Well-heeled Liberals have been invited to attend a private tête-à-tête Thursday with Michael Ignatieff at the Westmount mansion of a prominent Sikh businessman and philanthropist.
It’s an effort by the Grits to raise more funds in advance of an election that could come as early as this spring.
Tickets are $500 for two hours of cocktails and chit-chat with the Liberal Leader. The invitation reads: “The Honourable Baljit Chadha hosts an intimate conversation with Michael Ignatieff.”
“It will be a cocktail event built around a personal question and answer session with Mr. Ignatieff,” a senior Liberal official told The Globe, explaining that Mr. Ignatieff is in Montreal that day for a roundtable session on family care. “Fundraisers are part and parcel of the job of any opposition leader when we’re on the road.”
Liberals are not saying how many people are expected or the amount of money they hope to raise. It seems, however, that their fundraising operation is in overdrive in anticipation of an election.
Last Friday, the party’s national fundraising director Adam Smith made an appeal for funds to help keep two new attack ads on the air. The ads were in answer to a series of Conservative ads released earlier last week.
Mr. Chadha’s “Honourable” designation, meanwhile, is the result of his appointment in 2003 by former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien to the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the body overseeing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. To sit on the committee, Mr. Chadha was sworn in as Privy Councillor.
A 2005 article in Maclean’s by Peter C. Newman notes that Mr. Chadha made his fortune as a “major player in Canada’s nut trade.” His company is Balcorp Ltd.
In addition to raising funds, the event will also be useful in keeping the Liberals in touch with the Sikh community. The Conservatives, through Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, have been very successful in wooing new Canadian votes.
On Friday, Mr. Ignatieff went head first into the kirpan controversy, defending the right of Sikhs to wear them. He was in Quebec when he took his stand, responding to the ban on wearing the ceremonial dagger in the National Assembly.
Saying the kirpan is not a weapon, the Liberal Leader told reporters “Canadians have the right to access their democratic and parliamentary spaces. It's a question of tolerance, of religious freedom.”
