In his own words

Michael Ignatieff talks about liberal internationalism and defeating the NDP in British Columbia:

"I tell the crowd how pleased I am to have two good internationalists on the team, and I make the point that we need to re-invent liberal internationalism for the times we're in. With peace-keeping, Mike Pearson created the association between liberalism and international engagement. We need to renew this vision for the 21st century: peace-making, but also peace-building in tough environments like Afghanistan; promotion of good government in our aid policies; and most important of all, environmental stewardship.

I then speak to the Presidents of most of the riding associations in BC. They want to know how the party is going to beat the NDP. How about pointing out that by bringing down the Liberals, they torpedoed Kelowna, destroyed day care and early childhood learning, and sank a budget that had committed to reduce income tax on the lowest bracket to 15 percent! At the next election, we need to remind Liberals who 'parked' their votes with the NDP that it is time to come home."

More here.

Going after the NDP is a good idea - we need to win back those votes that the NDP took from us in the last two campaigns, particularly the last one. We need to convince left-leaning voters that the Liberal Party is the only party that is capable of standing up to the Conservatives, and that fleeing to the NDP just allows the Conservatives to win in a lot of ridings. In my own riding, Peterborough ON, the Liberals lost to the Conservatives a seat held by the party since 1993 because so many potential Liberal voters instead voted for the NDP - the NDP in this riding experienced a massive increase in votes - allowing the Conservative to win by a couple thousand votes.

Also, his comments on liberal internationalism show that he is still committed to that principle. He mentions Canadian involvement in Darfur (in a round-about way) which makes me wonder whether an Ignatieff government would indeed send troops there. Personally I hope so; the region threatens to become another Rwanda, which is the last thing we want.