Angry in the Great White North

Members of Canada's various left-wing parties are going to be attacking each other viciously for the next little while:

Oh, we can just hear Prime Minister Stephen Harper trembling now!

With Liberal Leader Stephane Dion and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May making nice yesterday, Harper now has four parties to the left of him, all fighting for the hysterically "pro-Kyoto" vote.

Simply put, anyone who believes the increasingly catastrophic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change about global warming can now vote for the Liberals, NDP, Greens or Bloc in the next election.

Everybody else, including those who think global warming is a crock or, more importantly, that it's real but that the threat is overstated and we need a rational, not a panicked response, can vote Conservative.

We suspect the only leader who doesn't have a nervous stomach today is Harper, who now sees the "progressive" vote on Kyoto splitting four ways, while he gets anyone who hasn't completely drunk the Kyoto Kool-Aid.

That four-way split is going to set the progressives at each others' throats. We can see it happening already. Consider this wall comment on the Facebook group Support the NDP in Central Nova!

This is a perfect confluence of factors in our favour, and we have to dominate. Elizabeth May is far from being progressive on issues that matter to people....if she were, she would have allowed the democratic process to unfold naturally, instead of this shady deal with the devil (a dim-witted devil at that). Peter MacKay is a well respected MP, and remains difficult to defeat - no question about that. But with this many votes up in the air now, and a limited field of candidates, anything could happen.

The Conservative MP, Peter MacKay, is described as well-respected and a challenge to defeat. Stephane Dion, who has boosted the pro-environment Green Party by withdrawing the Liberal Party from the riding of Central Nova were Green Party leader Elizabeth May is running, is a dim-witted devil.

We're going to see a lot of that. The Conservatives will be attacked in a pro forma manner, of course. But the real bile will be reserved for the fellow travellers on the left side of the spectrum.

The funny thing is that while Canada's right was once fractured too, I don't think the fratricidal attacks were ever that bad. Remember, the right thinks the left is mistaken, but the left thinks the right is evil. Now that attitude is going to be applied by the left to the left. That's why Stephane Dion is a devil, and not a short-sighted opportunist.

This will all settle out one day, but not anytime soon. Enjoy it while it lasts.