Michael Ignatieff’s Quebec problem

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 9:19 AM - 0 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP

Michael Ignatieff’s first pseudo-campaign through Quebec as Liberal leader was a glitzy affair during which he pontificated on bloodlines, belonging and “the act of imagination” involved in loving a country like Canada—ideals culled from his then-just-published tome True Patriot Love. His current so-called Liberal Express tour was decidedly more pedestrian; at an old age home in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil recently, Ignatieff listened as a handful of seniors and municipal politicians kvetched about bridge traffic, airport noise and the lack of recreational facilities. Macaroons and apple juice were served.

So goes the transformation from public intellectual to politician—one that, according to polls, hasn’t been altogether smooth. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Quebec, a province crucial to Liberal fortunes in the next election. Ignatieff remains bogged down by party infighting and an enduring struggle to get out from under the sponsorship scandal that nearly decimated the Liberals in 2006. According to online poll aggregator Three Hundred Eight, the Liberals have dipped 12 percentage points in Quebec over the last 16 months.

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Nuance alert

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 27, 2010 at 3:29 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff comments on the HST in British Columbia.

On the issue most British Columbians are talking about — the HST — Ignatieff said it was a good idea badly executed. “We’ve always believed that tax harmonization is a good thing. But the way you do it is absolutely crucial. And the way it was done here has given every politician pause for reflection. The issue is not the tax, in my view. It had to do with democratic accountability and whether trust was broken. That’s an issue for the provincial Liberals, it’s not an issue for me. We’ve been clear on HST all along. But you have to do it right. If you lose the consent of the people on this, that’s a problem for Premier Campbell.”

Iggy’s bus stops

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, August 20, 2010 at 10:07 AM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff is on his Liberal Express tour across Canada. In Toronto, he stopped at a BBQ in Thornhill just north of the city and then a restaurant downtown in Chinatown.

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Dance, dance, dance

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 5:13 PM - 0 Comments

New video of Michael Ignatieff dancing, this time at Folklorama in Winnipeg. His rhythm seems possibly to have improved, or perhaps he has found a beat to which he can more comfortably move.

Life and politics

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 9:37 AM - 0 Comments

Friends, family, colleagues and peers gathered in Montreal yesterday for the funeral of Mario Lague.

Ignatieff spoke briefly during the service and called Lague a team leader. The Liberal leader admitted he had a habit of taking things seriously, but that Lague would just roll his eyes and tell him that “this too shall pass.” In a final moving gesture, Ignatieff placed his hand on Lague’s coffin and said “Au revoir, Mario.”

Adam Goldenberg, Mr. Ignatieff’s speechwriter, was preparing to rejoin the Liberal tour on Thursday morning and has written about learning of Mr. Lague’s passing and the continuation of work the next day in Winnipeg. After pausing for a few days, the tour resumes this evening in Whitehorse.

Ignatieff in summer

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 13, 2010 at 2:03 PM - 0 Comments

In the latest print edition of Maclean’s there are something like 1,300 words, under this byline, about Michael Ignatieff’s summer. Here, for your amusement, curiosity or comparison, is the indulgently long version, including a never-before-seen alternate ending.

It could be read as the latest in a series that includes previous sketches in September 2008, February 2009, June 2009 and October 2009. It could also be read as a reference to my favourite rap song of 2008.

Anyway. Make of it what you will. Continue…

On the stump

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 2:28 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff is not quite reinventing the spoken word this summer, but he’s speaking with a certain vim and building a certain case. There’ll be another 2,000 words or so on this either later today or sometime tomorrow, but for the sake of visual documentation, here are a few clips.

First, his address to the rally in Windsor on Sunday night.

Previously referenced here were Thornhill and, from the official Liberal YouTube account, bits of his remarks in Oakville and London. Separately, the Liberals have also put up excerpts from Maugerville and Cupids someone has uploaded footage from Peterborough.

