Angry in the Great White North

The Toronto Star is reporting the defections to Ignatieff of these Dion supporters:

Liberal leadership frontrunner Michael Ignatieff has made the first in what promises to be a flurry of similar moves ahead of next week's vote, poaching a trio of senior Quebec organizers from rival Stephane Dion.

The defections foreshadow a chaotic second ballot at the leadership convention, with the leading camps pulling out all the stops to woo the others' supporters.

At an event designed as a Quebec show of political force by Ignatieff, who leads in committed delegate totals in the province, his campaign feted the new arrivals from the Dion campaign.

After delivering a partisan speech, Ignatieff told reporters the defections are "huge, absolutely huge, that's momentum."

They include a former candidate from the Quebec City region, a top Dion organizer in the provincial capital, and former Levis MP Christian Jobin.

"I would say that the majority of Mr. Dion's delegates will be deserting him after the first ballot," said Jobin, who told Dion the bad news on Wednesday.

Jobin and the other two — who claim they are bringing a dozen delegates along — said they were attracted by Ignatieff"s positions on two hot-button issues in Quebec: openness to recognizing Quebecers as a nation and a willingness to address the so-called "fiscal imbalance."

The Montreal Gazette names all the Dion defectors:

The switchers included Christian Jobin and Daniel Garcia, who were previously organizing for Dion in the Quebec City area, and former Liberal election candidates Eric Paradis from Lotbiniere and Gilles Savard from Jonquiere.

The article suggest more defections elsewhere, as well as a collapse in support:

"In a riding like Lotbiniere, they were all for Stephane Dion; now they're all coming onside with us," [Bourassa MP Denis Coderre, co-chairperson of the Ignatieff campaign in Quebec,] said. "We have others, in Manicouagan, from the Lower St. Lawrence, in central Quebec."

Coderre said some won't vote for Dion, even though they are committed to do so on the first ballot. "There's some people who won't even vote on the first ballot and just vote on the second."

These claims are hard to judge. I was hoping Jason Cherniak would give us some insight, and he might yet do so. In the mean time, we have the heady claims of a hemmorrhaging Dion campaign, with the net benefactor, perhaps sole benefactor, being Michael Ignatieff.

How is the Dion team reacting? Well, for one thing, Eric Paradis' endorsement of Stephane Dion as been removed from the Stephane Dion web site (here is the cached version of the endorsement).

I guess we'll have to wait to see if there will more from Dion camp other than to throw Paradis and the others down the memory hole.