Comparing a busted up old Pontiac Sunfire with a Rolls Royce Phantom.

Recently” Talk Talk Talk” questioned Michael Ignatieff’s right to be the possible next Prime minister of Canada, based on the fact Ignatieff has spent 30 years outside of the country.

I agree that a certain Canadian perspective could be lost by an expatriate but this logic also excludes new emigrants from the office, and implies that only a Canadian can understand Canada. Sorry we are not that enigmatic. A good politician in the US is a good politician in Canada.. For example CEO’s of major companies jump the border all the time, one look at the CEO jumping that took place at Sears Roebuck and Co. (Now defunct – part of Kmart) and Sears Canada is evidence that when one is good at a job the skills are portable. I use companies as an example because nations and companies are businesses to a large degree. The difference is that Shareholders do not have half the control that voting citizens do. That said the one thing that bothers me about Ignatieff is his lack of experience in politics. However, he has grown up in a family very involved in politics from his Great grandfather who was the Russian minister of the interior under Tsar Alexander III, to his Father Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff. That said if you compare his background to the current Prime Minister tell me who you would vote for?

Read the following biographies (which I admittedly stole from Wikipedia), and tell me who would you prefer?

Stephen Joseph Harper PC, MP, MA

Stephen Harper is the eldest of three sons born to Margaret Johnston and Joseph Harper (1927–2003), an accountant who worked with Imperial Oil. Harper attended Richview Collegiate Institute, a high school in Central Etobicoke. He graduated in 1978 as the top student of his graduating year with a 95.7% average, and represented his high school on the TV quiz and trivia show Reach for the Top.[citation needed] Harper briefly studied at the University of Toronto before travelling to Edmonton, where he found employment in the oil and gas industry as a computer programmer in his early twenties. He later attended the University of Calgary, receiving a Master’s degree in economics. Harper is the first prime minister since Lester B. Pearson not to have attended law school. His links to the University remain strong, and he has been a frequent lecturer there.

Harper married Laureen Teskey in 1993. They have two children: Benjamin, born in 1996, and Rachel, born in 1999. Harper is the third Prime Minister, after Pierre Trudeau and John Turner, to send their children to Rockcliffe Park Public School, a public school in Ottawa. Stephen Harper occasionally[1] attends church at the East Gate Alliance Church in Ottawa[2], a member of the evangelical Christian Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Harper has several hobbies and has participated in many artistic endeavours. He is an avid fan of ice hockey and of the Calgary Flames, and is currently writing a history book about the sport.[3] His father had also been a published author.[4] Harper recently taped a cameo appearance in an upcoming episode of the television show Corner Gas to be aired in spring 2007. [5] Harper reportedly owns a large vinyl record collection and is an avid fan of The Beatles and AC/DC.[6]

Michael Grant Ignatieff, M.P., B.A., M.A., Ph.D

Ignatieff is the son of Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff and Alison Grant, and the grandson of Count Paul Ignatieff, Minister of Education to Tsar Nicholas II and one of the few Tsarist ministers to have escaped execution by the Bolsheviks. His Canadian antecedents include his maternal great grandfather, George Monro Grant, the dynamic 19th century principal of Queen’s University. His mother’s younger brother was the political philosopher George Grant (1918-1988), author of Lament for a Nation. His great-grandfather was Count Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, the Russian Minister of the Interior under Tsar Alexander III. In his book called The Russian Album, Ignatieff explores the importance of memory and obligation to ancestry in the context of his own family’s history. Ignatieff is fluent in both English and French, and has a basic knowledge of Russian, the native language of his father.

Michael Ignatieff spent the majority of his formative years in Toronto, with the Ignatieff family moving regularly in accordance with his father’s rise in the diplomatic ranks. In 1959, he was sent back to Toronto to attend Upper Canada College as a boarder. At UCC, Ignatieff was elected a school prefect, was the captain of the Varsity Soccer team, and served as editor-in-chief of the school’s yearbook.[1] As well, Ignatieff volunteered for Lester B. Pearson during the 1965 Federal Election by canvassing the York South Riding. He resumed his work for the Liberal Party in 1968, as a national youth organizer and party delegate for the Pierre Elliot Trudeau party leadership campaign.

After high school, Ignatieff studied history at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College. There, he met fellow student (and future Premier of Ontario) Bob Rae, who became a friend. After completing his undergraduate degree, Ignatieff took up his studies at Oxford University, where he studied, and was influenced by, the well-known historian and philosopher Isaiah Berlin, about whom he would later write. From 1964 to 1965, Ignatieff worked as a journalist at The Globe and Mail newspaper.

In 1976, Ignatieff completed his PhD in History at Harvard University. He was an assistant professor of history at the University of British Columbia from 1976 to 1978. In 1978 he moved to the United Kingdom, where he held a Senior Research Fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge until 1984. He then left Cambridge for London, where he began to focus on his career as a writer and journalist. During this time, he travelled extensively. He also continued to lecture at universities in Europe and North America, and held teaching posts at the Oxford, the University of London, the London School of Economics, the University of California and in France.

While living in the United Kingdom, Ignatieff became well known as a broadcaster on radio and television. His best known television work has been Voices on Channel 4, the BBC 2 discussion programme “Thinking Aloud” and BBC 2’s arts programme, The Late Show. His documentary series Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism aired on BBC in 1993. He was also an editorial columnist for The Observer from 1990 to 1993.

In 2000, Ignatieff accepted a position as the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He taught at Harvard until 2005, when on August 26, it was announced that Ignatieff was leaving Harvard to become the Chancellor Jackman Visiting Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto. Ignatieff has received seven honorary doctorates.

Ignatieff is married to Hungarian-born Zsuzanna M Zsohar and has two children, Theo and Sophie, from his first marriage to Londoner Susan Barrowclough.[2]

Conclusion

To be honest this does not really address Talk Talk Talk’s point his argument is still valid that Ignatieff has lost a degree of Canadian perspective by living abroad for 30 years, but to me looking at the current Prime minister and comparing it seems like comparing a busted up old Pontiac Sunfire with a Rolls Royce Phantom.