Liberal leadership candidate Bob Rae’s new book, Canada in the Balance, will be published by McClelland & Stewart at the end of this month. Michael Ignatieff, who has been leading the race, is a prolific author whose books have been closely examined during the campaign. But although Stéphane Dion, another frontrunner, has written 10 books and many scholarly articles, Richard Warnica, a senior editor at The Tyee, writes that “Dion’s writing remains mostly hidden, at least in English Canada.”

Warnica’s look back at a 1999 collection of Dion’s writing, Straight Talk: Speeches and Writings on Canadian Unity (McGill-Queens University Press) shines light on some of the factors working against Dion in the campaign. The candidate, he says, “remains, in the public imagination, a bookish wonk.” A sample quote from a scholarly article provides a clear example of why.

However, Warnica goes on to show that Dion’s keen intellect and understanding of constitutional issues might make him the best-equipped candidate to fight for the unity of the country.

“In August of 1997, Bernard Landry publicly questioned Dion’s knowledge of international law, calling his assertion that ‘no country had been admitted to the United Nations without the approval of the predecessor state’ a ‘fundamental historical error.’

Dion, all pretences to courtesy abandoned, responded with this:

You claimed that, “to use one example out of fifty,” Germany recognized Slovenia as an independent state within hours of its declaration of independence. Here are the actual facts on Slovenia …. Despite the almost unanimous support of its population, Slovenia had to wait until the international community had determined that the dissolution of the Yugoslav federation was irreversible before obtaining international recognition.

The case of Slovenia shows how difficult it is to obtain international recognition. Our fellow citizens have the right to know that.

I am at your disposal to talk about the forty-nine other cases of international recognition you had in mind.

If only there were more debate in the House of Commons with this much substance and fire.

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