After the jump, the prepared text for remarks delivered by Michael Ignatieff tonight at an event in Toronto.
Merci. Bon soir.
Thank you Joe (Mancinelli) and good evening.
I want to talk with you this evening about the challenges we’re facing as a country, about the pain that so many Canadians are feeling during this recession.
And I want to thank you—the people in this room and the members of LIUNA right across the country—for the work you’re already doing to lead our recovery and shape our future.
But first, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying a few words about some recent developments in our politics.
Certains d’entre vous ont surement remarqué que les conservateurs ont décidé de s’intéresser sérieusement au Parti libéral de Michael Ignatieff.
En fait, ils sont allés jusqu’à diffuser à la télévision nationale des publicités négatives me reprochant les années où j’ai habité et travaillé à l’étranger.
Some of you may have noticed that the Conservative Party has recently taken a serious interest in the Liberal Party of Canada and its Leader.
And the Conservatives think you should be interested in me, too.
They’ve bought ads on television stations across Canada, attacking me for having lived and worked outside the country.
We knew it was coming. When you’re down in the polls, when you’re presiding over the worst collapse in employment on record, you try to change the channel. You try to make Michael Ignatieff the issue.
Well friends, Michael Ignatieff is not the issue.
We’re dealing with record bankruptcies in this country. Record job losses. Widespread economic uncertainty. That’s what matters to Canadians right now.
People care about whether or not they’ll be able to keep the job they’ve got, or find a new one, or find work for the first time. They’re worried about whether they’ll be able to retire, and whether they’ll be able to keep their family finances afloat.
And now, when we’re facing the worst economic crisis in a generations, the Conservatives are spending their energies—their time and money—launching personal attacks.
That’s wrong. That’s offensive. And Canadians know it.
Je vais laisser un message à Stephen Harper :
Monsieur, encore une fois, vous avez mal compris l’état d’esprit des Canadiens.
Notre pays connaît un nombre record de faillites, un nombre record de pertes d’emplois et la pire récession en plus d’une génération. Voilà les enjeux qui touchent les Canadiens.
Plutôt que de concentrer leurs énergies sur ces problèmes sérieux, ce gouvernement a jugé bon de consacrer son temps et son argent à des attaques personnelles.
And you know what, friends, like many of you, I have lived and worked outside this country. And I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. I’m proud of what I’m accomplished—as a proud Canadian.
Canada is a great country because Canadians are a great people. Our roots, our life stories, our family histories, cover every single corner of the globe.
Like many Canadians, I’ve seen our country from the outside. As a writer, as a teacher, as a war reporter, I’ve seen Canada from afar.
And when you see Canada from afar—when you see our unity and our purpose and our strength—you see a country that is proud of its diversity, that is strong and united in its diversity, that is an inspiration to the whole world.
Stephen Harper doesn’t understand that.
To Stephen Harper, if you live and work outside the country, you’re somehow less Canadian.
Friends, you and I know better.
We know that no matter where we come from, where we live or have lived, we are all, and always will be proud Canadians.
Comme beaucoup d’entre vous, j’ai vu le Canada à travers les yeux du monde.
Et comme beaucoup d’entre vous, je sais que le Canada peut être beaucoup plus que ce qu’il est.
Le Canada est un pays avec des habitants qui viennent des quatre coins du monde. Et vous et moi savons qu’il s’agit là d’une des grandes forces de ce pays.
Stephen Harper ne comprend pas ça. Il aimerait vous faire croire que les Canadiens qui habitent et travaillent à l’étranger sont, d’une certaine manière, moins canadiens. Nous savons tous que ce n’est pas le cas. Peu importe d’où nous venons, nous sommes d’abord et avant tout de fiers Canadiens.
I’m in politics to make my country more united, more prosperous, and more compassionate. My Party will never, ever set region against region, person against person, or group against group for the sake of partisan advantage.
Un gouvernement libéral, sous ma gouverne, travaillera toujours pour l’unité de ce pays—il ne montera jamais des régions ou des groupes les uns contre les autres.
