How embarrassing

Firstly, it was extremely duplicitous of CTV to claim "on reflection...we owe it to you to broadcast everything that happened," having "indicated" that they would not afford the clip public passage. They should have either refused to re-start the interview, or else been upfront about their intentions to broadcast the interview in its entirety. Both options would have made their sneaky pretence of public service a lot more digestible.

However, long after CTV's lack of integrity is forgotten everyone will still remember this painful episode in Stephane Dion's career. The Liberals have every right to feel aggrieved about the way CTV handled the affair. But really CTV are just a news organisation. Stephane Dion aspires to lead one of the world's major countries- and a G8 economy- after Tuesday. His inability to answer a question that was phrased simply ("If you were Prime Minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr Harper has not done?") should not be patched over with weak explanations of the different role that tenses play in English and French.

Canada is a bi-lingual country and it is only right that a Francophone should seek high-office. However, given that over 20 million of Canada's 33 million people cannot speak French at all, it seems reasonable to expect an aspiring prime minister to possess a suitable level of proficiency in English. Moreover, given that most global business is conducted in English, it would seem odd for a primarily English speaking country to elect a leader who could so easily fall foul of syntax. The thought of Dion at a G8 summit or an emergency financial summit, which lurks on the horizon for Canada's next leader, is enough to make one cringe.

It is disturbingly ironic that Dion would claim that Stephen Harper has not done enough to ease Canadians' anxiety over the economic crisis, only to be incapable of explaining what he would do differently, let alone understand the premise behind a question that he teed-up for himself.

Canada can surely do a whole better than this. Given that it is one of the few countries (in fact, I know of no other) that experienced real job growth last month, electing Dion on Tuesday seems like an insane prospect.

Harper's French may well leave a lot to be desired, but at least that is a better reflection of the Canadian population. True bilingualism does not mean electing a Francophone leader for the sake of it. Least of all one who speaks English poorly, but with a mitigating Franco twang.