TORONTO—It’s been less than three months since Michael Ignatieff took the reins of Canada’s largest opposition party, the Liberals. The changes have been swift.
The former academic says he’s trying to win back voters the party lost under former leader Stéphane Dion in the last election in the fall. It was the Liberal’s worst showing since the country’s first elections in 1867.
At a roundtable with media in Toronto on Monday, Mr. Ignatieff answered questions from The Epoch Times on the new direction in which he’s taking the party.
“Yes, I’m moving the party into the centre because I think we win from the centre. We win when people think we’re a moderate, pragmatic, sensible party that connects to what Canadians are worried about,” Mr. Ignatieff said.
“Canadians are worried about their jobs, their mortgages, their pensions, their savings.”
Born in Canada, Mr. Ignatieff spent most of his adult life teaching overseas at prestigious universities, including Oxford and Harvard. He was also a television journalist with the BBC and is an accomplished author.
Mr. Ignatieff returned to Canada three years ago and is serving his second term as the member of parliament for the Toronto constituency of Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
He was installed as Liberal Leader in December after a failed bid by Mr. Dion to oust Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government and replace it with a coalition of left-leaning parties.
As Mr. Ignatieff sees it, the party’s path to renewed credibility lies in the political middle. After taking power, he dropped Mr. Dion’s controversial carbon tax plan and has been instead touting his party’s economic credentials. In an interview this week, he suggested he was considering the return of income trusts, which could help energy companies raise capital.
Mr. Ignatieff was also quick to cancel the coalition agreement with the other two opposition parties—the left-wing New Democratic Party and separatist Bloc Québécois.
“I could be sitting here as your prime minister, but I turned it down because I didn’t think it was right for someone who believes in the national unity of my country to make a deal with people who want to split the country up,” Mr. Ignatieff explained Monday.
It’s actually an argument against the coalition made by Mr. Harper during the parliamentary crisis last fall. And it’s not the only similarity commentators are finding between the two leaders. Some argue that as Mr. Ignatieff charges toward the middle, it’s getting harder to tell the Liberals and the Conservatives apart.
Mr. Ignatieff himself offered that his party passed Mr. Harper’s recent stimulus budget quicker than any other budget but one in Canadian history. But, he says, that’s not because the two parties see eye to eye.
“We forced him to create a stimulus,” Mr. Ignatieff said. He adds that there’s still much that sets the two apart.
“The real stuff that matters to me is that I think the Liberal Party wins elections when we persuade Canadians that we can unite them. The real differentiation between me and Mr. Harper is I unite and he divides.”
As an example, Mr. Ignatieff said his party would create a high-speed rail connection between Quebec City and the southwestern Ontario city of Windsor, a line that would cut through more than half of Canada’s population. “That’s the best project I can think of to pull Canadians together,” he says. “It would pull Quebec and Ontario together like no other project I can imagine.”
Mr. Ignatieff also said he would invest in creating child care spaces, criticizing the Conservative policy of providing $1200 per year for each child under six. "You can't buy childcare spaces for $1200," he said.
“Yes, I want to be in the centre, but there’s lots of clean, blue water between me and the Conservatives,” he said.
Editor's Notes: This article was updated at 1:40 pm Tuesday March 10, to clarify comments made by Mr. Ignatieff regarding childcare policy. There has been debate on Mr. Ignatieff’s position on child care. The following is the complete transcript of his response on this topic to media in Toronto on Monday.
“Mr. Harper gives Canadian families $1200 for every child under six. The problem is you can’t buy childcare spaces for $1200. You can’t get close. We believe you gotta create the spaces. And we believe that investing in early childhood learning for every Canadian child is the best single project we can do to make our society more equal, more fair, and give every Canadian child a shot. That pulls us together, right? But it requires public investment.”