Un gouvernement libéral comprendra toujours que la magie de ce pays, c’est ce que nous accomplissons ensemble.
That’s what the times demand of us. That’s what’s demanded of our country. And that’s what we’re going to do together.
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Comment
My Party will never, ever set region against region, person against person, or group against group for the sake of partisan advantage.
That’s great to hear. If true, it signals a major change in direction for the LPC.
Wow. Your partisanship appears to becoming more apparent amongst a number of recent posts, or am I reading that wrong?
Dot, I usually don’t consider myself a particularly partisan guy, but I was (unreasonably) miffed by the partisan response to the recent Tory attack ad. I thought the ad itself was fairly lame, but I was annoyed by the logical distortions of the Tory-bashers who responded to it. I’ll try to tone it down a bit, especially since I really do like Ignatieff, unlike his predecessors.
Basically, Harper’s ads are saying Ignatieff is an arrogant bastard who only cares about himself and not about Canada. It is understandable that people who don’t agree with or care about that assessment are likely respond in the same tone that our Prime Minister choses to take.
For what it is worth, I don’t consider your comment to be terribly partisan. The Liberals have failed in the past to truly take every region into account.
Sometimes, choosing one policy over another will have a disproportionately positive result for one region and a disproportionately negative result for another, but that does not mean you are pitting one region against another. But when you consistently do so over time, it is fair to make the claim. We have a lot of bridges to rebuild. I believe Iggy is genuine in his intent to do that, but I accept and think, given the history, that others will want to see the actions before trusting the words on this particular issue with this particular party.
The Liberals have actually tried to demonize Alberta at times. They consistently pit east against west.
sf, “demonize Alberta”? Are you talking about Trudeau’s NEP or something in the last 20 years?
As to dividing – Harper has implied that there is a fundamental difference between Albertans and the rest of Canadians, but the ones I know aren’t so different. Do you know what Harper means? What are the “Alberta values” that Harper suggests other Canadians should swap their values for?
“We don’t need a second Liberal party. Westerners, but especially Albertans, founded the Reform/Alliance to get “in” to Canada. The rest of the country has responded by telling us in no uncertain terms that we do not share their ‘Canadian values.’ Fine. Let us build a society on Alberta values.”
What Liberal policies or strategies have set Canadian against Canadian for partisan advantage? I’m drawing a blank here.
TJ Cook, never mind. I don’t really want to get into a partisan discussion about Canadian regionalism.
Ah, NEP. I figured.
To his enormous credit, Iggy has reached out to the West in a way that seems sincere.
Ah, NEP. I figured .
Heh. More like the Crow rate, Batoche, the CNR, the feds letting the Brits build the “elitist” Banff Springs when a Holiday Inn would have been much more affordable for the “little guy”. That kind of thing.
Prairie resentments run deep; they’re abiding, irrational, and indelible.
We should remember too that, apart from the famous East European settlers, the main settlers on the prairies, the ones who first established the political ethos there, were people who had left Ontario in the 1880’s and 1890’s. So to a certain extent the West was settled as an alternative to Ontario and you get that tension (unfortunately an enduring one) between the two regions.
…to a certain extent the West was settled as an alternative to Ontario…
…as an alternative to Ontario, yes–but also, paradoxically, as an administrative outpost of Ontario. Hell, Calgary was founded by the Royal North-West Mounted Police–by the Crown, in effect–not by the “rugged individualists” of prairie lore.
Canada has always been an empire, with Ontario as the managerial, political and ideological centre–the Rome of the BNA, as it were–by turns envied and resented by Quebec and Alberta–our own Alexandria and Constantinople.
Throw in the hordes of barbarian foederati squatting on our territory (thank you, NAFTA!), and you’ve pretty much discovered the precise way Canadian history exemplifies Nietzsche’s Eternal Return!
Be interesting to calculate numbers: how many came from Europe, how many came from Ontario and how many came from the US.
