It's Up To Chuck

"At some point, you say to yourself, 'Does the government have any competence? Does it have any sense of what the correct thing is for the correct reasons?' "And finally, when you get enough reasons like this, you say, 'Mr. Martin isn't a serious person.'"

That's David Kilgour, tipping his hand on Thursday's budget vote. (Props to The Tiger In Winter for the alert.)

So, the game still appears to be afoot. Then again,

He said he won't support the Liberals in a confidence vote unless they promise to send up to 500 Canadian troop to Sudan. "Either the government is ignorant of the fact -- or wishes to deny -- that the military dictatorship in Sudan is complicit with the atrocities taking place in Darfur, or Prime Minister Paul Martin's commitments to Darfur were knee-jerk reactions, inspired by the current political crisis in Canada," Kilgour wrote in The Globe.

Given the state of Ottawa these days, it would not be a shock for the Martin regime to suddenly commit troops to central Africa. And if they do, you heard it here first. But what say you, Mr. Cadman? Take all the time you need, no matter what Adam Daifallah callously suggests. What a nail-biter -- and it may come down to an undecided man who is stricken with cancer. Love it or hate it, Canadian politics has never looked so much like a Hollywood picture.