Posted on 11/23/2006 12:47:31 PM PST by Clive
OTTAWA (CP) - Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff's on-again, off-again ownership of the Quebec-as-nation push is definitely on again.
Ignatieff, the Liberal MP with the impressive academic credentials, has been alternately embracing and distancing himself from the initiative with dizzying regularity.
Early Wednesday afternoon in a round-table discussion with The Canadian Press, Ignatieff was emphatic that a controversial internal Liberal party resolution to recognize Quebec as a nation was not his idea.
"Just so it's clear, for the 20th time, the (Quebec) resolution was not initiated by the Ignatieff camp," he said. "It was initiated by people who support a range of candidacies."
At that point in the day, the concept was clearly dividing the Liberal caucus and was a potential political liability.
By late Wednesday, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's surprise announcement that he'd introduce a Commons motion to recognize Quebecers as a nation within a united Canada, Ignatieff had begun to change his tune.
"I think it's a good day for Canada," Ignatieff said of the Conservative motion.
"That is to say, I'm proud of the way in which the Liberal party and my candidacy listened to Quebec."
By Thursday morning, Ignatieff was firmly planting his flag in the initiative.
It is just the latest Ignatieff U-turn on the subject.
When the Quebec wing of the Liberal party adopted the nation resolution on Oct. 21, Ignatieff's campaign issued a press release trumpeting his leadership on the issue:
"I was the first to say our party must recognize the fact that Quebecers consider their province as their national home, and that we cannot let the failures of the past forever define our constitutional future," Ignatieff was quoted in the release.
A week later, amid a raging public debate over the potential ramifications of the resolution for the Liberal party, the Ignatieff team began calling reporters with "new massaging."
Credit for the nation notion was to be shared among all the leadership candidates.
Ignatieff had urged caution in Montreal when the Quebec-as-nation resolution was adopted: "It's the first step in a long road, and we have to proceed prudently and wisely."
But Ignatieff - during a Sept. 10 leadership debate in Quebec City - had been the first federal politician in a decade to pry the lid off the constitutional casket.
"Other candidates have said . . . recognizing Quebec as a nation in the Constitution is too difficult," Ignatieff said in his prepared, closing remarks in the Quebec capital. "Yes, it's difficult, but we must do it.
"Otherwise, what alternative are we offering against (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper's status quo and the Bloc's politics of fantasy? I'm not in politics to say that the things we need to do are difficult, but to find solutions."
The man is a complete twit.
I love the brilliance of this move by Harper. He knows the setup of Canada, its only a matter of time until the 'French' (Majority of which are to the left politically) and the 'English' Liberals retake the reigns of power. I look at this two ways.
1) He's made a move to fracture the Liberal Party between the French and English parts, and will attempt to govern in the future with a Conservative Government while letting French Canada do what ever it pleases in Quebec, or
2) He's moving toward actual or Quasi-Independance for the francophone province that would leave remaining population much more favorable to voting for a conservative government.
He has taken a significant step toward shifting power back to the provinces thereby decentralizing it and undermining the centralization that is so essential to leftist social engineering.
related:
Canadian PM Declares Quebec a Nation
AP | 11/22/6 | BETH DUFF-BROWN
Posted on 11/23/2006 12:04:30 AM EST by SmithL
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