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Michael Grant Ignatieff, M.P., (born May 12, 1947 in Toronto) is a Canadian scholar, novelist and Liberal Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons. He was elected on January 23 2006, representing the southwestern Toronto riding of Etobicoke—Lakeshore. Ignatieff was named associate critic for Human Resources and Skills Development in the Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet on February 22, 2006 and announced on April 7, 2006 that he would stand as one of the Liberal Party of Canada Leadership Candidates.

Background

Ignatieff is the son of Canadian diplomat George Ignatieff and Alison Grant, and the grandson of Count Paul Ignatieff, who was the Tsar's last Minister of Education and one of the few who 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.

Michael 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 longtime close friend. From 1965 to 1968 , he worked as a journalist at The Globe and Mail newspaper. Ignatieff went on to receive his Ph.D in History from Harvard University in 1976, after which he taught at the University of British Columbia from 1976 to 1978. He held a Senior Research Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge from 1978 to 1984.

Ignatieff is fluent in several languages, including French and English. Until 2005 he was Carr Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University and has seven honorary doctorates to his name. On August 26, 2005, it was announced that Ignatieff was leaving Harvard to become the Chancellor Jackman Visiting Professor in Human Rights Policy at the University of Toronto.

Michael Ignatieff is married to his second wife Hungarian-born Zsuzsanna Zsohar. He has two children from his first marriage, Theo and Sophie.

Recognition

Ignatieff has written on Middle Eastern and Balkan affairs but is best known for his scholarship on human rights. Much of his work in this area explores the challenges of ethnic conflict and genocide for the concept of universal human rights. In addition, Ignatieff has addressed what he sees are the dangers of nationalism in a post-cold war world.

His work has been recognized in Canada and abroad. Ignatieff was chosen to deliver the 2000 Massey Lectures. The Massey Lectures are a prestigious annual event in Canada, in which a noted Canadian or international scholar gives a week-long series of lectures on a political, cultural or philosophical topic. Some notable Massey Lecturers have included Northrop Frye, Noam Chomsky, Jane Jacobs, John Ralston Saul and Martin Luther King, Jr.. Ignatieff's Massey Lecture series entitled "The Rights Revolution" looked at how, since the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, rights have become "the dominant language of the public good around the globe." The "Rights Revolution" also discusses Canada's unique rights culture, including Canadian approaches to equality, multiculturalism and collective rights.

Ignatieff's memoir, The Russian Album, won the 1987 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction and his text on Western interventionist policies and nation building called Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond won the Orwell Prize for political non-fiction in 2000.

In addition, his book on the dangers of ethnic nationalism in the Post-Cold war period Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism won the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues and the Lionel Gelber Award, which "honours the excellence of those who think and write about the local and global forces of change in international relations."

Ignatieff also writes fiction. His novel Scar Tissue was short-listed for the Booker Prize. He has also authored the more recent novel 'Charlie Johnson in the Flames', about a journalist who, haunted by a war crime he witnesses while reporting from Kosovo, decides to track down the responsible military commander for a confrontation.

On Canadian Rights Culture

In The Rights Revolution,, Ignatieff discusses what he calls Canada's "distinctive" rights culture. For Ignatieff, Canada's progressive stance on multiculturalism and recognition of minority and group rights contributes to the uniqueness of Canada's secular liberal society:

"Canada has become one of the world’s most distinctive rights cultures. First, on moral questions such as abortion, capital punishment and gay rights, our legal codes are notably liberal, secular and pro-choice. In this, they approximate European standards more closely than American ones. Despite the fact that we share our way of life and our public media with our neighbours to the south, our habits of mind on rights questions are very much our own. Second, our culture is social democratic in its approach to rights to welfare and public assistance. Canadians take it for granted that citizens do have the right to free health care, as well as to unemployment insurance and publicly funded pensions. Again, the comparison with the republic to the south is noteworthy. The third distinguishing feature of our rights culture, of course, is our particular emphasis on group rights. This is expressed, first, in Quebec’s Charte de la language francaise (Bill 101) and, second, in the treaty agreements that have given land and resources to aboriginal groups. Apart from New Zealand, no other country has given such recognition to the idea of group rights."

