Dion was master of none

There is some confusion over the future of Stéphane Dion, dropped from the foreign ministry, or “global affairs” as it is currently styled in the consultant jargon of Her Majesty’s government for Canada.

Perhaps he was offended at the indignity of being offered the ambassadorship to the European Union and Germany, as was reported by CBC News. It’s a conventional end to political careers, a diplomatic sinecure into which can be stuffed inconvenient ministers. One thinks of Alfonso Gagliano being shopped around Europe by Jean Chrétien; the Holy See said no, but Denmark was convinced to take something rotten. But Dion is not a conventional politician.

(It was rather strange that the EU apparently no longer merited a Canadian ambassador of its own, as we maintain with the Organization of American States, and was supposedly to be reduced to the status of the African Union, where our ambassador to Ethiopia does double duty.)

Whatever his next step, the unlikely career of Stéphane Dion was a reflection of our times. Two decades ago, he left his academic post to handle the national unity file in the aftermath of the 1995 referendum. The Supreme Court reference on Quebec secession and the Clarity Act followed, and by the time Dion left the federal cabinet (for the first time) in 2003, Canada’s 40-year preoccupation with the national unity question was finally waning.

He then made a “green shift” — as he would later call his 2008 election manifesto — from federalism to the environment. He served as environment minister for Paul Martin after the 2004 election, and advanced the argument that environmentalism was less about conservation than it was a complete economic revolution. Just 10 years ago he upset Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae to win the Liberal leadership. After the internecine fighting over the spoils of power in the Chrétien-Martin years, there was something refreshing about Dion.

Dion put a revenue neutral carbon tax at the centre of his 2008 election campaign. He lost badly, but attempted to bring down Harper in a coalition with the NDP, supported by the Bloc Québécois. It finished him off, as he was no longer the principled professor, endearingly awkward, seeking Canada’s good. He came off more like Joe Clark, awkward and bumbling to be sure, but without any redeeming principles as he sought common cause with the separatists to grasp power. Having sacrificed his most attractive quality, the Liberals quickly dumped him and he spent the rest of the Harper years as more of a scholar-in- residence than a senior member of the party leadership.

Justin Trudeau honoured the loose Westminster tradition that former leaders are given senior portfolios, with foreign affairs the most likely landing spot. Dion left no footprints there. He came into politics to assist a prime minister on national unity; as foreign minister he had to watch a new prime minister who had no need of any help in foreign affairs, at least insofar it consisted of basking in foreign adulation. The awkward professor could hardly have been more out of place in the celebrity approach to foreign policy.

He was even usurped on the global climate change accord, as Trudeau himself flew into Paris to strut down the green carpet. Alberta just introduced its carbon tax. Who needs Stéphane Dion anymore?

He will not be missed at foreign affairs. Apparently unequal to the task, he had nothing compelling to offer in the face of the most pressing issues. He shut down the Office of Religious Freedom as massacres of believers mounted, offering vague affirmations of tolerance in the face of jihadi terror. By the end of Trudeau’s first year of alighting at capitals the world over, Dion was reduced to fanboy status, boasting that in light of the American presidential race, “the world is counting on Canada to have a positive influence on the United States, especially when the most prominent and popular political figure on the planet is our prime minister.” Perhaps Trudeau didn’t want Dion telling Trump that in person.

Whether he shows up next in Brussels or Berlin or both, Dion was neither the great man who bends events, nor the more common case of the insignificant man carried along by events. His was a middle case, the unlikely man swept up in events greater than he, never the master of them, but who served admirably when the times called upon him. The prime minister has decided that the times no longer do. It’s hard to disagree. Former Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion.