 The broken-down tour bus for Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff's cross-country tour gets towed in eastern Ontario Tuesday night. (QMI Agency)
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PETERBOROUGH, Ont. - Along major highways and back country roads, the Liberal Express spent a second day rolling through the small towns of eastern Ontario before coming to a stop in Peterborough.
Ignatieff has been practicing his stump speech for the party faithful but so far has not had a chance to reach out to Canadians beyond the Liberal fold.
In an exclusive interview with QMI Agency, Ignatieff says reaching out is key for the Liberals, especially into rural parts of the country that have abandoned his party in recent years.
“I don’t want to be a downtown, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver ¬ MTV party,” said Ignatieff. “I want to be a party that appeals to all Canadians."
Ignatieff says when he returned to Canada and entered politics for the 2005 election, he started to notice the strong divide between the urban and rural parts of the country.
“There was tremendous resentment in rural Canada," he said. "A sense that they weren’t being listened to, a sense that the cities were driving the political agenda.” The Liberals have released what Ignatieff calls a suite of policies aimed at attracting rural voters ¬ expanding high-speed Internet access, supporting volunteer firefighters, improving health services among them.
The big sticking point for many years though may still haunt his party - the gun registry.
The last time Bill C-391 was voted on in March eight Liberals and 12 New Democrats voted with the Conservatives to scrap the controversial long-gun registry.
Since then Ignatieff has introduced proposals to change the registry to make it more palatable to gun owners. The changes include streamlining the registration process, removing fees and making failure to register a non-criminal offence, meaning a ticket rather than jail time for those that break the law.
“We’re addressing the central issue, which is the lack of respect in the gun registry,” said Ignatieff. “We want to stop treating legitimate, lawful gun owners, sports hunters, rural Canadians as if they are criminals if they don’t register.” While saying he’s up for changing the registry, Ignatieff is clear that under a Liberal government it will stay in place. It is a message that is playing well with the Liberal crowds so far, just like his calls for building schools and hospitals rather than prisons.
“The Conservative government’s social policy is prisons, tougher sentences for this and more people in jail,” said Ignatieff. “I would rather invest in youth employment, youth mentoring, the stuff that keeps kids out of prison in the first place.”