Not only was Calgary founded by the Crown, but Winnipeg and other towns and cities were founded by the Hudson’s Bay Company to fulfill its requirement to establish settlements in order to preserve the west as British, requirements mandated by its fur trade monopoly charter granted by the Crown.
My point being simply that any claim that the west was settled as an oasis away from the rest of Canada, a domestic version of the Mayflower puritans escaping an England they could no longer tolerate, is complete and utter BS.
…any claim that the west was settled as an oasis away from the rest of Canada…is complete and utter BS.
Yeah, but try saying that to Tom Flanagan/Barry Cooper/David Bercuson/Ted Morton/Link Byfield. They’ve got a huge zeppelin-sized regionalist ego invested in that myth…
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Michael Ignatieff signed on to the Coalition deal with the Bloc Quebecois so the Liberals could gain access to power 6 weeks after his party was rejected by the Canadian electorate. It was unprecedented that a federalist party conspire with a separatist party to wrest control of Parliament. You CANNOT get more divisive than that. It was an outrageous position which will live in infamy for the Liberal Party of Canada and Michael Ignatieff. Actions like that speak louder than flowery words in a speech. Talk is cheap especially when contrasted with actions like the Coalition deal with Duceppe.
Since becoming leader Michael Ignatieff has openly talked of forcing an election twice even though we had one just 6 months ago. We’re in the middle of a worldwide recession. The United States is led by the protectionist democrats that is threatening Canadian businesses with their buy- U.S.A. policies. And all the Liberals think about is gaining power. That is not a responsible oppostion. It’s the same old, same old Liberal lust for power.
I fear “lust for power” is not solely a Liberal-held characteristic. The Conservatives in Parliament and other parties in provincial legislatures have showed that they are willing to twist and turn every which way in order to get, and maintain power.
If only it were the Liberals…
And Harper has threatened an election many more times than that.
It wasn’t Ignatieff who promised Cadman “financial considerations” in exchange for his vote.
It wasn’t Ignatieff who illegally passed money in-and-out of local ridings so the national campaign could surpass the campaign spending limits.
It wasn’t Ignatieff who promised to only have a confidence vote on budgets and fiscal estimates, and then held confidence votes whenever he wanted to score some political points, something Harper used to think was anti-democratic.
It wasn’t Ignatieff who promised to have elections on fixed dates so the PM couldn’t call an election on a whim, something Harper used to think was anti-democratic.
It wasn’t Ignatieff who promised to have a confidence vote on his fiscal update, and then cancelled that.
It wasn’t Ignatieff who promised to give the Liberals an opposition day in November, and then cancelled that, an act Harper accused Martin did of being anti-democratic.
It wasn’t Ignatieff who took the historically unprecedent, anti-democratic, anti-Parliamentary step of cancelling Parliament altogether to save his own job and avoid democracy in the House of Commons.
No sir, the Conservatives are the very last folk who should be giving anyone lessons in democracy or “lusting for power”.
It wasn’t Ignatief that said W’ell get it resolved but then didn’t do a thing to correct the phantom income taxation problem
Ted, that’s a great political speech. Are you auditioning for a job with Ignatieff’s campaign team?
Actually, Michael Ignatieff signed on to the Coalition deal because Harper’s bid for a majority was rejected by the Canadian electorate, yet he attempted to gain power by putting forward a motion that would have bankrupted the oppostion (and given him a de-facto majority) and suspended women’s rights to take pay equity issues to court.
Talk about lust – as a former teacher of Canadian history with extensive time as a federal civil servant in five government departments, I can only conclude that many Canadians do not know how the Canadian parliamentary system is supposed to work.
If the PM does not retain the confidence of the house – that is to say, if the majority of our ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES in PARLIAMENT do not support him, he should resign or the Governor General should call on that majority to form a government if possible,( especially so soon after an election). Harper has never had majority suppoort at 37% (and it is well down from there now).
