Submit Questions for our Interview with Honourable Stéphane Dion

Greg Farries — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 10:25:28 -0600

Mapleleafweb is scheduled to do an interview with Honourable Stéphane Dion, Leader of the Official Opposition and Liberal Party of Canada. We are providing visitors to Mapleleafweb the opportunity to submit potential questions to Hon. Stéphane Dion.

Your questions can be emailed directly to me, or you can post the questions in this forum thread.

Questions can be submitted until Thursday, June 12th, after which I will select three (or more) interesting questions and include them in the batch asked to Hon. Stéphane Dion.

The interview will appear in the Interviews section of Mapleleafweb.

Stéphane Dion

Jay Makarenko — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:11:56 -0600

Stéphane Dion is leader of the Official Opposition and of the Liberal Party of Canada. He represents the federal riding of St. Laurent—Cartierville.

Dion became Liberal Party leader on December 2, 2006, despite being a low-key candidate in a lengthy leadership race. The environment was Dion’s primary campaign theme. He defeated several high-profile candidates, including Gerard Kennedy, Michael Ignatieff, and Bob Rae, to assume the leadership from outgoing leader and former Prime Minister Paul Martin.

From the outset, Dion has faced challenges as party leader, despite a surge in the Liberal Party’s popularity in the months immediately following his appointment. In early 2007, the Conservative Party unleashed a negative ad campaign portraying him as weak and “not a leader.” Dion has also experienced dissension in his own caucus.

On more than one occasion, Dion and the Liberals have faced tough decisions regarding whether or not to bring down the Conservative government helmed by Stephen Harper. For example, in February 2008 the Liberals walked out of the House of Commons in opposition to the government’s crime bill. And, rather than forcing an election, the Liberals have negotiated with the Conservative government on the mission in Afghanistan, while opting not to oppose any of the budgets tabled by the government. In October 2007, in order to avert an election, the Liberals abstained from voting on the Conservative Party’s throne speech.

In an upcoming election, the Liberal Party will likely campaign on the issue of global warming. Central to the Liberal Party’s vision is “building a sustainable, green economy with policies that both good for the planet and good for our wallets.” The economy and social policy (that is, health care and other social programs) are also key issues for the party.

Liberalism and Quebec Sovereignty

Before becoming Leader of the Liberal Party, Dion had solid experience in politics, as a member of cabinet for both the Chrétien and Martin Liberal governments.

He served as Minister of the Environment in the Martin Liberal government, a role that earned him mixed reviews. While editorialists recognized the sophistication of his views, Dion’s “Project Green” plan to reduce greenhouse gases was panned by environmentalists as weak. He was also criticized for his government’s failure to live up to its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.

Under former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, Dion served as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, from 1996 to 2003. This was a particularly crucial time in Canadian history, following the Quebec referendum on sovereignty. In this role, Dion wrote three open letters to leaders of the Quebec sovereignty movement regarding legal issues surrounding future referendums. In these letters, he asserted the federal government’s role in any future referendum process, particularly concerning its role in formulating any referendum question. It was from these ideas, and the Reform Party’s 20/20 platform on national unity, that the dominant themes of the 1999 Clarity Act emerged. Essentially, the Clarity Act established the conditions under which the Government of Canada would enter into negotiations with a province regarding secession. The Clarity Act requires a clear question about independence as well as a clear majority by voters in support of separation.

Dion’s influence over the debate on Quebec sovereignty also included submitting three questions to the Supreme Court of Canada in 1996. In response, the Court’s Reference, in its decision re: Secession of Quebec, asserted that Quebec could not declare independence unilaterally, but would instead have to enter into negotiations with the Government of Canada in order to initiate the separation process.

Perhaps ironically, as a teenager and undergraduate Dion supported Quebec sovereignty and the Parti Québécois. However, he remained neutral during the 1980 referendum on sovereignty association. Subsequently, he developed a strong commitment to federalism in the period surrounding the debate over the Meech Lake Accord, and began speaking out, in the media, against the separatist cause.

A Personal Snapshot

Dion was born in Quebec City in 1955 and was raised in the city’s Sillery district. He received a B.A. and an M.A. in political science from Laval University in 1977 and 1979, respectively. He then earned a Ph.D. from the Institut D’Études Politiques de Paris.

After completing his Ph.D., Dion returned to Canada in 1984 to teach as a sessional instructor at the Université de Moncton. That same year, he assumed a faculty position at the Université de Montréal from 1984 to 1996. Dion was also a visiting professor at the Brookings Institution, the Laboratoire d’économie politique in Paris, and at the Canadian Centre for Management Development, an agency of the Government of Canada. In his academic career, Dion researched and lectured primarily on public administration, but turned his attention to Quebec nationalism following the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord in 1990.

In 1986, Dion married Janine Kreiber, whom he met while attending graduate school at Laval. That year they also adopted Jeanne, their daughter.