Michael and me
July 15, 2010
As a guest on the Liberal Express I got first interview of the day.
I was rather surprised when Leeds Liberal candidate Marjory Loveys invited me for a ride from Brockville to Kingston on the Liberal Express, Michael Ignatieff’s ambitious summer march through all of the provinces and territories of Canada.
Marjory Loveys is a terrific interview because she knows politics and has a nimble mind. I use her whenever I can for columns because they always turn out interesting. Whatever she told the crew, they treated me with considerable deference, and maybe a little fear.
While we were waiting through the media scrum for a chance to board the bus a pleasant blonde woman beside me started to chat. I explained that scrums were of no use to me: I’m too deaf, so I prefer a one-on-one interview, and that this was the first time I had left home to do one. “Normally they come to me.” She smiled, amused, and we talked about the freedom which comes when one reaches a certain age. The kids are grown up, and one can start off on a major endeavour.
I introduced myself. She shook my hand, “I’m Zsuzsanna.” Ulp! Embarrassed. She quickly put me at ease and bade me welcome aboard the bus. Good start: I hadn’t recognized Ignatieff’s wife! Sweet lady, though. If I were a puppy I’d curl up at her feet.
The first available seat was with a young man in red t-shirt, one of the crew of interns with the Liberal headquarters in Ottawa. He’s from a town near St. John’s, Newfoundland, majoring in economics at Western. When the guy in charge warned me I was first up for an interview, I left my seat-mate my camera and made sure he knew how to use it.
The bus is set up with a number of seats facing tables. All except the leader’s are loaded with cookie bags, stacks of newspapers, and surprisingly large young men in dress shirts typing steadily on laptops. The bus has Internet. Somebody told me the password so I logged on and dashed off emails until my time came up.
With pen and pad in hand I moved up to join the trio at the table. Marjory beamed from the other side and Ottawa-Orleans candidate David Bertschi looked pleasant, if a bit detached. Mr. Ignatieff shook my hand and introduced himself as “Michael.”
“I’d like to begin with a question from political science, if you will.” Michael nodded. “It concerns the political spectrum. In the early sixties the Liberal Party could be comfortably described as slightly left-of-centre, but does the left-right distinction apply any more when people vote their wealth, their ethnicity, their religion, even their xenophobia? Is there a better way to distinguish between points of view?”
Silence. The Ottawa guy’s jaw dropped. Marjory grinned knowingly. She’s faced my questions before. Michael collected his thoughts for several agonizing seconds, then began:
“Since the time of Mike Pearson, Liberals have been a centrist party, a party of fiscal responsibility, strong defense, pensions, Medicare, and federalism with attention to the rights of Quebec. That was the centre. Some suggest we should move to the left or the right. We have many ideas in common with the NDP, but we are not the NDP. We can get it done.
“Stephen Harper pretends to be centrist, but he wants to move the political centre ten degrees to the right, and the people of Canada can’t let that happen.”
O.K., he’s just affirmed the basic assumption of Canadian politics. Nothing radical there. Time for the follow-up:
“I once wrote in a column that Michael Ignatieff is a better conservative than Stephen Harper. What do you have to offer to the Progressive Conservative who feels queasy these days?”
He’d fouled the first one back, but Michael watched this pitch drift across the plate, then knocked it out of the park.
“My uncle was George Grant, an ardent Red Tory and Canadian nationalist. He wrote Lament for a Nation. I grew up in a family where Red Tories and Liberals mixed freely. Moderate conservatives and Liberals are part of the same family.
“I don’t think Stephen Harper is a Red Tory. The Conservative campaign playbook is lifted from the playbook of the American Republican Party. Red Tories have always been ardent Canadian nationalists. While his tactics come from the United States, Harper’s ideas come from those of the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance. They are no mystery.
“And there is definitely room in the Big Red Tent for Progressive Conservatives.”
I had my interview and time was running, so I closed with a general question about Leeds-Grenville Liberal candidate Marjory Loveys.
“What I like about Marjory Loveys is that she has put down roots here. She knows Ottawa and is unimpressed and unintimidated by it. She can get things done there.
“Marjory cares about ideas. I have talked with her in detail about economic development in Leeds-Grenville. We need for our young people to stay in the community. They shouldn’t have to leave for schooling, or for jobs. People shouldn’t have to travel away from their community for medical care. Marjory should make an excellent MP.”
From what I could see on the bus and in the interview, Michael Ignatieff takes a traditional approach to politics. He’s going about this tour the methodical way, stop by stop, talking with Canadians and picking up ideas and believers as he goes. For example, Michael commented with a smile at the end of our interview: “In four years in this business nobody has ever asked me an initial question like that.” But have you noticed how he slips “Progressive Conservative” into every speech now?
A response to Neil Reynolds
July 22, 2009
Neil Reynolds’ review of Michael Ignatieff’s speech last week in his column (The Globe and Mail, July 22, 2009) demanded a comment. While I greatly admired Mr. Reynolds during his days as editor of The Kingston Whig Standard and even later as the founder of the Libertarian Party of Canada, I fear this review showed a careless reading of the subject and sloppy thought.
Mr. Reynolds: You seem to be reviewing the speech you wish he had given, rather than the one he did. I’m wondering how carefully you read the thing, frankly, for while bashing away for what the Liberal leader failed to say or said badly, you seem inadvertently to end up supporting Ignatieff’s main point in this carefully-veiled jab at his chief opponent: within the traditions of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, Michael Ignatieff is a better conservative than Stephen Harper.
