Chantal Hebert makes the comments about Stephane Dion in her latest column on the importance of bilingualism:
Word on Parliament Hill these days is that a handful of senior Liberal MPs have been hitting their French books with a vengeance. Stephane Dion may have been on the job for only a few months, but the prospect that his successor will almost certainly not be from Quebec has convinced some of his ambitious colleagues to put energy in language training now, to avoid being left behind later.
Too bad we don't know the names of these "early birds". Hebert also suggests that Dion's tenure as leader of the Liberal Party will not be a long one, if Liberal strategists take her advice:
But in English, Dion tends to come across as petulant when he means to sound decisive. There are times when he is downright incomprehensible.
He is not the first Liberal leader to mangle the English language. Jean Chretien made a brilliant career of it. But everyone understood what he meant. The same cannot be said of Dion.
And that begs the question of how he would fare in the crossfire of an election debate. If the recent past is any indication, the answer is: Not so well.
Paul Martin, who was similarly challenged in French, could never score a debate hit in that language. The Bloc Quebecois's Gilles Duceppe trounced him every time. Martin's confused French was one of the reasons why he so decisively lost his Quebec audience.
Between now and the next campaign, Liberal strategists might want to ponder the optics of an English-language election debate that features a federal Liberal leader whose English is less effective than that of his sovereignist counterpart.
The next campaign might only be a few months away, as early as May perhaps.
I wonder what the record is for the speed at which national leader has had his or her political obituary written, or at least sketched out, openly by political observers. This has to be one of the fastest ever.
