The followup:

• Jack Layton confirmed on Friday that May had approached Stephen Lewis about a month ago to discuss a possible collaboration with the NDP. A source told Canadian Press that May wanted Lewis and longtime Liberal strategist Tom Axworthy to hammer out a tripartite agreement, but that Lewis had immediately rebuffed the offer.
  
• The Conservatives attacked Stéphane Dion's leadership in a press release on Friday. "By agreeing not to run a Liberal candidate against Green Party leader Elizabeth May in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova, Stéphane Dion has abandoned Liberal supporters and implicitly endorsed the Green Party platform," it reads. "Mr. Dion will have to answer some tough questions," it suggests, including whether the Liberals now believe - as the Greens allegedly do - that Canada should pull out of NAFTA and NATO, or that the Canadian Forces should be cut by half.
  
  "Does he agree with the Green Party candidate in Vancouver-Kingsway who described the murder of almost 3,000 people in the 9-11 terrorist attacks as 'beautiful'?"
  
• Elizabeth May has responded to Green candidate Kevin Potvin's four-year-old editorial. “If those views reflect his real views, if he hasn’t been in some way misrepresented from sections taken out of context…he will not be a candidate for the Green Party of Canada because I would not sign his nomination papers,” May said. “Those views are despicable."
  
  She said Potvin was “issuing a public apology today and a clarification that he feels an essay he wrote many years ago was misconstrued by the reporter with whom he spoke. So I will give him the benefit of the doubt.”
  
• On the day the Greens and Liberals announced their newfound spirit of cooperation, a National Post story about Green candidate Kevin Potvin raises the question of just who Stéphane Dion is getting into bed with. In November 2002, Potvin - who will run in Vancouver-Kingsway - penned an editorial, entitled "A Revolting Confession," for The Republic of East Vancouver (of which he is the publisher).
  
  It reads, in part: "When I saw the first [World Trade Center] tower cascade down into that enormous plume of dust and paper, there was a little voice inside me that said, 'Yeah!' When the second tower came down the same way, that little voice said, 'Beautiful!' When the visage of the Pentagon appeared on the TV with a gaping and smoking hole in its side, that little voice had nearly taken me over, and I felt an urge to pump my fist in the air...
  
  "Nor was I alone, I know for a fact, whenever I passed a TV or newspaper with a report on the ensuing US war to capture Osama bin Laden, and I secretly said to myself, 'Go, Osama, Go!' I am happy he has eluded capture by the Americans. I am in love with those Afghans who, whenever asked, said, 'He went that-a-way,' and their fifty hands pointed in fifty different directions."
  
  Potvin told the Post yesterday that he stood behind the piece, but added he no longer believed the "official" story of the September 11 attacks. "I have no idea what happened on that day, but it's certainly not the story that Washington propagates," he said.
  
  In 2006, Potvin was the subject of a Globe and Mail story suggesting he was misrepresenting himself on his Wikipedia entry. "Kevin Potvin writes and publishes a weekly print tabloid... full of inflammatory opinion pieces reminiscent of the ideological rants of 18th-century pamphleteers. It claims a circulation of 6,000," Shannon Rupp wrote. "Yet, according to Wikipedia, Mr. Potvin is a colossus."
  
• As expected, Liberal leader Stéphane Dion and Green leader Elizabeth May announced at a press conference they would not run candidates in each others ridings.
  
  "Currently, our two parties agree that urgent action is needed," Dion and May said in a joint statement. "So, too, do the vast majority of Canadians. Yet our electoral system could return to government the only political party that does not believe action is required urgently."
  
  Part of the trade-off also involves May endorsing Dion's bid to become prime minister, whose government, the statement reads, "could work well with a Green Caucus of MPs."
  
• NDP leader Jack Layton used a press conference on Friday to denounce the deal. "It's surprising that Ms. May would be supporting a member of the Liberal cabinet who, during his tenure in that cabinet, presided over an increase of greenhouse gas emissions of over 30 per cent - giving us the worst record in the industrialized world," Layton said. "Our party on the other hand... has actually got things moving."

The story:

Elizabeth May could soon have one less opponent to worry about in her quest to defeat Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay. On Friday, Dion is set to announce the Liberals will not run a candidate in the riding of Central Nova during the next election and instead throw their support behind May's candidacy.

In exchange, the Greens have agreed to endorse Dion as the best candidate for prime minister. The Greens would also decline to run a candidate in Dion's Cartierville riding, even though Dion is all but of assured of keeping his seat.

Despite the unusual agreement between the two parties, May's bid for the Greens' first seat in the House of Commons remains a long-shot. The Nova Scotia riding is a Conservative stronghold and May would need to pick up all the votes that went to the third-place Liberals, as well as half those that went to the NDP's runner-up.

The deal is meant to bolster Dion's profile after the Conservatives launched a series of attack ads questioning his record on environmental issues. The Green Party has been steadily climbing in the polls since May took over the party's leadership and is currently hovering around the 10% mark in polls.

Still, not all Liberals were pleased with the agreement. When Dion announced his decision to senior party members in Nova Scotia during a conference call on Thursday, some supported the effort to unseat MacKay, but others questioned the wisdom of clearing the way for May.

Liberals opposed to the move also - privately - complained the move to support May reinforced some negative perceptions about Dion. Namely, that he's too fixated on the environment and that he needs to be propped up by another party.

Both leaders are expected to announce the agreement at a joint press conference on Friday.

With files from Canadian Press

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