Harper has exerted pressure to circumvent this process. This is far from his first abuse of the parliamentary process. He has used prorogation of the house prior to a vote of no confidence to avoid the vote. This is UNPRECEDENTED and highly dangerous. Harper appealed to public opinion to go over the heads of our elected representatives in parliament while using distrust of Quebec as a club to shore up suppoirt since he has lost it in Parliament.
This is just one of his many abuses of the parliamentary process (go to the facebook group “why I distrust Stephen Harper” for 115 more or so). Everything that is good about this country was brought by the Liberal Party – Medicare, the CBC, the Canada Pension Plan UIC etc. etc. etc. If it were for The caolition, we would have had no stimulus package, since the Conservatives did not realize that the world economy was in trouble. And he is doing nothing about protectionism either – too busy writing attack ads. The LPC will bring back what it means to be a Canadian and competancy in government. Harper is toast and it is just a matter of time. (By the way, an MP from Quebec has just as much right to be in Parlaiument as Harper).
I stopped reading after the words “extensive time as a federal civil servant in five government departments”.
The Junta in Burma put a clause in the constitution barring anyone “who enjoys the rights and privileges of a foreign citizen” from running for office …
That’s an awfully lame demonization-by-transitive-property.
Really, the Conservatives aren’t so bad….
Ok that’s great Iggy. Now let’s get some tough ads on the air, even if they only carry sections from this speech.
This campaign is going to write itself…
All the LPC needs to do is do the “man/woman on the street” interview and ask if they would enjoy being labelled as “less-Canadian” because they lived and/or worked outside the country for a number of years, that their “competency” in participating in Canada’s governance is questionable…
I’m sure this will all go over just swell~!
“comme beaucoup d’entre vous, je sais que le Canada peut être beaucoup plus que ce qu’il est.”
That is a very patriotic statement, maybe the essence of patriotism. I’ve been waiting for a Canadian leader to say something like that my whole life. I hope Ignatieff develops that theme. Canada needs to be great.
Jack,
If you can stomach a little (ok, maybe a lot) of very airy statements, you might try flipping through True Patriot Love. It is not a heavy read and often too light for even my subway reading, but that is the essence of what the book is about: what is patriotism and what is Canada, and how he and his family have held different views on this over time – from the hyper imperialism of George Munro Grant, the first to travel from sea to sea in the country, to the emerging nationalism of William Grant, to the laments of George Grant for an independence he thought was doomed, and how each of them believed that Canada was unfinished business.
Thanks, Ted, I will check it out!
This response is weak sauce. Only Wherry would get weak in the knees while reading the message from his Fearless Leader.
Fun challenge: try to count how many straw men Ignatieff knocks down in this speech. But Wherry pants! it’s brilliant!
How is he panting by linking to a full text speech? What exactly do you want him to do as a reporter?
Better response:
Only Stephen Harper would think competing against the best in the world for most of my life as a proud Canadian is a bad thing. Unlike him, I didn’t spend nearly my entire life either in Ottawa or thinking about how to grow my influence in Ottawa.
thinking about how to grow my influence in Ottawa
Ignatieff has arguably spent his entire life thinking about how to grow his influence, period, wherever it might be feasible, geography be damned. That’s not really as clever a retort as you imagine.
Honestly, my biggest concern about Ignatieff is that I often find myself doubting his sincerity. That’s why the extent of his commitment to Canada is such a concern to me. I love the package: an intelligent, credentialed, centre-right, ancestrally pedigreed, bushy-browed and handsome sixtysomething Canadian who has a good international profile.
But then you read some of the essays he published years ago, and you get the impression that many of the Britons in his audience mistook him for an American, and he never did much to disabuse them of that notion. And you start to have doubts.
You summed up precisely what I feel about Ignatieff. I am drawn to him and want to like him but I still have misgivings I can’t shake… There is a reason that the conservatives are attacking him for having spent so much time out of the country. It does cause uneasiness in voters….
When I worked in Europe, everyone took me for an American…Britons, Swedes, Germans, French…and if I tried to disabuse them of the notion, they just thought I was being parochial. Really, the notion that we are substantially different wasn’t something I was ever able to get across. Eventually I stopped trying.
