The party of Pearson and even Trudeau was worthy of respect, but Turner was a mistake, Chretien a placeholder too long in place, and Martin an unmitigated disaster.

Needless to say, I've been terribly disappointed with Dion. He's shown no leadership, but worse, he's shown no direction. I understand that Paul Martin left the Liberal Party in shambles, and perhaps there is nothing there to 'lead'; but Dion has given no indication that he has any vision or coherent strategy of his own. It appears that he is himself governed by polls and the dictates of backroom hacks from the corrupt old-school of Liberal insiders.

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Needless to say, I've been terribly disappointed with Dion. He's shown no leadership, but worse, he's shown no direction. I understand that Paul Martin left the Liberal Party in shambles, and perhaps there is nothing there to 'lead'; but Dion has given no indication that he has any vision or coherent strategy of his own. It appears that he is himself governed by polls and the dictates of backroom hacks from the corrupt old-school of Liberal insiders.

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I really feel that Dion is the most evolved leader available to us right now

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"were backing down".

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Hot: Stéphane Dion. The Liberal Leader, who is seriously thinking of trying to defeat the government in the fall, had planned to talk to his closest advisers about this at a working dinner next week in Ottawa.

But, the meeting was cancelled, according to an inside Liberal source, after word of it leaked out. Meanwhile, the Grit platform is almost complete; there is to be a meeting about it next week.

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[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: NorthReport ]

Canada's greenhouse gas emission went up 27% in 1990-2004 (the years basically corresponding to the Liberal era), one of the worst records of any comparable country. The US went up 16%, Australia and Japan were up 5%, while Britain, Germany, France and the EU average were all DOWN by varying amounts.
wiki source

Dion of course was in cabinet and/or the environment minister and stood by fecklessly while Canada's greenhouse gases kept rising. His famous excuse when confronted: it's not easy to make decisions.

Meanwhile, VP Gore signed Kyoto, knowing that doing so was an empty gesture. The Clinton/Gore administration never submitted Kyoto to the US Senate for ratification. (The US Senate voted symbolically 95 to 0 against Kyoto.)

When running for President in 2000, Gore (and Leiberman his VP pick) re-iterated the Clinton/Gore position that Kyoto would not be ratified by the USA unless the protocol was rewritten to include developing countries. This is similar to George W Bush's stated position.

Wiki on Gore

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As Vice-President...in the late 1990s, Gore strongly pushed for the passage of the Kyoto Protocol, which called for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.[10][11] He was opposed by the Senate, which passed unanimously (95-0) the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98),[12] which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States".[13] On November 12, 1998, Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations.[14] The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification.

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[ 10 September 2008: Message edited by: Paul Gross ]