NEW LIBERAL leader Michael Ignatieff clearly was getting nervous that a key part of his intended message would not get delivered.
He wanted to signal the West and rural Canada that he cares, that he understands and that he will work for their votes.
But no one was asking him a question about the troubled Liberal relationship with those vast swaths of territory and population between Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal – cities that have become the urban Liberal party’s base.
It was deep into his first news conference since a handful of party grandees had done a Dec. 11 end-run around party membership and a planned leadership race to anoint the Toronto academic and intellectual as the 12th leader of the Liberal party. But no reporter had raised much beyond his plans for co-operation with other opposition parties to bring down the government.
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So Ignatieff used an unrelated question to talk about how he admired the West and its role as the “beating economic heart” of Canada’s economic future. “I particularly want to send a message to the wonderful people of Western Canada who voted for us and yet we are not representing Western Canada nearly the way I passionately long for us to represent.”
Then came a gift from the communications god, or at least the Parliamentary Press Gallery vice-president who was recognizing questioners. A western reporter was picked and he challenged Ignatieff to justify any claim that he understands agricultural or rural Canada.
He jumped at the chance. He talked about his boyhood when he visited uncles’ farms in Quebec and the Peace River region of Alberta.
He talked about needing to learn more from farm leaders and to support agriculture. He talked about the rural-urban divide being an “unaddressed national unity issue of our time.”
Perhaps most symbolically, Ignatieff debunked the official Liberal myth that it is a national party and the true voice of Canadian values. “Grain by grain, riding by riding, small town by small town and big town by big town, (I want to) regain the trust of Canadians without whom we cannot be truly a national party.”
In truth, it was an important beginning, an honest assessment of the Liberal failure to connect to millions of Canadians who don’t see themselves reflected in the party.
But another truth is that it is pro-forma for a new leader to proclaim that he or she will take the party to places where it hasn’t been before, or at least for half a century.
Ignatieff, a respected writer, teacher and thinker with a worldwide reputation, also has other things to prove to Canadians.
He returned to Canada in 2005 to run for Parliament and leadership almost as a tourist, having lived outside the country for the better part of 30 years.
He watched the great Canadian debates of the past quarter century from afar, presumably with a detached analytical view rather than visceral emotion.
And by the time he left the country, Pierre Trudeau already had reduced the Liberal party to an electoral asterisk on the Prairies.
There is little written evidence that Ignatieff used his years abroad to think about that or to analyze it.
It is his time to prove otherwise.
