Just got back from Dion’s big Toronto speech (although you wouldn’t know it was Toronto given the way he was playing to Quebec voters hard during it). All in all, a solid effort – lots of passion, a touch of empathy, and his English wasn’t that bad. Most importantly, he went hard against Harper on the economy which is really all he should be talking about over the final week. A few random notes:

–Radwanski and Kinsella have live blog recaps.

-Dion got 7 standing ovations in what was a very Liberal-friendly room (four of them were before he spoke).

-Dion’s biggest ovation line of the meal: “I may not speak English as well as Mr. Harper, but I speak the truth better“. How Chretien-esque.

-Paul Martin has become Dion’s very own Ed Broadbent…he got name dropped 3 or 4 times during the speech and gave the introduction. As much as I’ve criticized Paul in the past, I do think there is some value in rolling him out strategically to hype the Liberal economic record. Yes, you read that right. Calgary Grit is advocating more Paul Martin.

-Dion’s conclusion, where he personalized why he got into politics and talked about his family was his best part of the speech, although I doubt it will make the news clips. It’s a shame the closing statements got cut from the debates because that would have worked very well for him.