After Michael Ignatieff was declared leader of Canada’s official opposition at the Liberal Party convention in Vancouver on Saturday, he slammed Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and accused him of dividing Canadians.
“You have played province against province, region against region, individual against individual,” Ignatieff said in a hall of party members. “You have failed to understand that a prime minister of Canada has one job and one job only, which is to unite the people of this country.”
An academic, author, broadcaster and human rights advocate, Ignatieff left Canada in 1978 for a career in England at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and later in the US at Harvard University.
PHOTO: AP
More than 97 percent of 2,023 voters at the convention supported Ignatieff, the only candidate, on a symbolic leadership ballot. Party delegates also voted to make a major change in rules for choosing future leaders to give each party member a vote instead of using delegates.
Ignatieff, who has previously been tight-lipped about what policies he would promote in a future election, stressed education in his acceptance speech.
Canada needs to be a knowledge society “where what counts is what you know, not who you know,” he said.
Ignatieff said Liberals would support early education and childcare programs, equal pay for equal work by women and a “world-class” education for Canada’s aborigines children, whose drop-out rate is much higher than average.
Ignatieff used the last part of his speech to “speak directly to Stephen Harper.”
“Mr Harper, you have failed us. If you can’t appeal to the best in all Canadians, then we can,” shouted Ignatieff, promising that a Liberal government would promote confederation “based on cooperation and not confrontation.”
Liberals “are the big tent of Canadian life,” Ignatiff said, calling for courage during tough economic times.
“If we offer citizens a message of hope ... Canadians will ask us to form the next government of Canada,” he said.
But Ignatieff did not say when the Liberals might try to overthrow Harper’s minority government.
Harper’s Conservatives won minorities in Canada’s last two federal elections, forcing the party to rely on opposition parties.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS