| Who Stole Stephane Dion's Brain? |
| by Max Fawcett | ||||||||||||||||
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Max Fawcett knows why Stephane Dion is struggling so badly. *** It's no great secret that Stephane Dion's first fifteen months as Liberal leader haven't gone according to plan, unless the plan was to appear as weak and ineffective as possible. He has failed to make any inroads in the polls or on the debt his party incurred while electing him as its leader. Only the Liberal Party's current and entirely short-term aversion to regicide has kept him in the leadership chair and safe from the braying donkeys who sit on his backbenches. Michael Adams believes that Dion's weakness stems from his effeminate manner and the absence of "primitive leadership," while Michael Valpy argues that he appears "untouched by life" with a "too-smooth face." Yet even if Dion drove up to Parliament Hill on a Harley Davidson sporting a full beard, his leadership problems would likely remain. It's not that Stephane Dion needs a new image; he needs to rediscover his old one. What happened to Canada's favourite egghead? Stephane Dion was selected as the leader of the Liberal Party in large part because of his reputation as a major brain, although the fact that he was neither Michael Ignatieff nor Bob Rae certainly helped. Prior to becoming leader Dion had amassed an impressive intellectual resume that began with his role in crafting the Clarity Act but also prominently featured his views on the environment and Canada's place in the world. Liberals believed that they had chosen a man who could not only unite a fractured party but also stand up to Stephen Harper and, if he polished his English skills, beat him in a contest of ideas in either official language. Unfortunately for Liberals, and for himself, Dion appeared to misplace that famous brain of his shortly after the convention, because his brief time as leader has been defined not by intellectual vigor but by meekness and cowardice. At virtually every major encounter thus far, Harper has not only bested Dion but done so convincingly. On Canada's engagement in Afghanistan, Harper was able to conscript Dion into supporting the broader strokes of his position while removing it as a potential election issue in the process. On the budget, Dion couldn't muster the courage to vote against the budget, choosing instead to have his backbenchers either abstain from the vote or miss it altogether, thus depriving his party of yet another piece of critical election ammunition. On the Conservatives' controversial immigration bill that introduces political influence into the immigration process and threatens the vaunted Liberal vision of diversity, multiculturalism, and the role that immigration plays in it, Dion has similarly signalled an unwillingness to make his party's votes count for anything. These failures could, mind you, be more about bad tactics and strategy than a lack of intellectual resolve. But his incompetence in dealing with Bill C-484, Conservative MP Ken Epp's transparent attempt to subvert Canada's abortion laws, on the other hand, defies any rational explanation. Bill C-484, the proposed unborn victims of crime act, would make it a separate crime to kill a fetus during a criminal act against its mother. With respect to Canada's existing abortion laws this bill is the most obvious of Trojan horses, an attempt to confer rights on the unborn fetus. Those rights, according to Gaétan Barrette, head of Quebec's Federation of Specialist Doctors, "...will allow someone to go to the Supreme Court and say 'Look, you've passed Bill 484. And because of that, you implicitly gave rights to this fetus. And if the fetus has rights, then abortion should be illegal because it is a murder." It is understandable that members of the public not versed in the legalities of abortion laws would be deceived by the subterfuge, and that those who would otherwise be pro-choice might support Mr. Epp's bill. But it is not understandable that someone as politically experienced as Stephane Dion could fail to appreciate the importance of the bill. Yet during the second reading of the bill 27 members of his caucus voted in support of the bill and 11, including Dion himself, didn't even bother to show up. Abortion rights advocates across the country haven't been nearly as timid, describing it as a legally impotent tool that whose only effect, and indeed its desired one, would be to pave the way for the re-criminalization of abortion. They reject Mr. Epp's assertion that the bill is simply an effort to protect women, arguing that Canada's hate crimes legislation already has a gender clause that can be used when violence is committed against pregnant women, and that judges have always had the option of enhancing the charges in such circumstances. That Dion has been either unable or unwilling to bring a similar degree of intellectual clarity to such an important debate is puzzling. One of Dion's few remaining supporters might argue that the outcome of a vote on the second reading of a private member's bill is insignificant, or that he's allowing members to vote according to their conscience on a matter of moral significance. Yet those would be rationalizations at best, and unsatisfactory ones at that. Mr. Epp's bill has passed second reading and moved on to the committee stage, putting it dangerously close to becoming important. Worse still, Jean-François Del Torchio, Dion's media attaché, couldn't confirm if Dion plans to instruct Liberals to vote against it during its third and final reading. If Dion wanted to let his backbenchers vote according to their conscience, shouldn't he at least have insisted that they do so on a bill that presents the question in a straightforward and unambiguous manner? Shouldn't Dion, the author of the Clarity Act, have insisted on a similar degree of intellectual honesty with respect to this equally important issue? Stephane Dion will get one last chance to redeem himself, both among the Liberals who elected him as their leader and the Canadians who may yet make him Prime Minister. But for that to happen, he needs to re-awaken the renowned intellect that propelled him from the classrooms in Quebec City in the 1990s to Ottawa, into cabinet, and eventually into the leader's chair. If he doesn't, all the macho affectations in the world won't do him any good in his first and perhaps only election as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. And, for what it's worth, if Belinda Stronach starts expounding on the intricacies of monetary policy or the nature of identity in a multicultural society, you might want to check behind her ears for scars. Toronto, April 25 - 1,083 w.
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