Michael Ignatieff slid from the velvet daggers of academe into the rude pikestaffs of partisan politics yesterday, forced to defend himself in his first public appearance as a Liberal candidate against accusations of trashing Ukrainians in print.
As the Harvard professor arrived at Toronto's plummy University Club to speak to a business luncheon, members of the Liberal riding association for Etobicoke-Lakeshore where he plans to run for Parliament paraded with placards calling him a "democratic deficit"-- a reference to his being parachuted into the riding.
Myroslava Oleksiuk, membership secretary of the riding association in Toronto's west end, also handed out leaflets with quotations from Mr. Ignatieff's 1993 book, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, that appeared to belittle Ukrainians and their country. Ms. Oleksiuk said most of the association executive and a significant percentage of the membership are of Ukrainian descent. She said they will oppose Mr. Ignatieff's candidacy at the association's nomination meeting tomorrow. The riding has one of the largest concentrations of Ukrainian Canadians -- more than 7 per cent -- in the country.
Riding association president Ron Chyczij and member Marc Shwec both filed nomination papers, but the Ontario wing of the Liberal Party of Canada declared on its website yesterday that Mr. Ignatieff was the "acclaimed" candidate. The party said neither Mr. Chyczij nor Mr. Shwec qualified under the party's constitution.
Mr. Ignatieff was clearly upset by the allegations that he had disparaged Ukrainians.
He started his speech by passionately denying the accusations and issued a detailed statement to the same effect on Canada NewsWire. He said the cited quotations were "an attempt to distort my words and pervert my meaning" and were badly taken out of context.
He said his Russian forebears were buried in Ukraine, having fled there after the Russian Revolution. He said he had taken his children to national parks where Ukrainian Canadians were interned in wartime. He said he taught about the horrors of the Ukrainian genocide to his students at Harvard.
"I have a deep, personal affinity with the suffering of the Ukrainian people and a deep respect for the Ukrainian-Canadian community," his statement said. The statement also said incorrectly that Ukrainian-Canadians were interned in the Second World War; they were interned in the First World War.
The issue gave Mr. Ignatieff -- who has lived outside Canada for the past 30 years but said he returned to take part in the national debate -- a choppy entry into public life.
He is reported to have had an uncomfortable meeting with Borys Wrzesnewskyj, the Ukrainian-Canadian Liberal MP for the adjacent riding of Etobicoke-Centre.
In Ottawa, MP John Reynolds, the Conservative campaign co-chair, called Mr. Ignatieff's writings shameful, and said the news media would flay Tories if they made similar remarks. "He should be ashamed of other things he has said also, but nevertheless, everybody will leave him alone because he is a Liberal."