Ignatieff has been reading the polls again!

Perhaps the Liberals should have a genuine leadership convention before they try to topple the Conservatives. Ignatieff now has given the Conservatives carte blanche. He is just asking Harper to present him with a poison pill that will make him look even more unprincipled than he appears at the moment. Suddenly when the polls go down somewhat Harper's government is no longer so bad that it needs to go. This is a great Xmas present for Harper but Ignatieff could have waited a while before giving it to him.



Ignatieff retreats from trying to topple Harper

Liberal leader says they won't try again until spring election

By Andrew Mayeda, Canwest News ServiceOctober 20, 2009



Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Tuesday his party will no longer seek to defeat the Harper government, suggesting the Conservatives will remain in power until at least next spring's federal budget.
"We've said clearly we won't support the government but, at the same time, we won't try to defeat the government each time," Ignatieff told reporters Tuesday after making an appearance at a daycare in Ottawa.
Earlier this month, the governing Conservatives survived a non-confidence motion introduced by the Liberals. On Tuesday, Ignatieff wouldn't commit to tabling another such motion the next time the Liberals have the opportunity.
"I won't say but, as I've said, we won't support these people, because we're the opposition. But we're not trying to create opportunities to trigger an election," he said.
"Canadians have clearly said they don't want an election, and they haven't just said that to me, they've told that to all the parties, and we have to respect what the Canadian voters think."
Liberal officials sought to downplay Ignatieff's comments Tuesday, noting he has made similar statements in recent weeks. Nevertheless, it is clear the Liberal leader's tone has softened since early September, when he declared he would no longer support the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"After four years of drift, four years of denial, four years of division and discord -- Mr. Harper, your time is up," Ignatieff said at the time. "The Liberal party cannot support this government any further. We will hold Stephen Harper to account. We will oppose his government in Parliament."
The Liberals hoped the hard-line stance would help them build credibility as a government-in-waiting. But in recent weeks, the party has slid in the polls as the Conservatives have climbed close to majority territory.
In an Ipsos Reid poll released last week, the Conservatives stood at 39% in national support, compared with 29% for the Liberals.
Opposition parties can introduce non-confidence motions against the government on so-called "opposition days" in the House of Commons. There are five remaining opposition days until the House of Commons breaks for the holidays in December, and the Liberals are expected to get their next one early next month.
The Bloc Quebecois supported the last Liberal non-confidence motion, but the NDP abstained from the vote, allowing the Conservatives to survive.
The NDP has said it will support the government until Parliament passes legislation to expand EI benefits.
A Liberal source said Tuesday that the party will wait to see how the political winds are blowing before deciding whether to table another non-confidence motion.
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Siddiqui: Murky past could haunt Ignatieff

Ignatieff's murky past is exactly what makes him so suitable for his role to elaborate a Liberal vision of Canada. Canada will be closely integrated with the US and in foreign policy will act as a loyal helpmate of Empire Lite. As a humanitarian imperialist Ignatieff will probably push for even more involvement in the US led war against terror. The Liberals were the ones who got us into Afghanistan and Ignatieff is a big supporter of the mission to bring ""freedom and democracy etc." Ignatieff was a supporter of the invasion of Iraq and even when he somewhat recanted he still thought that it was a good idea but badly executed! The Liberal kingmakers are quite content to see Canada as a handmaiden to the empire providing them our natural resources at bargain prices under NAFTA restrictions and enjoying some favor as sub-contractors supplying the military industrial complex of the empire.

Murky past could haunt Ignatieff
Dec 11, 2008 04:30 AM
Haroon Siddiqui
Set aside the debate over whether the Liberal party has been as cynical and undemocratic in the pursuit of power as King Stephen (Harper) or just agile enough to respond well to the extraordinary developments of the last 10 days.
Ignore that Michael Ignatieff's coronation was engineered with the same ruthless methodology used by Paul Martin – elbowing out a leader by taking control of the party machinery. Time will tell if Ignatieff's manoeuvre works any better in the long run than Martin's.
Rather, consider this:
While Americans have turned to Barack Obama to thoroughly repudiate George W. Bush's agenda, Canadians are saddled with a Prime Minister and now his potential replacement as well who have both been Bush cheerleaders.
Arguably, the Liberal leader has been even more so than his Conservative counterpart.
As is well-known, Ignatieff supported the war in Iraq, a position he only semi-retreated from last year, in Year 4 of the botched occupation. Even then, he argued that he had been wrong for the right reasons (saving the Kurds from Saddam Hussein), while opponents of the war may have been right for the wrong reasons (ideological opposition to Bush).
He also supported the use of such harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects as sleep deprivation and hooding, even while saying he opposed torture.
He was also an advocate for American exceptionalism in defiance of international law.
Ignatieff's supporters argue that he was merely thinking aloud as a public intellectual.
That won't wash. He was an active participant in the American public debate both preceding and following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was among those liberals – a professor of human rights at Harvard, no less – who provided intellectual cover for Bush's neo-conservative policies.
Ignatieff's positions were the exact opposite of where a majority of Canadians stood on issues that are a point of differentiation between Canada and the U.S.
Canadians may no longer feel as strongly, preoccupied as they are with the economy. But we can be certain that the Tories won't let him off the hook. They will remind voters of all that he said and wrote.
We got a taste of it early this year in Parliament. On Jan. 28, during a debate on Afghanistan, Defence Minister Peter MacKay noted: "He has said previously ... `To defeat evil,' we must `traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.'"
Two days later, MacKay added that the Taliban "might also be interested to know that he said, `Defeating terror requires violence. It may also require coercion, secrecy, deception, even violation of rights.'"
This is not an ideological issue of right or left. Managing the relationship with the U.S. is one of the central duties of the prime minister. We've had different models – Harper's and Jean Chrétien's, to take two contemporary examples.
But we've never had a Liberal leader, let alone a prime minister, who had lived in the U.S. long enough to count himself in among "we Americans," and worse, had been a noisy apologist for some of the worst foreign and domestic policy disasters of American history.
Ignatieff is a man of formidable intellect, who has spent a lifetime thinking through some of the knottiest issues of our age. He is well suited to articulate a liberal vision for Canada, at home and abroad, the way Pierre Elliot Trudeau did.
But he cannot do so successfully while dodging his murky past.
Haroon Siddiqui writes on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiq@thestar.ca