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| quote: | Michael Ignatieff insists he is still in the race and believes Canadians will elect his party to form the government on Monday. But if they don’t, he suggested Wednesday that he hasn’t shut the door on leading an effort to unite the country’s centre-left.
“Once we have an election result, I’d deal with that eventuality when it arises,” he told reporters, after a town-hall meeting with high school students in Sault Ste. Marie., Ont. “It’s very clear to me is that what is happening in the country is that two-thirds of the country wants to get rid of Stephen Harper and so we will await the result of the people.”
Liberal Sen. Larry Campbell told Postmedia News on Tuesday that if Harper were returned to power on May 2, it could be time to discuss merging the NDP and the Liberals.
“I think this realization is coming along (to) lots of parties,” he said. “At the end of the day, I think if you take the Liberals and NDP, and took a look at their major points, there is a lot of agreement there.”
Ignatieff also told reporters Wednesday he sees common sets of values between both parties.
“We have certain values that we have always shared and we’ve shared for 60 years,” the Liberal leader said.
“We share objectives with the NDP — but for heaven’s sake, contrast this,” he said, holding his family-pack platform. “And what Mr. (Jack) Layton is trying to offer to the Canadian people . . . is not credible.”
Ignatieff criticized the national media for starting to write him out of the race after a week of polls — from Angus Reid, EKOS, Nanos and Ipsos Reid —have all shown the NDP vaulting into second place. He insisted he’s still very much in the race.
“This thing is not over,” Mr. Ignatieff said. “You guys are walking around as if it (is). We are in the middle of the third period here. And I am absolutely convinced that Canadians are going to wake up on the second of May and think, ‘Wow. We need a government here. We need people who can get the deficit (under) control, who can make promises they can keep.’”
For his part, Mr. Layton said he wasn’t currently interested in discussion on post-May 2 events.
“Our focus right now is on the election and giving Canadians a choice. That’s what our focus will remain right through Election Day,” NDP spokesman Karl Belanger said. “You can trust Jack Layton to work with whoever is elected to Parliament to get results for Canadian families.”
Mr. Ignatieff will add some star power to his campaign Wednesday evening when former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien will be at his side to give a speech at a rally in Liberal incumbent Ken Dryden’s Toronto-area riding of York Centre.
“Jean Chretien will say, what we know he’ll say . . . ‘I led three majority governments. I got the public finances of our country back in order. I dug us out of the Mulroney hole and Michael Ignatieff will dig us out of the Harper hole.’ That’s what he is going to say,” Mr. Ignatieff told reporters.
Mr. Chretien, however, was faced at the time with a divided opposition, two parties on the right of the political spectrum: A small Progressive Conservative party and a hugely popular Reform party, which later became the Canadian Alliance party.
That split votes among right and right-of-centre supporters and allowed Mr. Chretien’s Liberals to hold onto power.
Now, it’s Mr. Harper who is facing a divided opposition on the left. |
(Courtesy of the National Post)
If the NDP-Liberals merge good for them, as long as Iggy not part of it. Plus they better call it the NDP and not the Liberals though.
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