Michael Ignatieff's Canada is stuck in 1978
Posted: September 15, 2009, 12:15 PM by NP Editor
Kelly McParland, Full Comment Canadian politics
The more I think about the speech delivered by Michael Ignatieff in Ottawa on Monday, the more annoyed I get. The content of this address revealed a man deeply ignorant of the Canada of 2009, and serenely unaware of his ignorance.
This speech revealed a man who left Canada in 1978 with a vision of his country fixed in his head, and returned 30 years later with that same image in place. The country has moved on since then; Ignatieff's understanding of it hasn't. He clearly has little comprehension of the country he wants to lead, of the way it thinks and acts, of its motives and aspirations, of its very image of itself.
When Ignatieff left, Canada was still the land of Pierre Trudeau: he'd dominated Ottawa for a decade at that point, and had another six years to go. Two generations of Canadians have been born and raised since then, and are voting age now. If they know Trudeau, or the Canada of the 1970s, it's as a subject in history class. They don't feel its tug any more than their parents felt the uncertainty of the Great Depression. It's just a story their parents tell, which might have been the current reality once, but isn't any more.
Canada is no longer an insecure country, uncertain of its place in the world or its right to mingle with older or more powerful countries. It's no longer a place dependent on attention from abroad to bolster its own self-worth. It's not a country that aspires to be taken seriously; no, Canadians take themselves seriously and take for granted that other countries should too.
We're not a country lacking in heroes, achievers or international figures in any walk of life. There was a time when Canadians fell back on the same handful of names when justifying our place among nations, but no longer. In science, in technology, in culture and the arts, in business and industry, in sports and academia, the country has produced so many leading figures there is no longer any need or reason to count. Canadians know Canada matters, they don't need to be told any more.
Michael Ignatieff made clear Monday he doesn't know any of this. He simply hasn't been back in Canada long enough to understand the extent to which it has changed in his absence. He may have caught glimpses from afar, but his grasp of the details is no greater than a Canadian would understand Russia from having visited once or twice.
Look at the images he invokes in his address, which was supposed to reveal the Liberal vision for our country's place in the world. Searching for points of pride he falls back on the UN, the blue helmets, the Suez crisis, Lester Pearson, peacekeeping, multilateralism, the Security Council. This is the best he can do? Nothing in the 45 years since Pearson left the stage strikes him as evidence of Canadian achievement? Does he know so little about this country that everything from mid-Trudeau onward is a blank?
He blandly proffers immense absurdities. "Under Stephen we are no longer the world's leading peacekeeper," he laments, blind to the fact Canada lost its military bearing when Jean Chretien systematically starved it into a state of near-ruin.
"An engaged, muscular internationalism was not the exception for Canada; it was the rule," he boasts, apparently unfamiliar with the sad Liberal era of "soft power", when Canada's role in the world was to creep around the corners, jostling elbows and wondering if more important countries had a moment for us.
His heroes are big international talking shops, like the G-20 and the Security Council. If Mr. Ignatieff still thinks the UN is likely to solve any problem of substance, he must be the only one left. For years the UN's main human rights body has been a mockery held hostage by thuggish countries whose notion of "rights" is their own right to jail anyone they please. The UN has watched for years as Sudan's government murders its own people in Darfur, unable to act due to its own paralysis. The UN entertains resolution after resolution condemning Israel, but hasn't noticed that women remain indentured slaves in many of the countries putting foward the complaints. Just last week Canwest's Steven Edwards reported on Ottawa's efforts to stop a cabal of countries from blocking an effort to set up a UN super-agency to fight for women the way Unicef fights for children. The cabal members? Iran, Sudan, Egypt and Cuba. Mr. Ignatieff must be kidding if he thinks Canadians don't understand how empty a vessel the UN has become.
Look at his words and consider what mindset they must reflect. He offers us bromides, telling us "nearly twenty percent of our people were born in another country," as if we hadn't noticed.
He pledges to " renew our relationship with the U.S.," noting that "the number of visitors to Canada from the United States has fallen to its lowest level in a generation," as if that had anything to do with Ottawa rather than Washington's intensified obsession with security and the fallout of its economic problems.
He promises to "engage with China", sending off more Chretien-style Team Canada missions, as if Canadian business can't find its way without help from a planeload of politicians. "Our lobstermen in Prince Edward Island want to sell their catch in Macau," he thunders, Macau being a tiny enclave off the South China coast, population 540,000. Even PEI isn't going to get rich off that one.
Mr. Ignatieff seems to have a view of Canadians as a nation of well-meaning dunderheads with few of his international sensibilities, who can be wowed by a visiting professor waving a passport filled with exotic stamps. Throw a little ancient history at them, mention some far-off countries, and they'll give you their votes like they did for Trudeau. So deaf is he to his own pomposity he has the conceit to boast of his plans for delivering a "big Canada," which only makes sense if you believe the current rendition of the country is small and unimportant.
"Let me set out the elements of a Liberal strategy for a big Canada, an ambitious Canada, a Canada that leads by example," he told the Ottawa crowd, which must have been interested to learn Canada isn't already ambitious, energetic and busy leading by example. And to close his speech, he trumpeted the new Liberal slogan: "We can do better."
Well, he's right on that one, anyway. Canada can do better than Michael Ignatieff. The sooner Liberals learn that, the sooner they'll have a claim on Canada's respect.
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