A Dime a Dozen Blog

If you read the message boards at MacLean’s or the desperate posts at the Liberal Blogs  you might think that the question asked to Stephane Dion was impenetrable.  Well here’s the question:

If you were prime minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr. Harper has not done?

This is a mixed conditional (2nd + 3rd conditional).  The conditional element (the ‘if’) thing doesn’t seem to be too confusing.  The problem people claim – is in the ‘would’ clause – and it involves time.  Here’s Kady O’Malley re-stating the problem to a commenter:

I was asking whether you thought the reporter was asking what Dion would do *now*, if elected Prime Minister, or what he would have done back in 2006, if he had been elected during the last election, instead of Stephen Harper.

Well, it’s not as hard as people are making it sound.

The tense used in this ‘would’ clause is the Present Perfect.  The present perfect is made up of the auxiliary verb ‘have’ plus the ‘past participle’ – which in this case is ‘done’.  It is used to describe actions which:

… happened at an unspecified time before now. The exact time is not important. You CANNOT use the Present Perfect with specific time expressions such as: yesterday, one year ago, last week, when I was a child, when I lived in Japan, at that moment, that day, one day, etc. We CAN use the Present Perfect with unspecific expressions such as: ever, never, once, many times, several times, before, so far, already, yet, etc.

It’s important that the time is unspecified, that is to say, that we do not care when the action began.  We only know that the action began before now.  If it were a definite time and we could pin it down, then we would use the past simple.

So grammatically the question is simple and clear.

How simple?  I am fortune to work in an office with people from around the world.  I took it upon myself to ask these people a simple question:

If you were Prime Minister now, what would you have done about the economy and the crisis that Mr. Harper has not done?

Luis from Mexico:”I would have to pay the less taxes.”

‘Henry’ from Korea: “Canada has a lot of natural resources like gas so, I would have developed more gas and exported that.”

Young Shin from Korea: “I would have saved the banks.”

Luis has been in Canada for 2 years, Henry has been here 10 months, and Young Shin, for 6 months.

If you don’t know much about teaching the language, you are likely to think that questions like the one asked to Dion are more difficult than they actually are.  But look at how the language is taught, and when things like this are taught.  The present perfect is something taught at an “Elementary Level” of English.  It’s something you teach to eight year-olds, or to people that have only been learning the language for a few months.

Dion wasn’t just confused about the question – look at the interview, he was confused about his own 30 day “action plan” – calling it the “30/50″ plan a few times before finally nailing it.

Dion has issues, he has difficulty with stress, with tough questions, with English, he can’t keep his own party on message, he can’t explain his Green Shift, he can’t say in specifics what he would do about the economy – just look at him when confronted by the Prime Minister – or look at him here sputtering at an attack by Jack Layton.  Could you see such a person running a minority government or standing up for the economy in the face of NDP and Bloc pressure?