Angry in the Great White North

a heat-seeking missile in the Conservative arsenal

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced at a press conference that he was going to treat any bill that directly supported a Throne Speech promise as a confidence motion, the Liberals denounced the move.

Not Stephane Dion, though. Stephane Dion has has not been spotted for over a week now:

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion remained silent yesterday in response to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's parliamentary dare that has raised the prospect of a fall election.

Harper met with reporters Wednesday and issued an ultimatum that appears to corner opposition parties into either supporting substantive government bills or voting down the government to force an election.

Stephane Dion was supposed to be in the Arctic, but that was too visible as well:

Dion called off a planned Arctic trip to deal with staffing issues and shuffle his shadow cabinet. That shuffle has been put off until next week, an official from Dion's office said.

The NDP is pouncing on Dion's absence from the public spotlight and staking claim as the true opposition party to Harper's Conservatives.

"This is an opportunity for the NDP to play the role as an effective opposition while the Liberals are in chaos," said party strategist Brad Lavigne. "If this keeps up, they're going to have to place Stephane Dion's picture on the back of a milk carton."

Well, that was published on October 6. Now it's October 9.

Still no Stephane Dion.

Jamie Carroll still has his job.

Still no Stephane Dion.

No shuffle of the Shadow Cabinet, though maybe that'll come tomorrow.

Still no Stephane Dion.

Stephen Harper deliver his Throne Speech ultimatum on October 4.

Still no Stephane Dion.

The Liberal response was delivered by Ralph Goodale on October 5, who supported Bob Rae in the Liberal Party leadership race, and then again by Michael Ignatieff on October 7.

And still no Stephane Dion.

Normally this would not matter so much, but with the Liberal Party in disarray, you have to wonder if there is some significance to this. At the very least, disheartened Liberal footsoldiers are going to get increasingly nervous if Stephane Dion does not make an appearance and some substantive comment on current political issues and soon.

It would have been better if Stephane Dion had appeared first thing this morning. Since then a new polling result has been reported, and it shows the Liberal Party standing in the polls moving in the wrong direction (for Liberals, that is):

The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey indicates a seven-percentage-point spread between Prime Minister Stephen Harper's governing Tories and Stephane Dion's opposition Grits.

The poll of just more than 1,000 Canadians last Thursday through Sunday put Conservative support at 35 per cent nationally.

The Liberals slipped to 28 per cent among decided and leaning voters as three weeks of very public recriminations and infighting apparently took their toll.

Pollster Bruce Anderson says the survey is especially problematic for the Liberals in Quebec, where support fell to just 14 per cent. The Bloc had 35 per cent support in Quebec and the Conservatives polled 26 per cent.

So now when Stephane Dion does pop up, some reporter is going to ask him about the polling numbers, and Dion will have to give the standard response of not following the polls, which to me always sounds like an admission of incompetence, whatever the stripe of politician who says it.

Maybe the plan is to keep Stephane Dion locked away until the poll numbers turn around. Or maybe Stephane Dion is undergoing some sort of major upgrade and it's taking longer than expected.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and with Garth Turner not doing much this week, his look-a-like Denis Coderre is dominating the news for the Liberal Party:

Casting himself as the Lone Ranger, and with a thin new beard serving as a partial mask, Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre ventured deep into hostile territory yesterday for a preelection photo op.

No, Mr. Coderre did not travel to Taliban country. He spent the day as the not-particularly-welcome guest of Canadian troops who were almost universally angry at the Liberals' insistence that Canada must end its combat mission here when the current mandate expires in February, 2009.

Mr. Coderre instead had to hoof it around the airfield, but his main points of interest seemed to be Tim Hortons and the media tent. Among the few perks that Jean Chretien's former immigration minister was given was a computerized card in order to eat at one of the chow halls.

But what Mr. Coderre lacked most of all was a credible explanation of why he had bothered to come on at all on a "fact-finding mission" if, as he said again and again, his mind was already made up that Canada should not continue fighting alongside the Dutch, British, Americans, Australians and Romanians in southern Afghanistan.

Given the poor reception Coderre is getting in Afghanistan, and the absurd statement he made in which he declared that nothing he would see in Afghanistan could change his mind about a February 2009 pullout, the Liberals really need to get someone else in front of the camera. For the people running the Liberal Party, it might have made sense to tell Stephane Dion that he would not be allowed to appear in front of the cameras for a week or so as punishment for his poor performance, but they really ought to have had prepared a better backup plan than letting Denis Coderre be the voice of the Liberal Party for even a few hours, much less a whole long weekend.

But then Denis Coderre paid his own way to Afghanistan, so maybe Coderre caught the party flatfooted. They might have been expecting a quiet weekend with little or no political news to distract them from retooling Stephane Dion.

I guess we'll see this week if the wait was worth it. Or maybe it'll be next week...

Update: Wouldn't you know it? I just post when news comes that the shuffle of Dion's shadow cabinet has been announced, with Stephane Dion making the annoucement. More to come...

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