Apparently, third place is where you want to be.

On a strange saturday night, two candidates came from third place to win their respective leaderships.

First, Ed Stelmach came from behind to defeat Jim Dinning and Ted Morton to become the premier-designate of Alberta and the leader of the provincial Progressive Conservatives.

I've read very little of Stelmach, so I'll have to start learning more into Alberta politics if I end up working in Calgary. I probably won't agree with many of his positions, but if I can respect his principles and he's less reactionary than Ralph Klein, then I can live with that.

Second, Stephane Dion came from behind to beat the two frontrunners of the Federal Liberal Party, Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff, respectively, and become the Leader of the Opposition.

As for Dion, he's pledged his platform around the concept of Sustainable Development, except he actually seems to know what he's talking about when he uses the three pillars: economic, social and environmental sustainability. If he can actually form a coherent platform from this, using help from the likes of Gerard Kennedy and Martha Hall Findlay, it might actually make me consider voting for the Liberals in future elections.

He has two weaknesses that I care about: his failure to do accomplish anything with Kyoto when he was in government. And his lack of a sound foreign policy strategy. I hope he can correct these two flaws (well, the former really requires an admittance of failure while the latter will be a bit tougher...)

Either way, the surge in support for the Green Party in the London by-election and the election of Dion has sparked a small flame of optimism in me about the possible future direction in Canadian politics.