Dion sensing mood for an election!

So lets see Dion is applauding links between U.S. and Canadian policy. No doubt he will also go along with increased U.S. activity in Afghanistan. Maybe he will even suggest we should send more troops to finish up the job in time! I thought that it was Harper that was so enamoured of U.S. policies. No doubt Dion thinks that with Obama or even McCain there will be real change away from Bush policies. Perhaps there will be some minor change in environmental policy but most of the change will be in appearances rather than substance. The same will be the case if Dion manages to win an election rather than Harper. The difference might be that if Dion is in a minority Harper will probably not order his troops to sit on their hands and let legislation they oppose pass.
There is no poll evidence presented that Canadians are in the mood for an election. Perhaps it is polling that suggests Conservatives are going nowhere that induces a mood for an election this fall or perhaps he thinks that the economic slowdown will work against Harper. Dion says that Canadians do not like Conservatives'' style. Maybe not. But on the environment the Liberal style was to talk big and do little or nothing. From Dion''s rhetoric it sounds as if the Liberals intend to continue that policy.


Dion sensing mood for an election

TheStar.com - Canada - Dion sensing mood for an election
Liberal leader says U.S. presidential contest may boost his party's `green shift' carbon-tax pitch
July 24, 2008 Susan DelacourtOttawa Bureau
OTTAWA–Canadians are increasingly in the mood for a federal election this fall, says Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion.
"More than before," Dion said yesterday when asked what he was hearing on the road about voters' desire to go to the polls. "We have seen over the winter and the spring, more and more interest for federal politics and more and more appetite for an election."
But it may be another election – the U.S. presidential contest – that will also help the Liberals in any electoral battle here, Dion says.
The Liberal leader, currently on a tour of eastern Ontario to sell his "green shift" tax proposal, said that both presumptive U.S. presidential candidates – Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama – are proposing a more aggressive stand on climate change.
Dion said that the Liberals, with their plan to move taxes away from income and more to environmentally unfriendly carbon, are more in tune with the changing U.S. mood than is Stephen Harper's government.
"Both of them, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama, have said that the United States needs to stop (being) passive ... and come with a price on carbon – carbon pricing," Dion told a morning gathering in Kanata, just west of Ottawa.
Dion said that everyone from U.S. mayors to Al Gore, the former vice-president and Nobel laureate, is encouraging Americans to demand stronger action against climate change. A number of powerful U.S. mayors have talked about limiting imports from the Canadian oil sands, for instance, and Gore recently said the U.S. should be getting all its electricity from renewable sources within 10 years.
"So there are a lot of interesting things that are happening in the United States. The last thing I would like to see is Canada behind the United States," Dion said.
"The world is looking more and more to include carbon pricing in their trade strategy and I want Canada to be ahead of the curve, instead of being behind and vulnerable."
The Liberals have held off on provoking an election for the past year, arguing Canadians aren't ready. But at the end of June, Dion launched his "green shift" plan, including tax-enhancement and poverty-reduction schemes, and has since been out selling it. The plan has been condemned by the Tories as "a tax on everything," ill-timed to coincide with rising gas prices.
The Liberal leader insisted yesterday that his plan was going over better with Canadians than the Tories' attack ads were. He told his audience in Kanata that oil prices are going to rise regardless, so all politicians will have to eventually say what they are going to do to help Canadians offset those increases.
Dion says people he's meeting say they appreciate the chance to have a debate about the environment – something beyond the name-calling and attacks that have dominated federal political discourse.
"An election will come. I cannot tell you when. I know that Canadians are telling me more and more: `You were right to wait. We know more about this government and we know more about what kind of government you Liberals may give to us,'" he said.
"Not only about what (Conservatives) are doing wrong for the economy, the environment and social justice, and no strategy at all to fight poverty. But also in their style. People don't like that."