The Honourable Michael Ignatieff
Leader of the Opposition
Liberal Party of Canada - National Office
Suite 400-81 Metcalfe Street
Ottawa
K1P 6M8
12 January 2010
Dear Mr. Ignatieff,
I noted in The Globe and Mail some while ago your review of Machiavelli’s The Prince, but you forgot a lesson: “When trouble is sensed well in advance it can easily be remedied; if you wait for it to show itself any medicine will be too late because the disease will have become incurable.” Why did Canadians have to wait a week after Harper’s second prorogued Parliament for your meagre depiction of it as “crazy” when the words illiberal and undemocratic would have been an understatement? Apparently you chose to take a vacation – outside of the country? Why did you not return home sooner? Were you not aware that Canadians suffered a leadership vacuum in the days since Harper’s announcement? Were you not aware that “governments” such as ours regularly like to make full use of strategic timing to announce policies in an effort to minimize scrutiny? Ottawa was rife with rumour of prorogation: why did you not say anything earlier, like pass a warning shot across Harper’s bow?
Your sense of timing is impeccable. In the autumn you announced your candidacy for the prime minister’s job when Liberals were riding high in the polls - and for no other apparent reason. After the polls plunged to near Dion levels, as we know, and when constitutional stakes are critical, you announce to all interested parties that you are not going to make prorogation an election issue. This amounts to a terrible squandering of political capital. Perhaps if you had not gambled so soon, we would not be facing prorogation today. Now you must pose a serious threat to the Harper government while they remain ever dismissive. What will construe an election issue, in your mind? Will it be dictated by high polls? Or by what actually matters? It is high time that parliamentary principle prevail over pathetic party-line politics.
I gather you have been canvassing the country while the Afghan detainee issue made its way into Parliament, so your team has been speaking on behalf of Richard Colvin, et al. This must be terribly convenient. In other words you can avoid the detritus of your own regime change politics – and a nebulous climate of opinion around the issue of torture - made on behalf of the Americans and President Bush not too long ago. (See Ignatieff’s World Updated: Iggy goes to Ottawa by Denis Smith, pp. 140-143). The more you remain out of sight today, the less you appear to contradict yourself. Now you have the daunting task (without a sitting Parliament, as you note) of making alleged torture an issue when you were seemingly making the atmosphere around such matters less clear in the years before returning to Canada.
And I would like to point out that one of the causes behind the Afghan detainee issue is that Canada is at ‘War on Terror’. This is also one of the reasons why the Harper government might just get away with prorogation, because it reflects the general diminishment of liberties already taking place in the West since 9/11. While Harper is the only one to have thought of prorogation, both Britain and the USA have experienced profound legislative setbacks to civil liberties (for example the American Patriot Act, aspects of which, it turned out, infringed on the U.S. Constitution). In Britain the House of Commons recently passed legislation allowing subjects to be held without charge for 42 days (extended from a mere 28 days). At the time of the Magna Carta (1215) one could only be held for 48 hours. (See A.C. Grayling, Liberty in the Age of Terror). The widespread decline of civil liberties (for example, now also at our airports) and the opportunity for prorogation itself could have been minimized, perhaps, if Canada’s Leader of the Opposition (as a previous ‘public intellectual’) had not advocated for war on Iraq but instead helped focus the resources of the West initially on Afghanistan, which has very much remained an unfortunate sideshow. Do I see an irony?
Canadians need fresh air. Parliament has been prorogued twice now since your turn in federal politics. You did nothing previously, being the last Liberal signatory to the “coalition”, and so far you have done nothing this time around except time your criticisms of Harper with The Economist, apparently. You must push for an alternative Parliament, and you need to appeal to all Canadians (there is at least 60% of them) to support it until March 3, when “Harper’s Parliament” reconvenes. It is also time you considered working with the other parties, certainly the NDP, to help bring representation back to Canada and to Canadians. This way you can revisit the detainee issue with some element of atonement and clarity. It is up to you as Leader of the Opposition to carry the torch for Canadian democracy: you will not find it in Harper’s government, because it has sacrificed everything for party discipline, the war (in Afghanistan and against the Opposition) - and for Machiavellian machinations. Let’s put some of that “true patriot love” you speak of in action before we conclude it is nothing else but empty and supercilious rhetoric.
Sincerely,
Joerge Dyrkton, D.Phil.
cc www.joergedyrkton.blogspot.com
cc joehueglin@bellnet.ca
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