How many times will you hear the Sun Tzu quote today?

In a move that is meant to encourage party unity, Stephane Dion is placing his former rivals in the leadership race at the forefront, giving them prominent positions in the party structure.

What is the old saying? Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.

So, if Dion wins the next election, we are in government everybody is happy and we can worry about governing and not leadership. If we lose…we can all be comforted by the fact that Bob wrote the policy, Gerard did the organizing and Michael was the right hand man all along…

Good Job Stephane, for an idealistic philosophy professor, you are more Machiavellian than I ever gave you credit for.

Ok with all the ass-slapping and back-patting done, can we move onto the real issues affecting Canada, like collapsing social safety net in this country, and the gap of services received in different areas, rural and urban, across provinces. Ottawa is awash in surpluses, just like it was in the 1950s. It took good will and leadership to give us social security, health care, and pensions. Now we need leadership to push forward with child care, pharmacare, home care, and the other programs that Canadians want.

Clearly, we have work to do.

My blogger colleague Sebastien Jodoin takes Stephane Dion to task on the nation and fiscal imbalance with the time and precision I only wish I could provide on a regular basis. His analysis goes to the heart of how as minister, Dion was only interested in winning points against the sovereigntists, and not interested in solving the problems before him.

Although my personal favourite quote is how Dion talks about Canada is not good with symbolic politics, how it never works really well. Like say, for example, signing an environment treaty with no plans to ever meet the targets but acknowledging it as a symbolic step in the right direction. Oh the irony, oh the Bloc attack ads… (Symbolism is good for plants, but not for Quebecers!)

We all know that interprovincial relations is not a walk in the park, as like our dear leader says ‘Canada works better in practice, than in theory.’ My hope is the same thing can be said about Stephane Dion.