Toronto Star - Devastated Dion set to quit
Bye Bye Dion ~
now let the finger pointing begin !
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Oct 16, 2008 04:30 AM
Les Whittington / Joanna Smith
Ottawa Bureau
Stéphane Dion, shown in a TV interview on Oct. 12, 2008, is unlikely to try to hang on to leadership after the number of Liberal seats in the House of Commons plummeted from 95 to 76.
OTTAWA–The federal Liberal Party says that leader Stéphane Dion will not make a public statement about his future today.
Devastated by the disappointing showing of his party in the election, Dion was expected to announce today he will step aside as Liberal leader. But this morning, the party said this is not the case.
“We will properly advise the media when M. Dion is prepared to speak publicly,†said George Young in a message sent to the media.
Unlike the other party leaders, Dion did not make a public appearance yesterday, instead huddling with his family and advisers. Party insiders said he would remain as leader until the Liberals choose a successor.
Dion had been expected to announce in his remarks after the polls closed late Tuesday that he would set in motion a process to allow his party to choose a new leader. But he avoided the subject.
The 26 per cent of the popular vote that the Liberals received on Tuesday is among the worst results the party has ever had. Liberal seats in the House of Commons plummeted to 76 from 95 while the Conservatives strengthened their minority position to 143 seats from 127 at dissolution.
With that record, there was little expectation that Dion would try to hold on to the leadership. "He just can't stay" was a typical assessment from a senior Liberal close to the Dion campaign yesterday.
The party has a biennial convention scheduled in Vancouver in May, where Dion's leadership would face a vote of confidence. Should he step down before then, the Vancouver meeting could be turned into a send-off for Dion and a leadership convention.
Veteran Liberals said Dion, who has never had a strong political organization or powerful backing in the caucus, would be unlikely to survive a leadership review.
It's no secret that Dion – a reserved, unexciting former professor – was a liability for Liberal candidates on voters' doorsteps, and that his Green Shift plan to fight climate change with a carbon tax turned off voters.
"Sometimes in political life ... you make the best efforts and it doesn't show results," said re-elected Vancouver Liberal Ujjal Dosanjh.
"Mr. Dion attempted over the last couple of years to connect with Canadians on the Green Shift or otherwise and ... we came up short," Dosanjh told CBC-TV. But he added that he wasn't taking any position on the current leader's future.
Liberal Jim Karygiannis implied he would like Dion to step down but said the future of his leadership would be up to the Liberal caucus.
"As a caucus we have to see where we went and where we're going and how we go," he said. "The leader also has to decide in his own mind what he wants to do. Is he staying or is he going?
"You don't go from 95 to 76 – you know," he said, trailing off. "It was the worst performance we did in years. ... We're going to have to think about that one."
Karygiannis said the national campaign did nothing to help him get re-elected in the Scarborough-Agincourt riding he has held for 20 years. "There was no message from the national campaign. There was no theme that we've seen and certainly the message from the leader's office was not getting through."
Defeated Nova Scotia Liberal Robert Thibault said the weak national campaign likely had an effect on the traditionally tight race in West Nova, where he lost to Conservative Greg Kerr.
"I was fortunate to win it three times, but the Green Shift was a very, very difficult sell," he said.
Thibault believes Canada will eventually adopt a policy similar to the Green Shift, but, politically, Dion went about it the wrong way.
"He was trying to put it through without proper debate in my mind," Thibault said. "It would have been better to put a green paper forward, tell Canadians: `This is what I'm considering, this is the direction I'd like to go. How do we make this work for you? What are the problems with it?'"
Liberal strategists said Canadians' fears over the economy may have driven voters away from the relatively unknown Dion to Harper, who scores well as an economic manager in opinion surveys.
Insiders said problems with the Green Shift were compounded by Dion's inability to fight effectively the negative attacks that the Conservatives' Stephen Harper launched against the proposal.
One organizer for a Liberal candidate said Dion was a tough sell as a leader because he appeared weak when he repeatedly passed up chances to defeat the Harper government and force an election. The Liberals held back because, under Dion's leadership, polls showed the party was not in a winning position. Senator David Smith, a Liberal campaign co-chair, said it would be wrong for anyone in the party to pressure Dion to step down immediately. He said Dion was in "a period of soul-searching" yesterday.
But supporters of Toronto MPs and leadership aspirants Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae are unlikely to wait very long to press the issue.