Mitchel Raphael on the power couple who are heading for Calgary

By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

The giant belt buckles just had to go
Ottawa is losing one of its top, not to mention better-looking, power couples. Conservative House leader Jay Hill has announced he will not run in the next election. His wife of 11 years, Leah Murray, one of the capital’s best-dressed women (her taste in footwear is superb), has already moved to Calgary to take up a position with the public relations firm National. The two are having a home built in Calgary, which will be ready in September. When Murray met Hill, he was a rural B.C. MP with the Reform party. He wore black jeans, giant belt buckles (“satellite dishes,” as she called them), bolo ties and he had a toothpick in his mouth. “He was one below [former Alberta MP] Myron Thompson when it came to worst-dressed on the Hill,” says Murray. A month after they met, Hill suggested the two of them go shopping. When the press gallery members saw Hill in his new Harry Rosen duds in the House, they couldn’t believe it. Hill noticed them staring at him and pointed up to Murray, who was sitting in a viewing gallery. The media looked over to her and burst into applause. Over the last several years the two have teamed up for a number of charity events, including selling Afghan silk scarves to help with literacy programs in Afghanistan and selling goats (buttons represented each goat bought) to help with orphanages. Murray was involved with the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s prestigious Politics and the Pen award gala for political writing, which Hill co-hosted last year. She also sat on the gala organizing committee for the Governor General’s performing arts awards and helped bring a large number of MPs to the ceremony. Murray says the two always planned to retire to Calgary, but thought it was best to move their lives and careers there now to build a base for the future. Two of Hill’s three children from a previous marriage live there.

An MP’s starring role in Vienna
NDP MP Libby Davies returned to Canada last week after attending the XVIII International AIDS conference in Vienna. Jet lag prevented her from attending a rally with iconic singer Annie Lennox, but she was the only North American MP to participate in the first-ever politicians panel at the conference. Davies was pleased with the conference’s Vienna Declaration, which endorses drug harm-reduction models like the safe-injection health facility Insite located in her East Vancouver riding. The federal government is still fighting the B.C. government over Insite. On Davies’ first official day as an MP in 1997, she was walking to the Senate to hear the Speech from the Throne beside the health minister at the time, Allan Rock. Seeing her chance to discuss the record number of drug overdose deaths in her riding, she introduced herself and began talking. Rock said he would meet with her, but Davies says follow-up calls and emails went unanswered. Finally, she went and sat in the minister’s office and said she was not leaving until she got an appointment. She got one, and after they met, the ball got rolling on what would become Insite.

Ignatieff’s wife doesn’t get a preview
The Liberal Express, Michael Ignatieff’s cross-country summer tour, rolled into Toronto this week. Stops included the riding of Thornhill just north of the city, which the Liberals lost to Conservative Peter Kent in the last election, and the riding of Trinity-Spadina, which they lost to the NDP’s Olivia Chow two elections ago. In Thornhill, Ignatieff’s wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, listened attentively to Iggy’s speech, which was much more passionate than the scripted questions the leader asks in the House. Does her husband do dry runs of his speeches for her? No, said Zsohar. In fact, much of what she was hearing was “for the first time.” One Liberal noted it’s all a dry run for when the next election is called, an opportunity to make sure the team works well together.

Photographs by Mitchel Rapheal

In the mud

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 3:45 PM - 0 Comments

And now, courtesy of Susan Delacourt, there are these videos of Michael Ignatieff and the Comber Fair demolition derby.

Calling London

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, August 8, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

Last night, he drew a crowd of perhaps 400 to the market square in downtown London. After an eight-hour bus ride from Ottawa he was not quite electric on the stage, but he waded in before and afterwards and shook hands and posed for pictures and marvelled at a bobblehead likeness of himself that someone had brought for him to autograph. Inside the market he talked garlic imports with two gentlemen from the agriculture federation. Before boarding the bus he stopped to talk with a group of pensioners who wore matching t-shirts calling for changes to the Bankruptcy Insolvency Act. Continue…

Where he was

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 8:12 PM - 0 Comments

By my count, the Liberal bus stopped in eight ridings—all of them held by either a New Democrat or Conservative—over the last three days. For those who are interested in such things, here are those ridings, how the Liberals finished there in 2008, the margin of defeat and when the Liberals last won the riding.

