Dion is Forked

In chess, when your opponent is poised to take two of your pieces with his next move, you have to choose which one to save, knowing that you will inevitably lose the other. The dilemma is commonly known as a fork.

One can only imagine the fun filled booby-traps that Stephen Harper will put in his Throne Speech tomorrow. Buoyed by two polls which show the Tories emerging from a deadlock with the Liberals, (one which places the Tories in majority territory), Harper can afford to be bolder than usual.

The one lesson we have learned from the Ontario election is that people will value leadership over broken promises. Promises matter. Leadership matters more.

Jean Chretien taught us that a confident leader with a vision will overcome a broken promise on the GST or the Billion-dollar HRDC boondoggle. We can all agree Paul martin had a different style…

So Harper will give a pretty boring speech. He will have new priorities, including a limitation on the infringement in provincial jurisdiction of the federal government, something the NDP and the BQ support whole-heartedly.

Harper will also include a little sentence in there meant to put Stephane Dion in a tough position. Harper will renounce the Kyoto Protocol, probably moving toward another agreement which included the US and Australia. Some are suggesting Harper will say the government wants to repeal Pablo’s Bill C-288, the Kyoto Implementation Bill.

Dion is faced with the most difficult decision of his career. He must choose between his principal issue, the environment, or his own career.

Do the Liberals go now or crush their credibility and wait for a better time. After a reversal of policy of this magnitude, could they possibly regain their credibility? Lose an election now or lose worse later?

Gilles Duceppe is Harper’s number one target in Quebec. He has also decided the Tories have nowhere to go in Quebec but up. He is taking his lumps and is going to the polls before the BQ heads the way of the PQ.

Back to the Liberals. I can hardly see how Stephane Dion prevents an election from happening, especially if the speech is something the Liberals could never support. No government has ever fallen on a throne speech. He can wait until the poison pill issue/bill comes to the house to defeat that. However, he would have had the ample opportunity to have previously stopped it.

My history teacher once told me “Great leaders have always been judged based on what they did when they were at a fork in the road.”

Stephane Dion, it is your move…