A surprising reversal

While there's been no lack of Lib flip-flops to discuss lately, the biggest one yet just surfaced on what's supposed to be Dion's signature issue:

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion retreated from his previous opposition to a carbon tax Thursday, blaming Conservative government cuts to climate change programs for forcing him to revisit his own party's environmental policies.

Dion said the proposed tax for businesses, responsible for greenhouse gas pollution linked to global warming, is among the new measures he's considering in an effort to improve his platform...

"The Sierra Club, in their last report card, said we went from hero to zero with the Conservative government regarding climate change," Dion said. "We wasted a full year before being able to do anything. So I need to revisit my own plan to make sure that it will work more speedily for Canadians in order to do our share for climate change and to have a strongest economy built on sustainability, and it's what I will do."

Now, there's nothing wrong with the mere fact that a leader or party changes a policy position - so long as there's some reasonable explanation for the initial stance, the new stance and the timing of the changeover. But in this case, such an explanation is sorely lacking on first two of those elements.

After all, Dion spent the vast majority of the last year (in which the Cons demolished as many existing emissions-reduction programs as they could find) running a leadership campaign with the environment as his primary issue - which should presumably have ensured that he was kept informed about where Canada stood in its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And it was in that same leadership campaign, where he presumably knew not much less than he does now about the Cons' actions, that Dion took a strong stand against the policy he's now looking to bring back to the table.

As a result, Dion's change in position effectively amounts to a concession that he was poorly informed and/or unduly narrow-minded on precisely the issue which won him the leadership race. And if Dion can't be counted on to have fully considered the options available on his signature issue (whether while handling the environment file personally or while running on the issue to win the Libs' leadership), there's serious reason to wonder just what he's failed to consider in other areas as well.

Update: Of course, it would be even worse if Dion were to then reverse course yet again. But that wouldn't happen, would it?