Trinity-Spadina Second. 3,475. 2004.
Thornhill Second. 5,212. 2006.
Halton Second. 7,850. 2004.
Hamilton East-Stoney Creek Second. 6,479. 2004.
St. Catharines Second. 8,822. 2004.
Niagara Falls Second. 10,149. 2000.
Oakville. Second. 5,483. 2006.
Mississauga-Erindale. Second. 397. 2006.

The nation's people remain more serious than the nation's newspaper editors

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 30, 2010 at 5:17 PM - 0 Comments

Mr. Ignatieff took ten questions from the room during his visit to the old Merritton town hall this afternoon. Two pertained to climate change, two to federal infrastructure spending. Government procurement, a proposed trade agreement with Korea, possible civil liberties abuses during the G20 summit in Canada, the census, long-term care for the elderly and child care were covered by the other six queries.

Michael Ignatieff Elitism Watch

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 6:32 PM - 0 Comments

In a speech just now to a few hundred Liberals in suburban Thornhill, Mr. Ignatieff used the word “tendentious” to describe the Conservative government.

However, he also, at the behest of one barbeque attendee, signed a picture of himself drinking cheap Canadian beer. And, later, he posed for a photograph with three scantily clad dancing girls.

Mr. Ignatieff did not, though, partake of the inflatable bouncy Disney castle.

On the road to Thornhill

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 29, 2010 at 3:57 PM - 0 Comments

On the way to MuchMusic, a steel drum band played at the back of the bus. Mr. Ignatieff tried his hand at the drum, while a camera clicked away. He and one of the drummers then discussed the band’s prospects at a competition this weekend (the band—Afropan—expects to win).

Once at Much, Mr. Ignatieff was greeted by a dozen clapping kids in red t-shirts who chanted his name. He ducked inside to have a little powder applied then returned outside to the sidewalk to be interviewed by a 17-year-old girl from Sarnia who had questions about the nature of leadership and the future of the country and what video Mr. Ignatieff would like to request (he went with K’Naan’s Wavin’ Flag). He then walked over to dance awkwardly but unabashedly with the calypso queen of this year’s Caribana festival. This segued into a conga line featuring half a dozen Liberal MPs.

We are now crawling through downtown Toronto on the way to a barbeque in Thornhill. Then it’s back to Toronto for an evening reception at a restaurant in Chinatown.

The rolling people

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 3:32 PM - 0 Comments

As of tomorrow morning, I’m on the road, again. In this case that means following Michael Ignatieff around southern Ontario—Thornhill, Toronto, Burlington, Stoney Creek, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Oakville and Mississauga. The trip concludes with a visit to Caribana where the Liberal leader will, in a party tradition that dates to Laurier, be made to jump and wine.

I last saw Mr. Ignatieff on the road nearly two years ago during the 2008 election, the result of which was a magazine story, the content of which may or may not still be relevant. I last saw Mr. Ignatieff beyond the walls of Parliament last fall, the result of which was a magazine story, the content of which may or may not still be relevant.

For the perspective of someone who is not, nor has ever been, a member of the parliamentary press gallery, the Citizen’s Matthew Pearson (full disclosure: he’s a good friend of mine) rode the Liberal bus for the first few days of this summer’s tour and came back with 1,600 words on what he saw.

Where Michael Ignatieff is going, literally

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 3:19 PM - 0 Comments

The indispensable Alice Funke looks at the theoretical electoral calculus of the Liberal leader’s bus tour.

Medium and message

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 1:01 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff explains the principle at play.

