OTTAWA -- Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are eroding the nation’s international credibility so much that “Canada is becoming the country that dares not speak its name,” Michael Ignatieff said Monday.
The Liberal leader used a speech to the Canadian Club of Ottawa to lay out his vision for returning Canada to the status he says it occupied in the past on the international stage.
He included promises to reinstate the high-profile “Team Canada” trade missions of the Jean Chretien and Paul Martin years; to establish a permanent headquarters for G-20 countries in Canada; and to build a secretariat for “peace, order and good government” aimed at helping other countries prevent conflict.
On a day when the Tories were highlighting the decidedly domestic issue of improving employment insurance, Ignatieff accused the Harper government of squandering Canada’s international reputation.
“The Conservatives are giving up Canada’s place in the world,” he said.
“We have a prime minister who thinks so little of foreign affairs that he changes foreign ministers the way he changes shirts. We’ve had four in just three-and-a-half years. They come and go with the seasons.”
For Harper’s government, he said in French, “the international scene only exists to score points domestically.”
Ignatieff said while Canada was once a leading peacekeeper, it’s no longer even in the top 30. It’s also no longer among the top 10 donor counties to poor nations.
In fact, he said, “Stephen Harper has so diminished our stature that we are struggling to win a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations – the seat we’ve held every decade since the founding of the UN.”
Canada’s stature in the world is expected to be a major theme for Ignatieff if a fall election is called. The first round of Liberal advertising has featured short spots of the Grit leader, framed against a forest glen, tell voters “I know Canada can take on the world and win.”
Ignatieff, who has written several books on global themes and human rights, ties internationalism to economic recovery, enhanced trade and what he terms “the jobs of tomorrow,” with emphasis on Canada’s links to India and China.
China’s ambassador to Canada sat beside Ignatieff at his speech; the Liberal leader recently cancelled a trip to China because of the possibility he would have to prepare for an election.
The Liberal theme that Tories are not doing Canada proud in the world led to controversy this week when a Liberal flyer showed up in some mailboxes this week with a picture of a tattered maple leaf on a rucksack, accompanied by the word “We used to wear it abroad with pride.”
