In the midst of business travels that has me out west this week, I’ve thought to take a minute to comment on a story emerging today out of the Niagara region.

The purported Green logic behind the Leader-to-Leader deal is to unseat Mr. Harper in the name of addressing the importance climate change. Great idea. Wrong golf course!

The story unfolding in the riding of St. Catharines Ontario exemplifies the inapplicability of the symbolic “Ralph Nader” analogy. See: No deal with Grits to defeat Tories: Fannon.

As the story points out, St. Catharines is a swing riding where if the results of the last election roughly hold true in the next election, then not running a Green candidate would almost certainly ensure a Liberal victory. By contrast, running a Green candidate almost certainly puts another check-mark in Mr. Harper’s win column.

It gets worse. In the midst of turmoil, uncertainty and a lack of direction, there is no guarantee all Greens will abide by Mr. Fannon’s on-again off-again communications efforts. Some will follow Elizabeth May’s lead and will support the symbolic gesture of voting for Mr. Dion as Prime Minister, by voting Liberal. Some will do as the local association presumably wants Greens to do; stick to voting Green. Some will get fed-up and vote NDP, while still others may get even more fed-up and vote Conservative. Once again, therefore, I’ll ask the question. How does “the deal” succeed in unseating Mr. Harper?

Don’t get me wrong, I am in favour of someone other than Mr. Harper as Prime Minister. I’m just partial, I guess, to strategies that have at least a hope of getting the job done, all things being equal.