Ignatieff says Liberal message is catching on

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This article was published 17/12/2010 (5384 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Voters in one of the country’s most troubled ridings voted for hope over fear when it comes to battling crime, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Thursday.

During a day of year-end interviews with national reporters, Ignatieff told the Free Press the results in the Nov. 29 byelection in Winnipeg North are significant.

“Winnipeg North is a community that has been devastated by crime,” said Ignatieff. “And yet we stood up there and fought it block by block and street by street, blew the NDP away, blew the Conservatives away with a message that said ‘yeah we need to be tough on crime but we need to be smart on solutions.’ “

Kevin Lamoureux won the byelection for the Liberals, defeating the NDP in a riding it had held for more than a decade. The Conservatives finished a distant third. Much of the Conservative campaign was focused on the party’s tough-on-crime approach.

Ignatieff called that the “politics of fear” approach and said Winnipeg North voters, who deal with violent crime every day, rejected it.

“We can build prisons in Canada until the end of time, and it won’t necessarily make Etobicoke or Winnipeg North any safer,” said Ignatieff. “Winnipeg North was a very interesting campaign in that regard.”

He said Lamoureux’s campaign included offerings of community policing, parent counselling, youth employment training and victims’ services programs.

“I’m not into the politics of fear, I’m into the politics of hope,” said Ignatieff. “It’s just real simple. I want to get those kids to graduate from high school. I want to get them a job… I want to make sure aboriginal Canadians get the same shot as everybody else.”

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said in the House of Commons Thursday the Liberal solution to violent crime is to call a public inquiry.

“How about this as a novel idea for them: How about putting violent criminals who victimize innocent Canadians behind bars for a change,” Nicholson said.

Ignatieff is heading into his third year as Liberal leader and spent most of the end-of-year media day fending off questions about his leadership and trying to focus his party’s policies on a single theme: middle-class resurgence.

His leadership, he said is fine. His summer bus tour helped solidify the party base. Now his focus is on selling the party’s policies to Canadians.

“The thing we’ve been saying all along is the key issue in 2011 is who can best protect and advance the standard of living of the average middle-class family,” he said.

For Ignatieff, that means reassuring working parents that the government will be there for them with child care, help them plan for their retirement, help them get their kids through college or university and support them if they need to take time off to look after parents who fall ill.

He also said he’s not worried about trying to have his messages compete with Conservatives such as newly elected Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Ford’s “stop the gravy train” campaign easily overcame the efforts of a former Ontario Liberal cabinet minister in the city where the federal Conservatives do not own a seat.

“People forget the people who put me in the Parliament of Canada are the same people who voted for Rob Ford,” said Ignatieff, who represents a Toronto riding. “Rob Ford tapped into a sense that we pay all these taxes, what do we get back? The challenge is for every one of us who is a Liberal in public service is to say ‘we hear you and you have to get value for government services.’ “

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca