Why I still support Dion

As the polls have shown the Liberals to continuously struggle and many suggesting at the moment the Liberals may fall below 28% (that is their worse showing ever in terms of popular vote, which happened in 1984), so many people are questioning whether Dion was the right choice. I know many people not involved in politics who have views very similiar to what Dion espouses, yet refuse to vote for him since they somehow believe he is a weak leader. As someone who follows politics closely, the problem with Dion, is not what he stands for, the problem is he does a poor job of selling it. In fact if people would actually listen to his speeches and read his platform, I believe he would be doing much better. Anyways here is why regardless of opinion polls, I plan to vote Liberal and not just to stop Stephen Harper, but actually to vote for Stephane Dion.

Stephane Dion is a leader

Contrary to popular position, Stephane Dion has shown that he is a true leader, not a weak leader as the Tory ads portray. What is ironic is the whole weak leader idea was started by the Tories, yet somehow people bought into it. After all, your political opponents are rarely going to say nice things about you and that is about the last place one should look for an honest opinion on someone. However, the reason why I believe he is a leader is his introduction and defence of the clarity act as intergovernmental affairs minister. Back in 1995, the Yes side nearly won a referendum in Quebec, yet a full 1/3 of Yes voters thought Quebec would still remain part of Quebec in the event of Yes victory due to the convuloted question. As someone who put his country first, Dion wanted to make sure this would never happen again. He introduced the clarity act which stated Quebec could only separate with a clear question and a clear majority. The Quebec media ridiculed him to great lengths but he stood his ground and in the end succeeded. Today separtism is at an all time low and even so much that the Bloc and PQ have put the idea of another referendum on the back burner. This is an example of a true leader, not a weak leader.

Stephane Dion is a centrist

Harper has gone to great lengths to argue that under Dion, the Liberals have taken a dramatic shift to the left and are socialists in disguise. This is again totally untrue and anyone who bothered to read their platform and also read the NDP would realize the differences between the two parties are just as stark as they are between the Conservatives and Liberals. If Dion were really as left wing as Harper says he is, I would have torn up my Liberal membership card in an instant, however, I know full well this is not the case. Dion favours both corporate and income tax cuts, hardly a socialist policy. He favours helping low income parents with childcare, not a full blown childcare program like Martin proposed. He has stated unequovically we will have a balanced budget even if it means spending cuts, again hardly a hallmark of a socialist. In fact ironically, his policies are very similiar to other conservative leaders abroad such as Angela Merkel in Germany and David Cameron in Britain, neither who anyone would describe as socialist. Likewise, his platform is one that I could easily see a Red Tory from the former Progressive Conservatives supporting. True, those on the centre-left would also agree with much of the platform, but I suspect the ideologues on both the left and right would find it tough to stomach, which is off course a good thing in my view. I lived under a socialist government in the 90s in BC, so I know what a socialist government is like and Dion is not even remotely similiar to one. In BC politics, he would be closer to Gordon Campbell than Carole James although still to the left of Gordon Campbell.

Liberals have the best platform

Forget about the ten second sound bytes and front page news, if you want to see who would be the best person to run the country, the best thing to do is to read the party platform and check out the party website. There are many Liberal policies I disagree with, as no party perfectly matches my views, however on the whole I feel their policies are well reasoned and balanced. More importantly, they are made based on what works best, not on some populist slogan or as others have done based on what side of the spectrum they fall on. In fact, I get the impression Dion is the only leader who ignores the whole idea of whether an idea is a "right wing" or "left wing" idea and instead looks at whether it is a "good idea" or "bad idea". Now some may say it is great to make great long speeches and have good articles, but if you want to sell something you need to do it in ten second bytes. While that maybe the case regretably, I think that is unfortunate and is certainly not what will influence how I vote. When buying a new house, you don't take just a minute looking through, you spend a whole day looking through several carefully and likewise when buying a new car, you test drive each one, not just look at the exterior. When choosing the next PM, one should look carefully at each party's platform. There is no reason why one cannot spare 10 minutes to read the party platform.

So while it is looking increasingly likely that Dion will not win the next election (although still possible), I will still happily vote for him as I believe he would make the best PM of the choices available.