OTTAWA - Which public education was it that gave Michael Ignatieff his start?
On Sunday as he passed through Hagersville in southern Ontario the Liberal Leader said that he got his start in life due to a public education.
"Everything that has ever happened to me that has been good in my life happened because I have had the enormous good fortune of being a Canadian citizen," said Ignatieff. "Born here. Educated here. Had a publicly-funded education here that gave me my start."
That led to questions about what Ignatieff meant by public education. The Liberal Leader is best known for attending schools like Upper Canada College, an elite boarding school that he attended from the time he was 11 years old.
Globe and Mail blogger and former Mulroney aide Norman Spector questioned whether Ignatieff was the beneficiary of a program where taxpayers pay for the children of diplomats to go to boarding school in Canada.
Such a program exists in Britain but a Liberal official told QMI via e-mail that this is not the case, “Mr. Ignatieff attended UCC on a combination of scholarship and his parents’ own money.”
As for which public schools he did go to, it appears Ignatieff was a student at Manor Park public school in Ottawa’s east end. After graduating from Upper Canada College he went on to the publicly funded University of Toronto.
