You may or may not have heard, and I wish I wasn't studying and had more time to dive into this, but Stephane Dion stated that he would step down, meaning that a new leader had the chance to be picked by the Liberal caucus as early as this week. Well, yesterday LeBlanc, third leading Lib leader hopefully, dropped out of the race and through his support behind my man, Michael Ignatieff. This morning I bought the Globe and Mail when I read that Dion agreed to step down (which is actually very honourable of him and I'm glad for him, he's a good sidelines guy that didn't deserve the negative press he was getting for the debauchery that was the most recent Liberal results for the elections) and I just read right now online, so it must be very recent being as it wasn't even plausible in the paper's headlines and wasn't on the CBC website earlier today, that the second most popular Liberal leader hopeful, Bob Rae, has also agreed to step aside for the sake of the party, I'm assuming (haven't even read through the article as procrastination is getting dangerously addictive), and now the Liberals have a new leader, Michael Grant Ignatieff. I read a bit of stuff on the guy already and I love what I've read so far, he's complex, a thinker, and not shy about certain opinions. 16 published novels, decades of teaching at Harvard, and international experience and unfortunately, a minor experience in Parliament, two years and two elections. But regardless, the guy is wicked and he does have some environmental bones in his body, which is great to hear. Had the Liberal party had him on the foreground 2 months ago, anything could've happened. Time to get excited about the Liberal party again folks.
As a side note, someone reminded me of a fact that I'd never really considered before that is kinda very telling for me. Nationally, there are usually two divisions people vote, for a party with conservative or liberal ideologies. In Canada's multi-party system, we have only one national conservative party, Harper's Conservatives, but we have three separate liberal parties; Ignatieff's Liberals, Layton's New Democrats and May's Green. So what were the statistics, 40 odd voters in 100 voted for a conservative government, while the remaining sixty wished to see a liberal party in the stronghold. This is why I support the idea of a coalition government. Its not undemocratic because that is the nature of a minority government, half of the country didn't want you there, you just garnered the most support because of a lack of intra-ideal competition. So media saying that US is going left and Canada is going right, get your facts straight. Canada is still very much of the free thinking, "individual liberty and equal opportunities" (Wikipedia said it best).