Certainly there’s no more questions regarding Harper’s sincerity now, is there?
See Ted’s post above if there is…
Do you really believe that all he cares is Canada? C’mon, we know he feels he is the second coming and he is going to be remembered like one of the greatest leaders in this country, this is about him and his huge ego….
Yeah. So?
Honestly, think it through. There is no question that Mr. Ignatieff has a strong ego and a desire to achieve profile and renown. This is a trait he shares with every other party leader, and most MPs, mayors, CEOs, and anyone else with a trace of ambition.
So what?
The interesting question is: What is his political narrative? And does he have the strength to make it a reality? If his narrative of how he wants to shape Canada is one you agree with, and you think he has it in him, then vote for him. If not, don’t.
Jejeune statements that he is driven by “ego” are about as useful and interesting as saying rain is driven by the coalescence of water molecules around dust particles in the atmosphere. It’s not wrong, but it’s certainly not the whole story (rain is also driven by the sun heating up the surface of the ocean, etc.) and it’s irrelevant to the question of whether the consequent rain will help you grow your crops.
”My Party will never, ever set region against region, person against person, or group against group for the sake of partisan advantage.”
That describes the coalition of losers perfectly….
Oh but that was 5 months ago,
this week,
the coalition of losers threatened national unity and were illegitimate,
just like PMSH said 24 hours after they launched their coup.
borrrrrrrrrring.
Please do some elementary level reading on our Consitution and Parliamentary process. Please! I’m begging you! Pleeeaaaaaaaaassssse!
Then you can stop embarrasing yourself.
Totally unlike the coalition of socialists and separatists that Harper was squealing about to GG Clarkson five years ago, whot? Oh right, no signing ceremony. Things agreed to in secret are much more legal and morally upstanding eh Wlson?
Chantal Hebert wrote a strong article about Harper playing divisive and separatist politics in Quebec with his attack ads:
http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/634671
Harper’s ads are not going to help him in Quebec, but if they work, they will help Duceppe. That’s our Prime Minister, working for Canadians!
Cahterine – nothing the Conservatives do in an ad campaign raising questions on Ignatieff’s Quebec policies will trump what the Liberal Party of Canada did on December 1st of last year: allow the separatists to actually govern Canada. That has already gone down in ignomy. Inviting the fox to run the henhouse.
Chantal seems to forget that the Liberal Party of Canada used to attack the Conservatives for cosying up to Quebec because of their position on the Meech Lake accord because Pierre Trudeau though only his view of federalism was the right one. Didn’t that play in the separatist’s hands? You betcha it did. They came within a whisker of winning the 1995 referendum.
I could go on and talk about adscam. The Liberal Party of Canada has lost its golden touch.
So it’s okay that the CPC is providing material aid to a separatist party?
As sick as it may sound, Duceppe is more canadian than Iggy!! Because he can relate to canadians
What’s becoming increasingly apparent (to even strident liberals) is that a closer examination of Iggy’s positions reveals that he seems to have taken every possible position on every issue.
His true consistency is that whatever position he has taken at any particular time is one that is the most politically expedient or otherwise provides him with the immediate gratification from the particular audience he’s addressing.
On Monday he’ll tell group “A” what he thinks they want to hear. On Tuesday he’ll tell group “B” the exact opposite.
On Wednesday, he’ll dazzle us all with the nuanced explantion as to why A and B are really the same, all the while wagging his superior academic finger at us, for our not having his ability to appreaciate why A and B are really the same.
I’m glad we don’t have a PM who changes positions on important issues in order to gain partisan advantage.
You got that right, and that’s scary! Imagine showing that to the rest of the world, we will never been seen as the great country we are, they will be laughing at us!
“My Party will never, ever set region against region, person against person, or group against group for the sake of partisan advantage.” Ignatieff, yesterday.
