{"id":14819,"date":"2012-04-27T10:05:37","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T15:05:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14819"},"modified":"2013-05-15T10:16:45","modified_gmt":"2013-05-15T15:16:45","slug":"michael-ignatieffs-incautious-remarks-prove-he-was-the-wrong-leader-for-the-liberal-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/04\/27\/michael-ignatieffs-incautious-remarks-prove-he-was-the-wrong-leader-for-the-liberal-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Ignatieff’s incautious remarks prove he was the wrong leader for the Liberal party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Gurney<\/a> on the media kerfuffle over Michael Ignatieff’s perhaps-quoted-out-of-context remarks on Quebec and separation:<\/p>\n

Michael Ignatieff is not entirely right when he claims his now infamous remarks on the inevitability of Quebec\u2019s independence, made during a BBC interview discussing Scotland\u2019s possible exit from the United Kingdom, were taken out of context. He is correct that the sound bites that aroused so much media interest in Canada did not do justice to the full interview. But, in the final analysis, he did indeed say, in clear terms, that Canada and Quebec are essentially two counties, that they have little to say to each other and that Quebec is at a \u201cway station\u201d on its inevitable road to full sovereignty. Ignatieff, a brilliant man whose political instincts remain as faulty as ever, may regret saying what he did, but he did say it.<\/p>\n

Separatist politicians welcomed his comments, as it \u201cconfirms\u201d that Quebec\u2019s independence is inevitable. Federalist politicians, particularly those unkindly disposed toward the Liberals, slammed Ignatieff, and the party he led for good measure. It was all premised upon the idea, whether sincerely believed by Ignatieff\u2019s critics or not, that his comments may in some way encourage Quebec to leave.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s unlikely. But it might \u2014 just might \u2014 hasten along the day when the Rest of Canada (the ROC, as it\u2019s called) decides to rid itself of Quebec.<\/p>\n

Ignatieff described the situation we face as Quebec and Canada having nothing to say to each other. That\u2019s not exactly it. It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t have anything to say, it\u2019s just that we don\u2019t have anything in common. And the more we talk to each other, the clearer that becomes. But that growing distance between Quebec and the ROC is not, as Ignatieff described it, a \u201ccontract of mutual indifference.\u201d If it was, that would be fine. But that isn\u2019t the system we built. Quebec\u2019s indifference to the ROC comes at a cost \u2014 almost $7.4-billion in transfers from other Canadian provinces a year. That\u2019s effectively half of the total sum dispersed through the equalization process. That\u2019s not indifference, that\u2019s bribery. And the price Quebec is willing to settle for is not necessarily the price the ROC will be willing to pay indefinitely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Gurney on the media kerfuffle over Michael Ignatieff’s perhaps-quoted-out-of-context remarks on Quebec and separation: Michael Ignatieff is not entirely right when he claims his now infamous remarks on the inevitability of Quebec\u2019s independence, made during a BBC interview discussing Scotland\u2019s possible exit from the United Kingdom, were taken out of context. He is correct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,28],"tags":[908,296,113,338,114,101],"class_list":["post-14819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-cancon","category-media","tag-liberalparty","tag-michaelignatieff","tag-quebec","tag-scotland","tag-separatism","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3R1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14819"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20286,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14819\/revisions\/20286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}