Today’s announcement that Mississauga-Streetville MP Wajid Khan has crossed the floor and joined the CPC caucus is disappointing but no surprise. His acceptance of the PM’s offer to become special advisor on the Middle East and Afghanistan last summer demonstrated his loyalties were not to the Liberal Party and caucus. He should have been ordered to choose then and interim LO Bill Graham can be faulted for not dropping him from caucus immediately. But in a minority government situation and in the middle of national leadership campaign, people do strange things.
Stéphane Dion was right to order Khan to make a choice. The loss of one seat is less important than showing strong leadership and better to lose that seat now than in or close to an election. The Liberals now have time to organise and recruit a real Liberal nominee.
The new numbers mean, of course, that the CPC and the NDP combined have a majority in the House of Commons and give new significance to the close relationship between the PM and Jack Layton. The PM has acknowledged that Layton is the party leader he talks to most often and Layton has professed they have a deal to amend the government’s clean air draft legislation. Just where Layton is going with this and how NDP loyalists and stalwarts will respond to his snuggling with the PM remains to be seen. Will it be one grand “train wreck” as the CPC and NDP rush to the centre of Canadian politics? Can Stéphane Dion emerge as the preferred representative of Canadian values chosen over those who pursue merrily the politics of hypocritical expediency?
Stéphane Dion was right to order Khan to make a choice. The loss of one seat is less important than showing strong leadership and better to lose that seat now than in or close to an election. The Liberals now have time to organise and recruit a real Liberal nominee.
The new numbers mean, of course, that the CPC and the NDP combined have a majority in the House of Commons and give new significance to the close relationship between the PM and Jack Layton. The PM has acknowledged that Layton is the party leader he talks to most often and Layton has professed they have a deal to amend the government’s clean air draft legislation. Just where Layton is going with this and how NDP loyalists and stalwarts will respond to his snuggling with the PM remains to be seen. Will it be one grand “train wreck” as the CPC and NDP rush to the centre of Canadian politics? Can Stéphane Dion emerge as the preferred representative of Canadian values chosen over those who pursue merrily the politics of hypocritical expediency?