“The Prime Minister talked to the Star after launching a two-pronged attack on Conservatives yesterday, lumping Alberta Premier Ralph Klein along with Conservative Leader Stephen Harper to accuse both of them of planning a threat to Canada’s medicare system.
“With his Liberal war room issuing news releases calling Klein a ‘public health menace,’ the attack also officially signals that the ruling party is more worried now about keeping support in central Canada than in any potential gains in the West.” Toronto Star, June 18, 2004
Nicely done anon,
and impeccable timing.
(though in fairness, you did have a plethora of examples to work with).
interesting how some have trouble reading basic english. “My party will never” refers to the future, as in “Iggies liberals from here on in, will never…”. As opposed to, “My party HAS never”, which would refer to the past, and thus would render your comment somewhat reasonable.
Notwithstanding the verbal and mental gymnastics required to rationalize that comment, are you saying a party’s past record shouldn’t be used as a basis for comparison to what it’s proposing now? And here I was, thinking that hypocrisy is hypocrisy.
But in that case, since what parties have done or said in the past is no longer fair game, I gather we’ll all stop hearing from Liberals about Mulroney now.
I not once said that what is in the past is no longer fair game. I said that Iggies comment doesn’t refer to the past. He could be very well aware that in the past the Liberals did pit one region against another, but thats not his point.
Patrick,
you seem to be confusing lack of reading comprehension, with a lack of blind faith that if Iggy promises the sun won’t rise tomorrow, that it won’t, notwithstanding the obvious pattern to the contrary.
No worries patrick, I sure some time in the near future, Iggy will be explaining to us why an apparant position designed to leverage regional difference, isn’t what it appears to be. It will be our lack of “comprehension”.
No doubt caused by our not residing in academic halls for most of our adult lives, and thus beholden to basic rules of cause and effect, responsibility for words, and actions vs. rhetoric. Rules which never apply in nuanced academia.
You keep forgetting to double space. You’re getting your online personalities mixed up.
I’m glad you base your arguments on your apparent esp. Is academia the bane of your existence?
How does criticizing a Premier on a policy matter like health care constitute “pitting regions against one another”?
I don’t suppose it does, necessarily. But it’s Ignatieff’s party that screamed bloody murder about Conservatives “attacking Ontario” and “pitting region against region” when they criticized the tax rate on new investment there. So please let me know which standard I should adhere to.
our Finance Minister said no one should invest in Ontario. I think that was worth criticizing Anon.
Then again, calling a Canadian premier a “public health menace” might be stretching the bounds of legitimate policy criticism and trickling into the waters of deliberately inflaming regional tensions too.
And we tossed Martin under the bus for such tactics. Rightly so.
Iggy recognizes that just as we are all recognizing that the Harper Conservatives are acting and behaving just like the Martin Liberals did in their dying days in office. Desperate lashing out in the hopes that, in the flurry of negative attack ads, no one will realize that they had no clue what they were doing.
Harper’s Conservatives get us involved in the most objectionable debates, don’t they?
My forefathers came to this country in the 1600s. I am a French-speaking Ontarian, of portageurs heritage, but more recently I have been told that I am part of the Québécois nation, something that ‘has to do with the French language’ – I do speak French and was educated in French and my adult children speak French to me. If you were asking me today, here in Toronto where I live, what I am, I would definitely respond, screw you Stephen Harper, I am a Canadienne. Is Michael Sabia a member of the Québécois nation? Some say yes, others no.
Sabia, Ignatieff and I are all citizens of Canada. Ignatieff has the right as a citizen of this country to run for office and to become its prime minister. If someone is questioning that right, then it is not Michael Ignatieff’s right that is questioned but the mobility right of all Canadian citizens. If Stephen Harper intends to quantify the ‘canadianity’ of citizens dependent on the time they spend in Canada versus abroad, then he should grow a pair and table legislation.
