We can't count Ignatieff out yet

OTTAWA -- Michael Ignatieff was named by Forbes last week as someone to watch for in 2010.

The magazine said that if an election is held next year, the Liberal leader could become the Canadian prime minister "with the biggest international profile since Pierre Trudeau."

The honour was met by a lot of eye rolls around Parliament Hill.

The Liberals have been in a free-fall for much of the fall, and overall support is only marginally better than it was during the 2008 election. You know, that election in which their support was the worst it has been since 1867.

One recent Angus Reid poll had only one in six Canadians approving of Ignatieff. While that was up slightly from the previous month, it's still only about half the number who approve of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Last December, Ignatieff was touted as the saviour who would lead the Liberals back to victory. This December he spent fighting off rumours of a coup against his leadership and suggestions he will pull the plug himself and run back to Harvard with his tail between his legs.

For the moment, he seems resolved to stick it out. A good thing, as history has shown being down does not mean being out.

Even Stephen Harper could tell him that, if the two ever exchanged more than barbs.

In January 2003, 10 months after Harper was elected leader of the Canadian Alliance, the party's poll numbers had plunged.

An EKOS poll showed 10.5 per cent of Canadians supported the Alliance, compared to 52.1 per cent for the Liberals. It was down from the 25.5 per cent the Alliance received in the 2000 federal election. Even combined with the Progressive Conservatives' 13.8 per cent -- this was before the two parties merged -- the right-wing options in Canada were outstripped more than two to one by the Liberals in popular support. Comparatively, Ignatieff is doing pretty well.

And within 18 months, Harper had merged the two parties, won election as the new leader and turned more than a decade of Liberal majority rule into a minority.

Ignatieff certainly has a steep hill to climb, but as Harper showed, nothing is impossible.

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In October, Manitoba Justice Minister Dave Chomiak was lambasted by a Liberal senator for his appearance at a Senate committee.

Joan Fraser asked for Chomiak and Alberta Justice Minister Alison Redford to be admonished, even held in contempt of Parliament, for saying they had to leave before the hearing was finished to catch a plane.

It was true, but they went to a pre-planned press conference before they left for the airport, something they didn't mention to the committee and that, Fraser, alleged, was misleading and disrespected Parliament.

At the press conference, federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson accused the Senate of delaying passage of a bill eliminating the use of two-for-one credit for convicted criminals for time served in jail before their trial. Chomiak and Redford were at the committee hearing pleading with senators to pass the bill unamended.

Contempt of Parliament is a rare but serious allegation, used when someone prevents Parliament from doing its work. It could carry a jail term, though most often those held in contempt are simply asked to apologize.

I felt Fraser's charge was an example of just how tense the situation is in the Senate these days. The Conservative government has repeatedly accused unelected Liberal senators of thwarting the will of the people by not simply passing legislation from the elected House, no questions asked.

Liberal senators are weary of being on the one hand accused of not working hard enough, and on the other of being told not to do their work and simply push through government bills without review. Having two provincial justice ministers getting into the act was more than Fraser and other senators were willing to tolerate.

Nevertheless, Chomiak was spared any time in Senate jail. Speaker Noel Kinsella ruled Fraser's point of privilege had no merit. He said the two ministers were there voluntarily, had been told they would testify for an hour, and had scheduled their day accordingly, Kinsella said.

"Once this premise is accepted, the subsequent events do not appear unreasonable," he said in his ruling.

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper isn't usually known as someone with a sense of humour. But last week he gave a glimpse of his softer side, hosting a Christmas party for the media at 24 Sussex Drive. The fire was roaring, the eggnog was flowing, and Harper stood and made small talk with the members of the national press gallery, whom he normally prefers to ridicule and debase.

Harper talked about his recent trips to India and China, including a stop at the Great Wall. He said it was hard to conceive a project that took so long to complete that those who started building it were long dead by the time it was finished.

I suggested that wouldn't be a project to qualify for economic stimulus and he said no, it wasn't exactly shovel-ready. Then he mentioned that his staff had advised him not to use that term in question period one day to describe what came out of a certain NDP leader's mouth.

It may not have been a prime ministerial thing to say, but it would have generated a lot of laughs. If Harper showed this softer, Beatles-singing, jokester side more often, it would go a long way to melting the ice that seems to be as common as suits and ties on his person.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 21, 2009 A8