Ignatieff: ‘Do you want
four more years of this?’

While in Ottawa last month, I had the opportunity to meet with Michael Ignatieff. This was my first meeting with the leader of the federal Liberals and my initial impression was of a gentleman who exudes intelligence. If elections were based on I.Q., Mr. Ignatieff would be our next prime minister.
Unfortunately, brains and knowledge often have little to do with who wins elections. The Liberals, as a whole, need to do a better job of simplifying their messaging, their vision and their platform so that the average Canadian can understand what specific things that they stand for.
Mr. Ignatieff sat down with Mehfil Magazine to talk about the Liberal Party’s fortunes and specific policy objectives relating to immigration, families and Canada’s role in the international community.

Mehfil Magazine: The Liberals seem to be trending downward in the opinion polls. How do you turn that around?
Michael Ignatieff: I’ve been up, I’ve been down. Up’s better. I actually don’t think the trend is down. It changes week to week. And remember, Mr. Harper has hit a ceiling. I’m just getting started.

MM: What do you think are going to be the key issues in the next election campaign?
MI: Do you want four more years of this?
We will provide a clear alternative. Progressive, fiscally responsible, let’s invest in Canadians, focus on learning, versus a slash-and-burn, cut-the-deficit, shrink-government vision. And I think between those two choices Canadians will choose us.
And there will only be two choices that matter. To be blunt, if you vote for Mr. Layton or Mr. Duceppe you get more Harper. If you don’t want Mr. Harper you’ve got to come to us. That’s how it works. I mean no disrespect to those two gentlemen but it’s going to be him (Harper) or me.

MM: When do you think the election will be?
MI: I’m not in the business of seeking an election. Canadians have said that they want us to give them a clear alternative first.

MM: The Conservative Party got a lot of play out of the “Just Visiting” advertising campaign where they tried to portray you as an outsider. What is your defence to that campaign?
MI: I don’t need to make a defence. Twenty to 25 per cent of this country was born in another country. At any given time something like two million Canadians – good Canadian citizens – are working overseas, building businesses, doing work, helping other countries develop. What I’m speaking out for is a vision of Canada that is more international and not less international. Yes, I was out of the country. I’m proud that I was. I’m proud that I succeeded in some pretty tough places. I was a war correspondent, I was a freelance journalist, I was a writer, and I ended up being a professor at a pretty good school.
What’s at stake here is a vision of Canada. It’s not about me. It’s about people who come here from other lands and have enriched our country and the millions of people who have worked outside this country and I’m one of them.

MM: With the emergence of the Asian superpowers and the solidification of the European Union, Canada’s role in the international community seems to be diminishing, or at the very least changing. What role should Canada play in the international community?
MI: I feel strongly about this. First of all, (our role should be) as a conflict preventer. One of the great achievements of Canada is that we have managed to build a multicultural, multi-national, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society for hundreds of years and have done it better than anybody else.
I think the key thing that Canada stands for is that vision of openness, tolerance and, believe it or not, political systems. I think we haven’t gone out in the world enough and said this is who we are, this is what we can do, how do we help you?
I think the second challenge is the future of the global economy. Canada faces north south. We now have to face out to the west. We’ve got to face out to the new economies of India and China.

MM: If elected, would the Liberals maintain existing levels of immigration?
MI: (We would have) an orderly increase in immigration, increased emphasis on family class, and increase the number of permanent residents from Asia.
At the “Montreal Conference,” we pointed out the demographic transition that we’re going through, which is the most dramatic in our history, which is the retirement of the baby boomer generation. This will produce jobs without people, and people without jobs – that is labour shortage coincident with stubbornly high unemployment. What do we do about that? We have to do two things: we have to invest money in training and education and second immigration.
The current government has done nothing in that regard. They’ve greatly increased the number of temporary foreign workers, but the number of landed immigrants has actually fallen, particularly from Asia, and we think in principal that is wrong.

MM: The Conservatives often talk about the millions of dollars that they have allocated to  immigrant settlement services. In your opinion, have those funds been allocated appropriately?
MI: The thing that we notice is a gap in language. We are not doing enough to get the kind of specific language training that focuses on accent and that focuses on professional vocabulary. Mr. Kenney (Canada’s immigration minister) has under-spent on language services. I talk to settlement people in my own riding, in Vancouver, and elsewhere and they say we want to offer more language courses.
It’s a big investment but we have to do it. I don’t want to have Canadians who feel shut out of Canadian life because they can’t speak one of the official languages.

MM: What would a Liberal government do differently with regards to foreign credential recognition?
MI: I would use the Ontario model. The Ontario government has a Fairness Commission. The Fairness Commission works with all the certifying bodies – the engineers, the pharmacists, and the doctors – and says: Have you got top-up courses to recognize foreign credentials? What are your protocols on credential recognition? Just so there is a government official working with these bodies to make sure they don’t turn into a job cartel. I think there’s a role for a national Fairness Commission.

MM: Many young families in Canada would like to have more children but can’t afford to do so. As a supplement to immigration, how would a Liberal government help young families who do want to have more children?
MI: The country has never had a birth-promotion policy. I don’t think it’s out of the question but I won’t go there yet because we need to study what other countries have done.
The bottom line for me is child care. The real problem that I see everywhere is that families can’t get child care; a lot of them want to go back into the workforce but can’t do it.
The other thing that relates to the family is the sandwich generation pressure – families who have both young kids and aging parents. How do you care for both? How do we create a society where families aren’t crushed by the burden of care?
One of the issues that we are actively working on is how to help families, specifically caregivers, who have to take time off to look after aged parents or ill children. You have six weeks compassionate leave now under the EI system but the person you’re caring for has to be actually dying. We think the time is too short, the criterion to narrow and (as a result) take-up is nearly zero. Family after family after family is looking at these burdens. 

Andy Radia is political columnist based in Vancouver, B.C. His articles have been published in the Vancouver Sun, Winnipeg Free Press and Vancouver Metro. He can be contacted through his website at www.radia.ca