The Martlet

There was standing room only in the Michelle Pujol Room on Jan. 15, as Michael Ignatieff, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, fielded a series of increasingly difficult student questions about some of the hottest topics in Canadian politics today.

However, some students didn’t quite receive the answer they were looking for — namely, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and an activist for the legalization of marijuana, who were both told their ideas would not receive Liberal Party support.

When asked if he would convene a Canadian inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ignatieff went into detail about his vision for a world in which “no 23-year-old thinks it’s acceptable to blow up a plane and kill innocent civilians,” referring to the Boxing Day bombing attempt aboard a Delta Airlines flight into Detroit.

When pressed to answer the question still, he responded: “No, I would not initiate an inquiry of that kind.”

Another student welcomed Ignatieff to “the land of B.C. bud,” and asked him if he would support legalizing marijuana. While he used this question as an opportunity to outline his support for Conservative policies of harm reduction, and other Liberal party policy goals for addressing addiction, he refused to publicly support the legalization of marijuana, whereupon he was booed by the questioner and a few other audience members.

He was also asked about his support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And while he went into greater detail about his reasoning for supporting the invasion he simply said: “I got it wrong, and I’ve said so.”

In the last 10 minutes of the presentation, Ignatieff was asked about his decision to force the Liberal caucus to vote “yes” on the HST, despite public dissatisfaction with the bill.

“If I come out against the HST, then I have to go into the next election promising I’m going to abolish it for you; and then I’m doing false, populist politics that I detest,” he said.

Despite the current Conservative government’s best efforts to convince the public that Ignatieff is a poor, uncharismatic speaker, the speech drew both laughter and applause from the audience.

His Friday visit was part of the “Canada at 150” program, a series of conferences and discussions aimed at providing policy goals to improve Canada before its 150th anniversary in 2017. This particular tour, which took Ignatieff to nine campuses across Canada in five days before coming to UVic, is a lead-up to a conference in March.

Perhaps more importantly, it was a chance for students to see the Liberal leader face-to-face and get a sense of his stance on the various issues of importance to Canadians. It also provided a chance to hear Ignatieff’s response to the numerous Conservative ads that have attacked his character.

“I am much reproached for having spent a certain amount of time outside the country; I’ve got nothing to apologize for,” said Ignatieff, while outlining his vision for increasing Canada’s participation in the international arena. “The killer for Canada is provincialism … and we’ve got to stand now and say we want to be the most international society in the world.”