Jane Taber's Column
This is the comment I added to Jane Taber's post on The Globe and Mail's website.
Whatever you may have thought of his strengths and weaknesses as a potential Prime Minister, Stéphane Dion had the courage to present a platform that offered the very solutions that Canada needs -- and the world needs Canada to rally behind, as a responsible global leader: environmental action, sustainable development, and social justice.
The real tragedy here is that Canadians allowed themselves to be distracted from those critically important messages -- that timely vision -- during the election campaign.
The net result is that Canada will soon be heading off to Copenhagen with the reputation of being a nation of climate change obstructionists. The situation could have been so different.
Politicians may try to dodge the gravity of these issues by making the climate change debate about partisan politics, but we, the citizens, have no obligation to follow their lead.
We can set our own agenda for the country and insist that our elected representatives follow that agenda -- or find new representatives who better represent that agenda.
They work for us, after all.