The Written Word: Rafe Mair March 15th

By Rafe Mair

      On Tuesday last I interviewed Liberal leader Stephane Dion and he was very upset.

Here’s the question and its follow up, in a nutshell.

At the leadership convention Gerard Kennedy directed his supporters to move over to Mr. Dion’s camp. One of the influential men in this move, Navdeep Bains brought many Indo-Canadian delegates to Mr. Dion. This is part and parcel of any leadership convention but it must be noted that, from time to time, the beneficiary of the move makes a commitment to the person who brought them. Whether or not that happened here I can’t say. Two more dots exist and the question is whether or not these dots can all be connected.

A motion came before Parliament to extend two sections of the Anti-Terrorism Act and one of those sections was very important to the Air India investigation for it would have conferred upon it the ability to subpoena, amongst others. Mr. Bain’s father-in-law, an important witness who is considered to have knowledge of the events leading up to the Air India murders, if the two sections were retained, Mr. Bains father-in-law would be subject to subpoena.

Was there an undertaking by Mr. Dion to agree to let those sections lapse so Mr. Bain’s father-in-law would not be forced to testify? Please not that is a question, not a statement.

There is another dot, however. The anti-terrorism legislation was passed by the Liberal government when Mr. Dion was one of its cabinet ministers – why would the Liberals now vote against their own legislation?

Mr. Dion complained bitterly about this attack on his honesty reminding me of the Emerson quote, “the louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons”.

I like Mr. Dion and in fact predicted and hoped he would win the leadership. But I’m not doing my job unless I test the veracity of politicians. I’m not entitled to assume that Mr. Dion is fresh as a virgin thus a special case not subject to “hard talk.”

I think Mr. Dion is on a steep learning curve. If he wants a nice job, no hassles, no defending integrity, he should go back to being a member of a University faculty.

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