THE COLUMN begins with a caveat.
At time of writing, the federal Liberal party leadership was in chaos but events will likely have progressed by the time these words are published.
Stéphane Dion had announced he is stepping down and the party caucus was trying to figure out whether to elect a caretaker interim leader on Dec. 10 until a new permanent leader could be chosen in January, or whether a Dion replacement should be elected by caucus immediately.
Still, this much is known no matter what happened Dec. 10.
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When the Liberals signed an agreement Dec. 1 with the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois to bring down the Conservative government and substitute a Liberal-led coalition government as early as Dec. 8, there was much anguish about who should lead that coalition government.
Dion had led the Liberals to their worst popular vote result in history Oct. 14 and had announced he was stepping down May 2, 2009.
Could he credibly lead a national government for five months?
The stubborn and proud Dion thought so but many in his caucus did not and bluntly told him so.
And for many of them, the preferred candidate to become interim leader and prime minister for a few months was Ralph Goodale.
Ralph Goodale?
The case for the seven-term Saskatchewan MP had logic behind it, as described by one of those MPs who urged Dion to step aside for a Goodale caretaker leadership.
Goodale is widely respected in the party as a workhorse, an extreme Liberal partisan and a vociferous opponent of the Harper Conservatives.
He was a respected finance minister in the Paul Martin government, held many cabinet positions under Jean Chrétien and since the coalition government would be dealing with economic turbulence and a likely recession, financial credentials would be important.
But perhaps Goodale’s strongest qualification in the eyes of his supporters was his Regina political base.
A Liberal-NDP coalition government supported by the BQ would have exactly three MPs between the Ontario and British Columbia borders and only Goodale would have a small contingent of rural voters.
A coalition government, if it happened, would be the least representative of Western Canada and in particular rural western Canada since Pierre Trudeau’s 1980 government, which had Prairie representation of two Winnipeg MPs.
“Having Ralph as interim leader would have given the coalition government at least a little bit of western credibility that it would not otherwise have had,” said one MP who urged Dion to step aside in favour of Goodale. “Having almost no one from the Prairies at a time of economic crisis would have been one of the great weakness of a coalition government.”
Of course, Goodale’s lack of French would have been a problem, and that led other MPs to recommend bilingual Toronto-area MP John McCallum.
Still, even the fact that Goodale was in the running to become Canada’s 23rd prime minister, if only for a few months, is an astounding turn around for a politician who laboured in the political wilderness in Saskatchewan throughout the 1980s.
And he surely would have set a record for the longest prime ministerial quotes ever.
