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Canada’s Liberal Party taps Ignatieff as leader

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff smiles as confetti falls following his acceptance speech to delegates at the Liberal Leadership Convention in Vancouver, Canada on Saturday. PHOTO: AP

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.

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.
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