In the next few days, the House of Commons is probably going to pass a Private Member’s Bill which would legally (or possibly legally, depending upon who you ask) bind the government to meet the absurdly unachievable short-term Kyoto targets. The Liberals and the rest of the Opposition are using this as part of their cynical political game on the issue – after having failed for the better part of a decade to do anything to meet the arbitrary requirements of this ruinous and ill-conceived treaty, they’re trying to trap the Prime Minister between reality and their delusions.

But, there’s a way out of this trap – and to deal honestly with the nonsense which has contaminated the Canadian climate in the months since Stephanie, sorry, Stephane Dion ascended to the leadership of the Liberals: the Prime Minister should declare that the passage of a bill legally obligating the government to meet these impossible targets constitutes a vote of no confidence and ask the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament and launch a General Election.

Now, of course, this runs counter to the consensus reality of the moment. The environment is supposed to be the Conservatives’ weakness and little Stephanie’s greatest strength. We’re supposed to want to avoid an election over this and instead fight one a few months from now over a tax-cutting budget.

But let’s step back for a moment and consider a few things.

First – the feelings of a “majority of Canadians” about Kyoto or, well, pretty much anything are essentially totally irrelevant to the results of any election. The Tories need just shy of 40% of the people who actually bother to vote to agree with them in order to form a majority of Canadians. In other words – the vote of about one in five adults is what’s needed here: we don’t have any need for unanimity.

Second – up until this very moment we’ve been debating the issues of “the environment”, “climate change”, and so forth in a more or less abstract sense. “Are you for or against the environment?” and that sort of things. It’s little wonder that spineless, limp-wristed, tree-hugging whiners are able to get a lot of favourable coverage under such conditions.

However, an election fought on Kyoto – and specifically the demand that the government meet stringent targets – would move the debate from the abstract to the real. Just how much would the Liberals raise taxes in order to meet these entirely arbitrary targets? How much money would the send overseas? How many jobs would be lost?

Calling an election over this specific part of the issue would allow us to move from the theoretical to the real. It would force the Liberals to stake out a position on climate change other than “opposed.” It would expose the deep sense of cynicism with which this issues has been exploited by the left on a global basis.

More to the point: now is the time to fight an election. Again, it runs contrary to the conventional wisdom: but I’m pretty convinced that, if we put Harper up against Dion in an election this year, Harper will be re-elected with either a majority or damned-near close to one.

First of all, at this point Dion and the Liberals have actually turned their biggest issue – the environment – (and I thought that Universal Child Care, or health care, or something was the ISSUE THAT WE ALL HAD TO ADDRESS OR WE WERE ALL GOING TO DIE) into a possible vulnerability. Their record – and their lack of any plan to actually implement Kyoto – indeed, the truth that there is no possible plan to do so and they already know that – would prove to be a huge vulnerability during the campaign. Indeed, I would expect that the move to make the environment the ISSUE WE MUST ALL OBSESS ABOUT could backfire upon the Liberals in that, once the generally fraudulent foundations of their platform are exposed, it could result in people who’ve been radicalized over the issue going to the Greens or the NDP.

Though the two parties are starting off, from the look of the polls, about where they left off last January, I expect that Dion’s support will collapse under the pressure of a national campaign. Once again, up until this point the Canadian public have known Dion only in the abstract – most have yet to see him up close. I don’t expect the results of such a meeting will be pretty.

Dion’s core problem is that he’s a Frenchman. Not only a French citizen – but he strikes me, when I see him on television, as looking at sounding as through he’s stepped right off a plane from Paris. It’s one thing, I think, to deal with the prospect of a Quebecker as the Prime Minister (though, I think that the rest of the country has earned a few turns by now) – but Dion doesn’t even seem like that. He strikes me as a foreigner in his manner, his dress, and his speech. Which, of course, I guess he is.

This isn’t a matter of “questioning the loyalty of dual citizens” – it’s a matter of questioning the loyalty of Dion. This is particularly relevant within the context of Kyoto and the environment in that the French government – to which Dion owes some degree of loyalty – is pushing for some kind of international tax against non-socialist Western nations (well, that’s not what they call it…). In supporting the kind of measures which the French government want here in Canada, which master does Dion serve?

Also helpful is the fact that Dion seems to be a genuine fanatic on these issues. A fanatic, as they say, is someone who can’t change their mind and can’t change the subject. If we successful discredit Dion on this issue, I doubt if he’ll have the sense to actually try and fight back by shifting issues – I expect him to continue to play his role as a French David Suzuki right up until the bitter end.

As I’ve told some people, I didn’t have anything non-political against Jean Chrétien. Actually, in a lot of ways, I kind of liked the guy. But I hated Paul Martin. And I really hate little Stephanie. Of course, I really, really, really, really hate the spawn of Satan likely to be the next leader of the Liberal Party. So, let’s get on with this so that we can get to fighting that real enemy.