EVERYTHING SEEMS TO BE pointing toward 2007 seeing Ontario voters trooping to the polls twice, with a federal election probably taking place in the spring and a provincial election following in October.

Granted, the federal election is still well short of being the proverbial “lead-pipe cinch,” with Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying only last week, in a year-end interview with the National Post, “I have no desire to fight another campaign.”

However, the same interview showed that whether or not he wants one, the Prime Minister is gearing up for a vote.

After all, the government’s single biggest concern must be the negative reaction to the position it has been taking on the environment and in particular the hostility found within the Quebec electorate.

At present, the Liberals have picked a new leader in Stephane Dion, who not only had the Environment portfolio in the Martin government but made the environment his rallying call in the leadership campaign.

So what does Mr. Harper now have to say on the subject? “From what I’ve seen, the preponderance of evidence suggests this is a real and a serious problem, adding: “As you know, the science has evolved several times even in the last couple of decades, but all the evidence suggests that we should take the problem seriously and start to try and act on it.”

The Post saw the PM as “a new, reinvented, election-ready Stephen Harper. The skeptics and scientists who insist, with some evidence, that severe weather is not a greenhouse- gas-generated planetary scourge have lost a swayable, sympathetic political leader.

“The last of the man-made climate change holdouts in the Canadian Parliament has gone green.”

Indeed,it seems highly possible that just as the grass turns green next April we shall find ourselves examining the environmental policies of one Green and three “green” parties, the New Democrats once having a leading role in the area that’s now properly occupied by Elizabeth May and her Green Party, and the “old line” Liberals and Conservatives competing with one another to convince us as to who’s the greener.

As we enter the new year, it’s anyone’s guess as to what party will emerge with the most seats in a spring election. Recent opinion polls suggesting that the Dion Liberals have a slight edge were highly suspect, since any party that has garnered all the public attention that accompanies a leadership convention will normally get a temporary boost in the polls.

One thing for sure is that the two leaders share little in common apart from having won their leadership roles against favoured competitors.

Mr. Harper is clearly the more eloquent of the two and there’s little doubt that his command of French is seen as being better than is Mr. Dion’s of English.

Another big difference is in their apparent leadership styles, with Mr. Harper being represented as something of a “control freak” who has little use for the Ottawa press corps, and Mr. Dion being portrayed as a team player who has managed to find roles for most, if not all, the seven other leadership candidates.

All we can say with certainty is that outside Alberta, the Canadian electorate is highly unpredictable, having swung between at least two parties in recent elections. Even in Quebec, where the Bloc Quebecois has had a relative stranglehold in recent elections, the Conservatives and Liberals have each won most of the seats there in elections since 1984.

As we see it, the Conservatives’ best hope of winning a majority lie in boosting support in Ontario and Quebec, and that will only be accomplished by convincing Central Canada that they have the best economic program; that their tax-cutting policies won’t return the government to deficit budgeting; that strong leadership is best provided by a single leader rather than a “dream team,” and that the party isn’t being run by Big Oil.

On the other hand, the Liberals are going to have to sell Mr. Dion to Ontarians and Western Canadians while boosting his image in Quebec, where rightly or wrongly he is seen as too staunch a federalist.

Apart from that, the Liberals will have to show themselves as standing for something more than opponents to the allegedly neoconservative ideology of the Conservatives.

Locally, the federal Liberals will have a tough row to hoe in trying to unseat David Tilson, who has been doing his best to keep his name in the news and following the lead of his Liberal predecessor, Murray Calder, in making a point of being on hand at all the important occasions in Dufferin and Caledon.

Turning to the provincial scene, our prediction is that next October’s election will result in Ontario having something it hasn’t had for nearly 20 years, a minority government.

Although it’s hard to see the McGuinty Liberals keeping their majority in the wake of so many broken promises (albeit from promises that realistically couldn’t and shouldn’t have been kept), it’s just as hard at this point to see either the Conservatives or New Democrats winning, either.

Locally, the perception is that whoever wins the Progressive Conservative nomination as candidate for the new Dufferin-Caledon riding will be a shoe-in come election time.

However, that’s not necessarily going to be the case, particularly if the Green Party happens to field a strong candidate and the Liberals field a strong candidate who will be able to point to some real accomplishments by the McGuinty government.

As matters now stand, Dufferin and Caledon have seen precious little evidence that the Liberals have even noticed Dufferin-Caledon on the map. Indeed, they seem to have gone out of their way in snubbing the riding and its tens of thousands of commuters.

But that all might change if the government moved even one Crown agency into the riding while improving GO Transit service; widening Highway 10 between Caledon Village and Orangeville; committing itself to four lanes between Camilla and Primrose, and re-assuming Highway 9 between Orangeville and Harriston.

Then we might really have a horse race!