Key Members Of Progressive Canadians To Join Liberals

The executive made the decision to quit en masse. It was a surprise when the others followed. There was a realization, said Ms. Parsons, that Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion was offering policy options that closely mirrored their own. “As a political party you are always trying to find your differentiators [with other parties] and I found that when Stéphane Dion became the leader of the Liberal Party that that differentiator was harder and harder to locate,” explained Ms. Parsons, who lives in Truro, N.S., and had been party leader since 2005. “He had a lot of the same visions for the country that we had. And, of course, the Liberal Party has sort of moved into that Progressive Conservative space anyway.” There were also some key points of departure with other Progressive Canadian Party members, she said. “So when you start having some fundamental disagreements on direction inside the party, you have to start asking yourself where your energies are best spent. And if I am going to put out that much energy I would like to do good for this country,” Ms. Parsons said. The Progressive Canadians are not large in number. They fielded just 25 candidates in the last federal election and took 0.1 per cent of the popular vote. But the move will be seen as a shot in the arm for Mr. Dion, who has been derided by the Conservatives as a weak leader and who, according to a recent survey, is not as widely recognized by Canadians as Mario from Nintendo's video-game series. ... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071117.tories17/BNStory/National/ [Proofreader’s note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on November 19, 2007]

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