On Equality Rights

Ignatieff also discusses the notion of "equality" at length in The Rights Revolution,. The following passage helps illustrate Ignatieff's belief that public institutions must recognize difference in order to achieve full respect for equality and human dignity:

"How do we generate a world in common? We take actual human individuals – rich, poor, young, old, homosexual, heterosexual, white, black, in between, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew (ie: human beings in all their embodied difference) – and we imagine them as equal bearers of rights... The entire legitimacy of public institutions depends on our being attentive to difference while treating all as equal. This is the gamble, the unique act of the imagination on which our society rests."

Controversies

Attitude Towards Canada

Critics of Ignatieff's political involvement in Canada, particularly his candidacy for the leadership of the Liberal party, have pointed out that Ignatieff had lived outside Canada for more than 30 years prior to returning to Canada specifically to run for political office.

Ignatieff has also come under fire for writing essays and op-eds from the perspective of an American. Particularly controversial was an article that Ignatieff published in The New York Times Magazine on May 2 2004 which covered several aspects of human and civil rights. Although Ignatieff is now a member of the Canadian Parliament, he used "we" and "us" in reference to America and Americans some 43 times in this one article, e.g. "Our constitutional rights...Our system...is supposed to be the American way...". However, in an interview by Peter Newman published on April 6, 2006 in Maclean's, he apologised for doing so: "I shouldn't have used the "we." I'm not and have never been and will never be an American citizen, so I shouldn't have done that."

Ignatieff also wrote an article in 2002 for a literary magazine, Granta, titled "What we think of America" in which he said; (America is the) " only country...to command the faith of people like me, who are not its citizens." And also; "I’m a Canadian...I loved my own country, but I believed in America in a way that Canada never allowed."

Foreign Policy

In recent years, Ignatieff has generated controversy by supporting the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and suggesting Canada take a look at the proposed Canada-U.S. North American Missile Defence Shield.

The "Lesser Evil" Approach

Ignatieff considered "a lesser evil approach", which attempts to strike a balance between a commitment to rights and the need for democracies to defend themselves from the threat of terrorism. For Ignatieff, this "balance" includes a ban on torture, but also legislative and judicial oversight for permissive forms of interrogation such as sleep deprivation and techniques to produce stress that "do not result in lasting harm to mental or physical health":

"An outright ban on torture, rather than an attempt to regulate it, seems the only way a democracy can keep true to its ideal of respecting the dignity even of its enemies. For that is what the rule of law commits us to: to show respect even to those who show no respect for us.

To keep faith with this commitment, we need a presidential order or Congressional legislation that defines exactly what constitutes acceptable degrees of coercive interrogation. Here we are deep into lesser-evil territory. Permissible duress might include forms of sleep deprivation that do not result in lasting harm to mental or physical health, together with disinformation and disorientation (like keeping prisoners in hoods) that would produce stress. What crosses the line into the impermissible would be any physical coercion or abuse, any involuntary use of drugs or serums, any withholding of necessary medicines or basic food, water and essential rest."

Citing the "lesser evil" approach, Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law at the London School of Economics, accused Ignatieff and other liberal intellectuals of giving United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "the intellectual tools with which to justify his government's expansionism" and creating an atmosphere in which torture ordered by the US government might be condoned. Gearty also said that Ignatieff is "probably the most important figure to fall into this category of hand-wringing apologists for human rights abuses." However, a letter from Dr. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, published in the Toronto Star on 21 December 2005, in response to accusations that Ignatieff supported "torture" or "torture lite" reminded readers of Ignatieff's stance on coercive interrogation as stated in a book they recently co-edited, where Ignatieff wrote: "I cannot see any clear way to manage coercive interrogation institutionally so that it does not degenerate into torture ... So, I end up supporting an absolute and unconditional ban on both torture and those forms of coercive interrogation that involved stress and duress."

Mariano Aguirre, co-director of the Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior (Fride) in Madrid is of the view that Ignatieff "mixes history and propaganda".. Aguirre is the former director of the Peace Research Center (CIP), Madrid and has been a program officer at the Ford Foundation in New York. He is a fellow of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam.

The "Lesser Evil" Approach on Rights, The Rule of Law and Privacy Concerns

In addressing the threat of terrorism, Ignatieff argues the Lesser Evil approach finds a middle ground between a strict adherence to the Rule of Law and coercive state measures. The central question is what "lesser evil" state measures are justifiable in a free and democratic society, and what steps do we take to prevent state abuse of such measures:

"But thinking about lesser evils is unavoidable. Sticking too firmly to the rule of law simply allows terrorists too much leeway to exploit our freedoms. Abandoning the rule of law altogether betrays our most valued institutions. To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war. These are evils because each strays from national and international law and because they kill people or deprive them of freedom without due process. They can be justified only because they prevent the greater evil. The question is not whether we should be trafficking in lesser evils but whether we can keep lesser evils under the control of free institutions. If we can't, any victories we gain in the war on terror will be Pyrrhic ones."

Ignatieff also contrasts "civil libertarian" and Lesser Evil approaches in practice, discussing privacy concerns vis-a-vis state powers of surveillance:

"It was shameful, as a Justice Department report found, that many Arab and Muslim detainees were abused and harassed in confinement. Civil libertarians like Prof. David Cole of Georgetown nobly stood up and denounced such detainments as the abuses that they were.

But being absolutely right on this issue doesn't make a civil liberties position right on every other issue. Consider the question of a national ID system. Instead of crying 1984, the civil liberties lobby should be taking an honest look at the leaky sieve of the existing driving license ID system and admit how easy it was for the hijackers to talk their way into the ID's that got them onto the planes. Instead of defending a failed ID system, civil libertarians should be trying to think of a better one. One possibility is for Congress to establish minimum national standards for identification, using the latest biometric identifiers. Any legislation should build in a Freedom of Information requirement demanding that the government divulge the data it holds on citizens and purge data that is unsound." and "Giving the F.B.I. the same powers to wiretap terrorist suspects that they already use against the Mafia and drug traffickers seems reasonable."

British media personality

Ignatieff lived in the United Kingdom for much of the time from the late 1970s through the mid 1990s. He became well known as a broadcaster on radio and television, most notably as presenter of BBC 2's arts programme, The Late Show and Channel 4's Voices. 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 newspaper from 1990 to 1993. Ignatieff also appeared as himself in the 1991 feature film Antonia and Jane.

Political career

In January 2005, journalist/biographer Peter C. Newman suggested that Ignatieff could be an ideal leadership candidate for the governing Liberal Party of Canada after Paul Martin retired as leader, which he did in his concession speech after the election on January 23rd, 2006. Ignatieff was the keynote speaker at the Liberal Party's national biennial convention in Ottawa in early March 2005.

Nomination controversy

After months of rumours, Ignatieff confirmed in November 2005 that he intended to run for a seat in the Canadian House of Commons in the winter 2006 election. While the media engaged in rampant speculation as to which riding would be chosen for Ignatieff's candidacy, it was eventually announced that Ignatieff would seek the Liberal nomination in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke—Lakeshore. Ignatieff was considered a star candidate by the media.

