Monday's events

Compared to last week, today seemed rather mundane.  First the Liberal leadership debacle.  Dominic LeBlanc,  realizing he has absolutely no chance at winning after near invisibility last week, decided to back obvious front runner Ignatieff.  Dion stated that he will step down far sooner than May, as the Liberals make a push to find a new leader before parliament resumes on January 26th.  I can tell you nothing will make all Canadians happier than to see Dion gone.  The big question is will the Liberal executive appoint Ignatieff and go with a token leadership vote in May, or will they decide to go with a more broad-based vote?  Ignatieff has a lock on the executive, due to their reluctance to back the failed former NDP Premier of Ontario.  Maybe they will surprise us an appoint an interim leader who is more pragmatic than Dion while Ignatieff and Rae bicker.  I'm guessing they will go with appointing Ignatieff, but I would warn the Liberals to remember the anointment of Paul Martin and the problems that caused.

The second big thing of the day is the Quebec election.  It appears that Jean Charest and the Liberals got just enough seats to win a majority.  It is probably less an endorsement of the Liberals than the absolute rejection of the ADQ and the poor leadership of Mario Dumont to increase the broad base support of the ADQ.  It also doesn't help that the ADQ are fairly close on many levels to the federal Conservatives, who aren't exactly popular in Quebec.  I think that Charest is a bit of a douche but given the alternative of a traditionally fiscally irresponsible PQ, what choice did Quebec have?  Marois is a very decisive personality herself, especially after the debacle over her mansion.  Well, the dream of a right wing party in Quebec seems to be over, anyways.

Now something completely different, the US is starting to fly aerial drones over the Manitoba border.  I wonder if they fear some sort of invasion by all the border straddling Mennonite communities.  But seriously, one has to wonder at the point of this exercise other than to build a level of mistrust between Canada and the US.  I find it highly unlikely that a single drone flying over will have any effect on the illegal drug trade.  The lessons of prohibition were obviously not learned in the US.  If they want to end the organized crime associated with the drug trade, the most effective thing would be to legalize and regulate these substances.  Of course, the US could never regulate anything and would rather spend billions on a futile battle across a border that would be impractical to monitor all the time.