So Mr. Dithers will face the same threatening policies -- same sex marriage, missile defence, health care -- in 2005 that he and his rickety cabinet teetered around in 2004. Not, mind you, that I think the Opposition would dare force an election next year; the polls don't suggest there would be in any change in their elected numbers. Still, there could be a mistake and everything would come tumbling down.

Or Paul could be consumed with the same hubris that proved fatal for Joe Clark who really thought his minority government could go into an election and win it.

Among the principal issues Paul will face in the new year, same sex marriage ought to succeed with about a 25 vote majority. The cabinet, rightly, will be required to support government policy they devised. And members, outside of Alberta, probably don't give a damn one way or the other. I know I don't. But then, in principle, legislation that doesn't affect me doesn't interest me.

But the American National Missile Defence program is another matter.

For sheer foolishness no North American defence plan can match it. And we are being asked to join in on the grounds we must co-operate with our best friends or risk losing a seat at the defence table and perhaps millions in military contracts.

It's hard to believe that President George Bush is so stupid that he's plunging ahead with a faulty program that has cost $130 billion so far and another $50 billion to come. Somebody he believes in has told him that someday the system will work although, goodness knows, no one has told us.

And if we did join in, what would be Canada's role? Mr. Dithers has told us he does not intend to invest any money in the program and no defensive missiles will be stationed on Canadian soil. And we will have nothing to do with the weaponization of space. So what are we supposed to contribute? I have long thought our best defence would be to have the Inuit stamp out a huge southward pointing arrow in the snow and a sign saying: U.S. this way.

In all the literature on missile defence there is no mention of Canada that I can find. The ground-based interceptor missiles will be place in North Dakota and Alaska, initially. There will be 20 at each site at first with expansion into 100 later.

I visited one of the old ICBM underground sites in North Dakota once that was in a farmer's pasture. I asked him whether he was not afraid to be so close to what was a certain Russian target. "Nope," he said. "The wife and I decided that if there was to be a nuclear war, we'd rather die right away than suffer for so long."

No interceptor base is likely to be targeted by a "rogue" nation with only a handful of missiles so Alaskans and North Dakotans would be safer on the farm than in Washington or New York.

The bottom line with the missile defence program is that it doesn't work. And even if it did, incoming warheads would be accompanied by dozens of decoys or simply wrapped in radar-absorbing rubber foam that would defeat the sensors. Critics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say the missile program is potentially "the most serious fraud that we've seen at a great American university."

So what is Parliament to do when the vote comes up? My choice would be to support it. Ridiculous or not, it won't cost us anything and we'll not have to dig in any interceptor missiles.

So if the Americans want us to make nice, what the hell. We want to stick with NORAD and we have to live with Dubya.

Besides Paul could use a little good luck and it is said that if the first visitor on New Year's Day is a tall, dark-haired man that's what he'll get.

So have Defence Minister Bill Graham call up Donald Rumsfeld right away.