A Modest Proposal Addressed to the Harper Government on How to Snare Stephane Dion

With more than a little interest, I've watched your recent efforts to snare Stephane Dion in a trap that will not allow him any choice but to bring down the government and get the election campaign going.

Allowing the cameras into the caucus meeting was a deft touch. The lusty bellowing, while down the hall the Liberals were attired in sack cloth and ashes, drove the point home that you’re ready and they’re not. (I will admit that seeing the Conservative caucus members on their feet did have the feel of a convention of used car salesmen about it, but don’t be deterred. The energy came through. I’m sure that a lot of Canadians are anticipating the day when you elect even more members of this sort, and won’t have to listen to the opposition at all. Hell, your caucus will be the House.)

The Speech from the Throne was a beauty. On climate change, you made it clear that you’re not going to be dictated to by so-called experts who are exaggerating the whole warming thing. (That was a great editorial in the Globe and Mail last week, showing how Nobel Prize winner Al Gore was blowing the issue out of proportion. If Rona Ambrose hadn’t been shifted out of the environment portfolio, I’m sure she would have been up for some kind of award herself. Not that I have anything against John Baird, who oozes sincerity on matters ecological.)

The real crisis is not the environment, as you subtly showed in the speech. It’s crime. You told it like I’m sure you think it is on the unprecedented crime wave that is sweeping the country. (Where did Stats Canada get those numbers about the falling murder rate last year? That’s not the stuff I see on the nightly news.)

Good idea to put all the crime bills into one big omnibus and to warn the Liberals that if they try to shift a comma, we’re into an election. Don’t let yourselves be distracted by the opposition idea that dealing with the bills one at a time could speed up the process and get them into law more quickly. They actually have the nerve to say they support most of this stuff. The point is that where crime is concerned, you need the omnibus to scare the criminal classes. Criminals don’t read the back pages of the paper to find out if this or that bill has passed. But the omnibus is different. They’ll see that on the front page of the Sun, and they’ll take notice.

The vexing trouble is that the Liberals are going to slither and slide and wriggle to do everything they can to avoid their appointment with the voters. This is not the time to grow faint-hearted and to worry too much about the fact that two-thirds of the voters supported other parties in the last election, and that they might think you should pay some attention to the opinions of the members they elected. That’s backwards thinking. This is the moment to get those voters who weren’t on board last time, and to snuff out the Grits for good.

With all the money in the bank, that big communications centre in Ottawa ready, the candidates salivating, the buses idling, and the pack media cheering you on, there is not a moment to be lost.

I’m worried that Stephane Dion is not man enough to take the bait and vote out the government. Maybe the attacks on him have not been personal enough, although the television ads did help. (Dion probably doesn’t watch television.)

Have you considered adding to the omnibus bill a provision that would make it a criminal offence for the Leader of the Opposition to wear those wire glasses Dion affects and to name his dog Kyoto?