Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Still with the Canadian question

by Aaron Wherry on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 11:26am - 11 Comments

Michael Ignatieff talks to the Star.

“My career has been a bit of a focal point for a debate about what makes a good Canadian.”

“There’s a funny idea out there that you can only be a Canadian if you lived in the country the whole time. It doesn’t seem to me to make any sense. More than one million Canadians live and work outside of the country at any one time. Are we saying they are less good Canadians than the people who never leave? On the contrary,” he said.

“Everywhere I go people say, `Well, it was good that you were out of the country – you know stuff.”

Tags: Michael Ignatieff, True Patriot Love

More by Aaron Wherry

http://prairiewrangler.wordpress.com/ Olaf

Haha. Oh Michael. Sorry to be a Conbot spinmeister but I’m a stickler first and foremost and these choice quotes deserve some shamelessly skewed consideration.

“Are we saying they are less good Canadians than the people who never leave? On the contrary,” On the contrary? Would the contrary be that they are better Canadians than the ones who stuck around here? And does the second quote imply that people who haven’t been out of the country don’t know stuff? It’s the same thing with his claim (in his book, maybe?) that you have to leave your country to see it for what it really is (I paraphrase). This tends to imply that if you haven’t left your country, you’re not seeing it for what it really is. Canada’s all a big mirage that only ex-pat Ignatieff-types can accurately interpret on our behalf.

I mean, they’re contextless soundbytes with little to no meaning on their own and I’m quite positive I’m taking them to mean something that Ignatieff certainly doesn’t mean and, for good measure, being highly unfair in the process. But that’s how I roll. More worrisome for Ignatieff, that’s how the CPC rolls. Except 10 times worse.
CAPS

Surely for the love of God we can find a middle ground between Harper who only went outside the country once in his life before becoming PM and Iggy who spent 30+ years laying roots, raising a family and earning a living abroad.

Nick D

Jack Layton?

Jason Hickman

Gilles Duceppe? ;)

Wayne

Elizabeth May?

Johnny

DON NEWMAN!
CAPS

Point taken.
Lord Kitchener’s Own

LOL

Kevin

We found one once before – Mike Pearson.

CAPS

This is more along the lines of what I was thinking – the obvious holes in my theory being pointed out above notwithstanding – but somebody like a Pearson or a Trudeau who has been around and seen different things and gained invaluable experience around the world but did not set up shop as some ex-pat for whom the return “home” was not something in the cards until the vary last minute after being told the keys to the kingdom were at hand.