Michael Ignatieff, former leadership rival to Stéphane Dion, swears he and his supporters had nothing to do with suggestions that some Liberals have given up on winning the election and are instead trying to save the party from devastation at the polls.
The Liberal MP for the Toronto riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore, in Vancouver yesterday as part of a B.C. tour aimed at rallying Liberal troops, said he has no idea where such sentiments, reported in The Globe and Mail this week, are coming from.
“I am looking you in the eye and I am telling you a true statement,” he said from across a coffee table at a downtown hotel before heading to one of several engagements in his B.C. tour.
“I have absolutely no idea. Nobody associated with me. Nobody associated with my campaign.”
The deputy party leader lost to Mr. Dion on the fourth ballot of the 2006 Liberal leadership convention. But Mr. Ignatieff had tough words for any dissenters in Liberal ranks.
“I think that people should shut up, get back to work and try and win this election.”
He also said he had not read a column by former party president Stephen LeDrew in the National Post this week that said the Liberals are likely to lose badly on Oct. 14.
“I haven't got time for the nattering nabobs of negativism,” he said, smiling as he borrowed a phrase from Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon's disgraced vice-president, whose political career ended in scandal.
“I am trying to win a campaign. These kind of comments are, in my view, irrelevant. Canadians don't care about them,” he said. “All of this chatter just goes away.”
And when it does, Mr. Ignatieff said, he will stick around. He repeatedly said “Yes, yes, yes,” when asked if he will remain in politics regardless of whether the Liberals form the government.
According to a Canadian Press/Decima poll out this week, the Liberals are running fourth in B.C. these days at 15 per cent, behind the Tories (37 per cent), NDP (26 per cent) and Greens (19 per cent).
Tories are sidestepping the Liberals in their rhetoric, suggesting Mr. Dion's party is irrelevant in the race.
Mr. Ignatieff dismissed all of that as “arrogant,” framing the choice for voters as one between a Harper majority and a Liberal government.
He gamely played down the polls, suggesting they were not catching the “incumbency advantage” of such well-known candidates as Hedy Fry, Keith Martin and Ujjal Dosanjh.
“All this poll stuff is, in my view, guff,” he said.
He said Liberals have to cut through a “wave of disinformation” about carbon taxes in the Liberal Green Shift program that is hurting the party.
“I don't think this election is a referendum on the Green Shift. It's a referendum on a related but different question. The question is, ‘Which team do you trust to lead you in tough economic times?'”
