… in 2011, the only time Conservatives have managed to win a federal majority in the last three plus decades, they ran one of the most effective campaigns in recent memory against Michael “just visiting” Ignatieff by waging a patriotic campaign against him. In Ignatieff the Conservatives had the perfect rival to attack; a patrician member of the Laurentian new class. But the campaign against Ignatieff wasn’t just effective because it successfully portrayed him as an elite, it was effective because in attacking the time Ignatieff had spent aboard and at Harvard especially, they actually managed to make the Conservatives the champions of Canada, and the Liberals the more American party.
Ben Woodfinden, “True North Patriotism and a Distinctly Canadian Conservatism”, The Dominion, 2020-10-20.