According to a press release by members of the riding association, a nomination meeting was set for November 30, 2005 by the Liberal Party leadership, mere hours after the resignation of Liberal MP Jean Augustine was announced on Friday November 25, with the deadline to file as a candidate in the nomination meeting set for 5 pm the next day. Despite such short notice, two candidates other than Ignatieff managed to obtain the necessary number of signatures and fill out the nomination papers. "The two candidates delivered their nomination documents to Liberal Party headquarters in Toronto, only to find that the office was locked before the 5:00 p.m. filing deadline. Liberal party staffers could be seen through the second storey windows, but they refused to answer repeated knocking on the doors and phone calls to the office," according to the press release. On Sunday, about 40 Ukrainian Canadians picketed Liberal Party offices in Toronto to protest the events around Ignatieff's candidacy.

Jean Augustine was a well-liked, long-serving MP, and was the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons. Some viewed Ignatieff's nomination in her riding as hasty, but Augustine supported Ignatieff's candidacy, stumping for him on the campaign trail and lending her volunteers.

Ukrainian Canadian members of the riding association have complained that the party establishment is trying to help Ignatieff at the expense of other potential candidates for the nomination, as well as complained regarding allegedly anti-Ukrainian comments in his 1993 book Blood and Belonging : Journeys into the New Nationalism in which Ignatieff wrote:

"I have reasons to take the Ukraine seriously indeed. But, to be honest, I'm having trouble. Ukrainian independence conjures up images of peasant embroidered shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phony Cossacks in cloaks and boots..."

However, controversy died down when it was revealed that the above quote was taken out of context, from a chapter in which Ignatieff argues against such stereotypes.

After winning the Liberal nomination in the riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ignatieff sent out a press release regarding the controversy and his positions:

"This is a transparent attempt to twist my writings with the objective of sowing division and strife in Liberal ranks on the eve of a campaign. I am satisfied that tactics of this sort tend to rebound heavily on their perpetrators when weighed against the truth.

My record and writings on the subject matter of Ukraine and Ukrainian history are clear. I welcome anyone who wants to review that record to do so in its entirety."

Despite the speculation that the "fix was on" given the process under which the two other candidates' nomination papers were filed, the Liberal Party reviewed the nomination papers and the two candidates were disqualified according to the party's own rules (one, because he was not a member of the party and the second candidate, because he had failed to resign from his position on the riding association executive before seeking the nomination). The candidates, who had retained counsel, abandoned the appeal of the rejection of their nominations and then lost their appeal of Ignatieff's acclamation, which had been based on his residency status.

Victory

Despite the ongoing controversy and opposition from some Liberals in Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Michael Ignatieff was able to stave off the Conservative candidate and win a seat in the Canadian House of Commons during the 2006 Canadian Federal Election by a margin of roughly 5,000 votes.

Leadership

When Ignatieff decided to run for the Liberal Party in the Ontario riding of Etobicoke-Lakeshore, there was speculation as to whether he would seek the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. At the time, Ignatieff refused to entertain the speculation, expressing unqualified support for Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin and stated, "this is the job, to be a good constituency MP in Etobicoke Lakeshore" . (To view clip, click on Thursday January 12th, "Election: George Chats with Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Party candidate.")

However, Martin resigned from the Liberal leadership following the government's defeat in federal election in January, 2006. On April 7, 2006, Michael Ignatieff announced his candidacy in the upcoming Liberal leadership race, joining several other candidates who had already announced their candidacy.

Before announcing his candidacy, Ignatieff gave a speech on March 30, 2006, to a packed room at the University of Ottawa entitled "Canada and the World". In it, Ignatieff outlined his vision for Canada, including, among other things, his views on citizenship, foreign policy, federal-provincial relations, and the environment. Some protesters attended the event, wearing hoods and orange jumpsuits, similar to those of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib detainees, holding signs alleging Ignatieff supports torture. Ignatieff acknowledged their presence and right to protest, but pointedly denied their claims in his speech.

When taking questions from the audience following the speech, Ignatieff refused comparisons to Pierre Trudeau, indicating that while he admired Trudeau, Sir Wilfrid Laurier was his political hero. Ignatieff said he wished to strengthen national unity by inspiring commitment to civic values and the indivisibility of Canadian citizenship, from coast to coast.