It’s kind of funny as I see nothing in the AD’s or have ever heard it said that that Iggy is less a acanadian than anyone else – the only people that metion this are quite obviously not paying attention or Liberal which is kinda the same thing : the AD’s and the CPC message is just that Iggy is a is parachute dropped in for an occasion and doesn’t have anything to do with how canadaian you are just how arrogant the party is.
The message seems to be both that Ignatieff is not Canadian enough (big focus on time out of the country) and that he is an arrogant bastard. Harper thinking his opponent is an arrogant bastard is of no interest to me, but I am mildly interested in how long Harper thinks one could be out of the country.
Harper accusing someone else of being an arrogant bastard?
Har, har. tr
Pot, meet kettle.
Harper is not just an arrogant bastard. He’s a mean, vindictive, unprincipled, control-freakish, cold, divisive arrogant bastard.
Whereas Ignatieff wants to strengthen national unity and invest in the country’s foundations, Harper wants to further decentralise what is already the most decentralised federation in the world, perhaps in the hope that eventually it’ll fall apart and his real aim will be achieved a couple of decades hence… accession of the Western provinces to the USA.
Hardly a tough electoral choice if you’re not a closet Republican.
“A domestic version of the Mayflower puritans escaping from an England they could no longer tolerate ” is also complete and utter BS, invented by the Americans in the 19th century as a sort of bogus founding-myth.
Only about a third of the passengers on the Mayflower (some 37 people in all) were members of an ultra-puritan sect called the “English Separatists”, which meant “separate from the Church of England.” Several of them subsequently returned to England, and others joined them from the old country.
The expedition itself was organized by City of London merchants, with a charter from the Virginia Company. As the passengers declared in the Mayflower Compact, their aim was: “for the glory of God and the honour of our King and country, to plant the first colony in Northern Virginia.” That is exactly what they did, and New Plymouth developed as a British colony for over 150 years.
Canadians ought to be the last people on earth to swallow later American secessionist propaganda.
Would like to know if this Canadian paid taxes in Canada in the 34 years he spent abroad ? Did he release his tax records ?
We have this tradition that a person of any age can come to Canada, reside for 5 years, apply for citizenship, take the oath and become a Canadian. They are just as much and as good a Canadian as anybody else. A Judge will tell them so.
So what are the Conservative attack ads really saying?
They are saying that some Canadians should not be prime minister, independent of how good they would be. They think there should be a residency requirement, like the US requires their Presidents to be born in the US.
Wow! And just what would be a suitable residency requirement?
The American rule would not apply to Iggy. But it did stop Arnie S.
Let’s be honest. The conservative attack ads are not that good. If he couldn’t beat Dion outright, Harper will need more than that to beat Ignatieff.
I would encourage all Canadians to be sceptical of an “I am your saviour and I have come to deliver you . . . watch me.” attitude. We’ve seen it before.
Iggy says we should focus on the economic crisis, not petty politics.
I say this economic crisis is, in Canada, mainly psychological. What we need is a shot of optimism and another topic of conversation. I say the Conservatives are right to focus on Iggy’s favorite subject: himself.
Spot on. The really important thing isn’t the hundreds of thousand of job losses, it’s the fact that the leader of one of Canada’s political parties may or may not be self-centered. I’m glad the Conservatives have a real handle on the problems facing our country today.
Michael Ignatieff, Big name, lots of degrees, extensive experience but as a result same as Obama. talks about change and visions but when it comes to reality nothing, zero.
I Iggy is very influenced by the United States and he DOES NOT
Michael Ignatieff, Big name, lots of degrees, extensive experience but as a result same as Obama. talks about change and visions but when it comes to reality nothing, zero.
I Iggy is very influenced by the United States and he DOES NOT have any Canadian national agenda to help us Canadians.
His comments regards the wars in the middle east is even more shameful
Notice “because Canadians are A great people”? To me that makes no sense that Canadians are a great people?
I think the Liberals should help pay for the new Conservative ads. They have the most to gain from them. These types of ads will only marginalize the Conservatives, just like the situation with the Republicans in the states. They may have worked for Dion, but not this time. Keep em coming boys.