The new “Conservative”
July 21, 2009
James Travers’s column in today’s Toronto Star bemoans the loss of civility in parliament, laying the blame squarely at the feet of Stephen Harper and the CPC. I keep thinking of Swift’s Liliputians when I watch Harper at work. Here’s a rope-balancer who isn’t very good at it. He keeps letting someone else have the centre and then has to squawk and flap his arms like crazy to keep from falling, first to the left and then to the right. Ignatieff has planted himself more or less in the centre, so the increasingly strident Harper has to struggle on the margins.
Then Stephen Chase of the Globe and Mail has an article on Harper’s announcement that the deficit will continue if growth does not eliminate it, even if it takes ten years, as most economists predict, to get over the current $17 billion/year drain (July 21, Ottawa likely stuck with deficits for a decade: economist).
Funny, when Bob Rae ran a deficit like that in Ontario back in the nineties, he became a pariah, labelled variously a communist, an idiot, a fool, a traitor to his class. Most tellingly, public employees revised the calendar to include the Rae-day, an ironic tribute to his leadership, and the NDP has never recovered.
So when a man leading a party which attempts to call itself “Conservative” adopts the same strategy, do these labels no longer apply? To be a “Conservative” do you have to act like George Bush and ignore the facts, using reckless spending and relentless tax cuts to shore up personal popularity until the country is bankrupt?
Where I grew up a conservative spent what he earned and saved a bit for tomorrow. He shared with his neighbours and cared for the needy. He had no thought of helping a few friends get rich so he could eat at their tables later. Not everybody agreed with the conservative, but they respected him.
Can Ignatieff use George Grant to gain Tory cred?
July 14, 2009
George Grant still carries some weight with my generation of Canadians. His pessimism ignited our nationalism; his acceptance of the inevitability of American domination left us determined to prove the prophet wrong. But the stimulus and the passion came from Lament For a Nation.
In True Patriot Love Michael Ignatieff uses Grant to establish his Conservative chops. Last week in London he served notice in the Berlin Lecture that the CPC is no legitimate heir to the support of Progressive Conservative voters. He stated in his lecture that Progressive Conservative leaders subscribed to a liberal-democratic tradition very like that of the Liberal Party of Canada. He’s not wrong in this.
Then Tom Flanagan wrote the think-piece in the Globe accusing Liberals of squealing like little girls over a few attack ads, and Harper found himself inadvertently tarred with the Republican brush. All of the sudden Uncle George starts to look pretty good to us wannabe Canadian nationalists, and Harper’s made-in-America politics doesn’t look Conservative at all.
In a delicious bit of irony apparently lost on the Ottawa press corps, Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff inferred Monday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have to make up the time lost when he prorogued the House last winter before the Liberals allow summer recess. He didn’t say it in exactly that way, of course.
Instead he showed his disappointment with the wayward Stephen’s most recent economic report, but he chose to return the assignment for revisions before flunking it. Stephen must realize, however, that if he doesn’t do some major work before Friday, he and his party will spend the rest of June in the House until he upgrades his work to a level acceptable to the professor and the Canadians he represents as Leader of the Opposition.
“If the PM has something good to help the jobless, I will support it. I’m prepared to make compromises which will help the unemployed. I’m looking for co-operation, not confrontation, but I’m ready to vote against the estimates on Friday, and yes, the full Liberal Caucus will be present in the House for the vote.”
As well as criticizing the E.I. gap, Ignatieff noted that the current estimate has dropped any mention of a plan to get the Canadian economy out of deficit, and this shows a significant lack of leadership. Further, the spending statements and projections contained in the report failed to provide specific information Canadians need to know.
Ignatieff seems particularly concerned with the current medical isotope crisis. He mentioned that he has spoken to the supplier in Australia. “I asked, ‘O.K., can you scale up here?’ He responded that we can’t guarantee our supply will reach Canada.” “This is a big deal. Tell us honestly what the situation is. This is a very serious failure of leadership by this government and I can’t let this go on longer. This is a public health matter, not partisan politics.”
A journalist asked if Ignatieff would advocate taking funds from infrastructure spending to boost E.I. payments. He responded by saying that on the subject of infrastructure spending, the Harper government leaves the impression of an adolescent with a garden hose spraying a backyard. On the other hand, the numbers in Harper’s own report make it clear that the most effective stimulus spending during the recession has been E.I. payments: they provide immediate and effective help. “If Harper can convince me a large rise in E.I. would cause a big problem of public finance, I’ll listen. But I want to help the unemployed. I’d like to discuss this with the P.M. He knows my phone number. I’d like to work with him on this.”
“I don’t seek an election, but we need accountability and I want some answers. He promised changes in three months in his last report. Now he mentions some plans to look at E.I. in the fall. What counts is getting action to help the unemployed. If he’s got something good to help the unemployed, let’s get it out now, not later, after the seasonal workers have missed the benefits.”
“Any sensible person understands that Canadians want to work. There are 58 regional variations across Canada on E.I. The P.M. won’t get away with saying that in three months he may come back to it.”
Accused of giving Mr. Harper a way out, Ignatieff responded: “We just had an election. I’m just trying to work with the government to make Parliament work. I don’t want him to give in to me, I want solutions that are good for Canadians.
Tory cabinet minister John Baird had spent the quarter hour before Ignatieff’s speech today in front of a CTV camera attempting a pre-emptive strike on the Leader of the Opposition’s credibility by using the word “games” a lot. Ignatieff came back with, “I won’t put a grade on this economic statement. The stakes for Canadians are way too high for that. This is not a game. What Opposition is for is to ask real questions and seek real answers on behalf of Canadians. The big prize here is to make Canadians feel we have a pretty good system of government here which can work for them.”
A CBC commentator concluded, however, with another games metaphor: “The ball’s in Harper’s court.”
Canadians are unlikely to share the pain of parliamentarians if Ignatieff makes them sit through the month of June and even longer while they finish the work of a session cut short by last winter’s prorogation. Serves them right.
the Walnut Diary 