Garneau is in!

This comes on the heels of Dion's recent denial that Garneau's name would appear on the Westmount-Ville Marie ballot as the Liberal candidate, which prompted Garneau to announce his retirement from a career in public life before it even began. Now all that has changed, and it has been confirmed that the Westmount resident and Canada's first nationally known astronaut will be carrying the Liberal torch into the next federal election — whenever that is.

The announcement took place last Friday at the Atwater Library, complete with all the TV cameras and tired old 'space' and 'astronaut' lines tossed carelessly around in the media, with Garneau's predecessor, the incumbent MP Lucienne Robillard, in attendance. So with the smiling support of party leader Dion and out-going veteran Robillard, Garneau is in and all of the alleged backroom nastiness is out. It was all friendly and everyone, it seemed, was happy.

But in other quarters, there is still some grumbling over the Liberals' continued lack of transparency in the matter. Few would contend that Mr. Garneau is not an excellent candidate for Westmount-Ville Marie, for he has actually lived here and is obviously in touch with all the key local issues. He is certainly well-known and, for all intents and purposes, should be able to beat all other comers at the polls — despite the ever-increasing momentum that is currently building among the Liberals' rivals, especially the NDP and Green Party.

But at the end of the day, there are quite a few die-hard Liberals out there who insist that Mr. Garneau should have been chosen in a more democratic way, through a nomination meeting where he could have been properly elected by local members — thus affording him the 'official' endorsement of his fellow Westmounters — the very people he hopes to one day represent in Ottawa.

Either way you look at it, it was definitely a good day for the federal Liberals last Friday — one of the few good days they can claim to have had in recent memory.