“This is not how Stephen Harper does politics. Stephen Harper would have you about 25 feet back, he’d have you behind a rope line,” Ignatieff told about 50 supporters in Hawkesbury, Ont.. Ignatieff wore a plaid shirt and blue jeans. ”He wouldn’t take an unscripted question, he wouldn’t wade into the crowd. There’s a kind of suspicion of Canadians, and a suspicion, that God help us, something might get out of control.”

In defence of irresponsible Liberal bus metaphors

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 12:10 PM - 0 Comments

“For the last time: the physical world does not conform itself to journalists’ desire for metaphors!” barked Colleague Coyne in the wake of the breakdown of the Liberal Express yesterday. “Mechanical breakdowns are not “emblematic” of anything, except to reporters who like to press the facts into pre-defined templates of spurious significance (see: narrative), or who think the universe is governed by magic.”

At first I read this and gave a firm, satisfied nod of approval. I don’t think the universe is governed by magic either. But wait: isn’t Michael Ignatieff leader of the Liberal party largely because his predecessor was tried and convicted of exhibiting bad juju?

Thinking back to Stephane Dion’s video suicide, it seems to me that there is some room to regard outbreaks of “bad luck” as non-specific indicators of leadership problems. We call them “leaders” for a reason, right? They cannot be aware of all the details of a campaign, but they are responsible for creating an expectation of professionalism, a spirit of unity, and a climate of accountability. They set the moral tone for an organization and determine how much energy the rank and file will apply to mundane tasks.

If you’ve had a career of any length you’ve probably worked for bad, discouraging bosses and good, inspiring ones: which kind gets the worker bees to mind their p’s and q’s, to put in that little extra soupçon of effort? Which sort of executive will have his people coming into work an hour early because they have to pick a transport supplier and they don’t want the old man to lose face? When patronizing a business, don’t you notice, and judge on the basis of, all kinds of little things like this—things that might be strictly irrelevant in themselves? A smudged countertop, an untidy restroom? And aren’t blameless “accidents” often the way in which an unclear command structure, cronyism, or a dispirited workforce manifest themselves?

I don’t say that yesterday’s stop-and-go should by itself, or will, reflect on the state of the Liberal Party. It really is just a damn bus transmission: I feel faintly silly even suggesting that there could conceivably more to it. But if journalists are somewhat prone to Kremlinological flights of fancy about the internal morale of parties and organizations, there’s a reason for that: by and large, their opportunities for genuine insight are a lot less abundant and useful than you think. The press, aided by ethanol and unscrupulousness, does what it can to ferret out the truth. The better one’s access, the greater the inherent compromises.

The Liberal campaign might be a joyless death march, but the marchers themselves live by an ancient, inflexible code that obliges them to plod on uncomplainingly until they fall. All the rest of us can do is to keep our eyes unerringly fixed upon the place where, ahem, the rubber meets the road.

The Commons: When it rains

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 4:42 PM - 0 Comments

The bus pulled up at the base of the Peace Tower and, as if on cue, what had been a light shower became a veritable downpour. Undaunted, Michael Ignatieff stepped jauntily from the vehicle, without either umbrella or cap, perhaps a half dozen metaphors trailing in his wake.

He walked to the edge of the front steps, beside where a bar band had been entertaining the assembled with a rendition of Hungry Like The Wolf, before a crowd of perhaps a 150 or so umbrella’d loyalists who crowded in close in the mid-afternoon rain. Behind Mr. Ignatieff stood a dozen or so Liberal MPs, a half dozen red-and-white umbrellas keeping he and them mostly dry. “Welcome to the official launch of the Liberal Express!” Dominic LeBlanc, standing beside Mr. Ignatieff, said by way of introduction.

Mr. LeBlanc proceeded with a joke about the recent warm weather and Liberal intentions to increase the temperature. He then introduced “the next Prime Minister of Canada” to a sufficient roar from the dampened audience. Continue…