Michael Ignatieff Two Sides: Foreign Policy

2005 Outside Canada

In Ireland Michael Ignatieff is very critical of Canada and Europe (excluding England, US).

How many Canadian men and women will shed Blood to satisfy the Liberal leader's desire to reclaim  our international citizen status from the 1950's?

Instead of blaming our country, why not blame the Liberal Party who were in power and gave away our capabilities?

Did China or Russia have significant interests and were they blocking any U.N. actions?

Why did the Liberals under Chretien use his close relationship with China fail to apply pressure?

2009 Toronto, Canada

 Michael Ignatieff revised his Foreign Policy speech, the Liberal leader drops his criticism and praises the Liberal Party and Canada peacekeeping reputation. He attacks the current government for tarnishing our reputation. In 2005 he was very critical of Canada and Europe for a bogus peacekeeping reputation.

In four years why did he change his mind and forget all his criticisms of Canada?






Kelly McParland: Michael Ignatieff's Canada is stuck in 1978

Look at the images he invokes in his address, which was supposed to reveal the Liberal vision for our country's place in the world. Searching for points of pride he falls back on the UN, the blue helmets, the Suez crisis, Lester Pearson, peacekeeping, multilateralism, the Security Council. This is the best he can do? Nothing in the 45 years since Pearson left the stage strikes him as evidence of Canadian achievement? Does he know so little about this country that everything from mid-Trudeau onward is a blank?
 
He blandly proffers immense absurdities. "Under Stephen we are no longer the world's leading peacekeeper," he laments, blind to the fact Canada lost its military bearing when Jean Chretien systematically starved it into a state of near-ruin.

"An engaged, muscular internationalism was not the exception for Canada; it was the rule," he boasts, apparently unfamiliar with the sad Liberal era of "soft power", when Canada's role in the world was to creep around the corners, jostling elbows and wondering if more important countries had a moment for us.