Dion must go, former Liberal deputy PM says

Stéphane Dion is facing calls from a senior party stalwart to immediately give up his post, the latest example of waning support for the Liberal leader within his own party.

Former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley said the Liberal caucus and party executive should move to choose a new leader before Christmas who can get the caucus ready for the resumption of Parliament in January.

"As a Liberal, I believe the first step for my party is to replace Stéphane Dion as leader with someone whose first job is to rebuild the Liberal party, rather than leading a coalition with the NDP," Manley said in an opinion piece in Saturday's Globe and Mail.

His comments come two days after Prime Minister Stephen Harper persuaded the Governor General to suspend Parliament and ward off, at least for the moment, the demise of his minority Conservative government.

That move came after the Liberals and NDP agreed to form a coalition headed by Dion and aimed at ousting Harper's government, which the opposition accuses of failing to propose an adequate plan to deal with the economic crisis.

Manley said the idea that the public would welcome Dion as prime minister after having rejected him during the Oct. 14 federal election "was delusional at best."

"Mr. Dion had seemed to accept responsibility for the defeat (although somewhat reluctantly), and should have left his post immediately" after the vote, wrote Manley, who is now counsel at McCarthy Tétrault LLP.

"Furthermore, in agreeing to the terms of the coalition with the NDP and the Bloc, Mr. Dion bound his successor to a controversial arrangement without even consulting any of the candidates to succeed him in the process, leaving them no option but to endorse it or break with him as party leader."

The Bloc is not an official member of the coalition, but has agreed to support it on matters of confidence.

The Liberal leadership convention is still scheduled for May. Some MPs, however, have said efforts are underway to speed up the process of finding a new chief.

Liberal MP Bob Rae, who is considered one of the frontrunners of the race to replace Dion, admitted Saturday that the current situation is becoming difficult.

"Mr Dion has already said that he's not staying on. If the party wants to move dates around or move things up, we're certainly open to that as long as what emerges is seen as a credible process and one that has a lot of integrity to it."

Rae's leadership rival, Michael Ignatieff, told the Toronto Star that "discussions are ongoing" to replace Dion before the party's leadership convention in May.

"What the party is discussing is whether there are ways in which the leadership race can be accelerated in such a way that we can present a clear alternative to the country," he was quoted as saying.

On Friday, Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy suggested the party might move up the date for changing leaders.

Dion avoided answering questions about his future as head of the party during a pro-coalition rally in Toronto Saturday.   

An EKOS poll conducted Thursday night found 60 per cent of Canadians surveyed think Dion should resign as Liberal leader in light of what has happened on Parliament Hill this week.

By comparison, 37 per cent of respondents said they think Harper should step down.

In total, a random sample of 1,502 Canadians aged 18 and over responded to the telephone survey. A sample of this size provides a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.