St?phane Dion, who came from fourth-place standing to win the leadership of Canada's Liberal Party early this month, declared immediate war on the minority Conservative government last week, and made it clear he is determined to force a late-winter election.

Implicitly, he made something else clear. He will attack the government on two principal issues, both of them integral to Canadian-American relations. One is the Kyoto Treaty, the other the Canadian role in Afghanistan. If he wins the election, therefore, America's northern neighbor will once again become vaguely hostile territory, as it was under the last Liberal government.

On Kyoto, the policy of Stephen Harper's Tory administration has followed the American line – namely that if the terms of the treaty were carried out, they would cripple the national economy. The previous Liberal government signed the treaty, but then quietly conceded that it could not meet the carbon emissions targets the treaty imposed. Ironically, the Liberal environment minister at the time was St?phane Dion.

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Undeterred by this inconsistency, however, Dion had no sooner assumed the party leadership than he launched a vehement attack on the Harper government's environmental policies. The attack was doubtless spurred in part by the new concerns on environmental issues being reflected in current public opinion polls. However, unlike his Liberal predecessors, Dion is not controlled by polls. He is a convinced leftist ideologue, much as Harper himself is ideologically conservative.

This separates Dion from the opportunism that has long characterized his party's policy positions. The Liberals have always tended to stand for whatever would get them elected. Much to the chagrin of the Liberal old guard, Dion is not cut from that cloth.

Similarly on Afghanistan, Harper wants the Canadian military mission expanded. Dion wants it withdrawn from its present heavy fighting in the Kandahar battle zone to a more "peacekeeping" role elsewhere in the country. Harper instantly chided him. As a Liberal cabinet minister, Dion had voted to send Canadians to fight in Afghanistan. Now, with a mounting list of dead and wounded, he wants to tell them it was all a mistake, said Harper.

Dion is aware, of course, that the English-speaking Royal Canadian Regiment, which has been engaged in heavy fighting in Afghanistan, will shortly be replaced by the French-speaking Royal 22nd (famous as the "Van Dooze," an Anglicization of the French word for 22, "vingt-deux"). This means that the casualties will be mostly French Canadian, and the publicity hurt the government's election prospects in Quebec. Or so he hopes.

Dion said that he would not support the government 's budget when it is brought down, probably in February, possibly sooner. Since Gilles Duceppe, leader of the separatist Bloc Qu?becois party in the Commons, has announced that he too will oppose the budget, the impending defeat of the government early in the year appears definite.

However, Dion's success in that election is a long way from secure. Though all Liberals are loudly voicing affirmations of party unity, they in fact remain far from united. To a gala reception at Ottawa last week honoring (and consoling) Michael Ignatieff, the favored candidate to win the leadership, Dion was not invited. Ignatieff took the occasion to publicly warn that Dion's stance on Afghanistan could split the party nationally.

His ideological fervor also alarms industry, which has always heavily bankrolled Liberal candidates and Liberal causes. To enforce Kyoto, for example, would certainly injure the tar sands development in Alberta, which is now fuelling the whole Canadian economy.

Dion has little to lose politically in Alberta or almost anywhere else the West, which is strongly conservative. But to win the election, he must restore the Liberal ascendancy in Ontario, whose manufacturing sector has been hit hard in recent years by Third World competition. If Dion is perceived in Ontario as a further threat to the economy, this is not likely to enhance his chances there.

Neither is his implicit anti-Americanism. While contempt for Americans has become a vogue among academics, journalists, the CBC and the cultural cliques of both Toronto and Montreal, it has by no means become fashionable anywhere else. Few Canadians do not have close relatives on the other side of the border, and the reality that any threat to the United States is instantly a threat to Canada lies deeply implanted in the Canadian psyche.

If he doesn't know this already, Dion should rapidly discover it if and when he talks to the people who actually do the electing. Should he fail to discover it, that could spell not only his own doom, but also that of the Liberal Party.

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