Senator David Smith, a powerful Chretien organizer, Ian Davey (son of Senator Keith Davey), Alfred Apps, a Toronto lawyer and Manley fundraiser and Paul Lalonde a Toronto lawyer and son of Marc Lalonde, are heading up his campaign.

David Peterson will be Ignatieff's honorary campaign co-chair along with former Trudeau cabinet minister Marc Lalonde. Jim Peterson will serve as Ignatieff's Ontario campaign co-chair with Aileen Carroll. Rodger Cuzner will be the Atlantic Canada campaign chair while Pablo Rodriguez, former president of the Liberal Party's federal Quebec wing, will be national campaign co-chair.

Media tidbits

According to Jane Taber of The Toronto Globe and Mail:

Late last spring (2005), André Boisclair, now the Parti Québécois Leader, graduated from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where Michael Ignatieff was teaching. As Mr. Boisclair was coming off the stage with his diploma, Dr. Ignatieff was there to shake his hand. "So are you going home?" Dr. Ignatieff asked the Quebec sovereignist. (Former PQ leader Bernard Landry had just surprised everyone by announcing his resignation.) "I think so. Will I meet you there?" asked Mr. Boisclair, who served as a minister in PQ governments. Said Dr. Ignatieff, "We'll see."

Works

Fiction

• Asya, 1991
• Scar Tissue, 1993
• Charlie Johnson in the Flames, 2005

Non-Fiction

• A Just Measure of Pain: Penitentiaries in the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1850, 1978
• The Needs of Strangers, 1984
• The Russian Album, 1987 (winner of the 1987 Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction)
• Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism, 1994
• Warrior's Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, 1997
• Isaiah Berlin: A Life, 1998
• Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, 2000
• The Rights Revolution, 2000
• Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, 2001
• Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, 2003
• The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, 2004
• American Exceptionalism and Human Rights (ed.), 2005

External links

Official sites

• Michael Ignatieff Leadership Campaign Website
• Official Website of Michael Ignatieff, Etobicoke-Lakeshore
• Federal Political Biography from the Library of Parliament

Articles

• Why Bush must send in his troops by Ignatieff, on why he believes imposing a two-state solution is the last chance for Middle East peace. Published in The Guardian, April 19 2002
• Michael Ignatieff. The Lesser Evil, transcript of remarks at Carnegie Council , Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, January 23, 2004.
• Michael Ignatieff. Lesser Evils, New York Times Magazine, May 2, 2004.
• A General Helping of Liberal Brains by Ignatieff, including an enunciation of his position on ballistic missile defense
• Alex Mazer. Ignatieff's Realm
• Getting a read on Michael Ignatieff Toronto Star, May 1, 2006.
• Ignatieff, torture and us New Humanist, Apr 11, 2006.
• But where's the context? Toronto Star, April 9, 2006.
• No more Mr Nice Guy New Humanist September 21, 2005.

Opponent sites

• Stop Iggy A site established by dissenting Liberals to outline why they disagree with his candidacy

Other sites

• Draft Ignatieff - A bilingual Draft Michael Ignatieff as the New Liberal Leader website
• Notable Names Database profile of Michael Ignatieff

References

1. "The Lionel Gelber Prize". Retrieved 2006-04-20.
2. ^ (Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2000) at 7-8) Ignatieff, Michael (2000). The Rights Revolution. Anansi Press."on Amazon". Retrieved 2006-04-20.
3. ^ Michael Ignatieff (May 2, 2004). "Lesser Evils". The New York Times Magazine.
4. Newman, Peter C. (April 6, 2006). "Q&A with Liberal leadership contender Michael Ignatieff". Maclean's. Retrieved 2006-04-20.
5. Michael Ignatieff. "What we think of America". Retrieved 2006-04-20.
6. Gearty, Conor (January 2005). "Legitimising torture - with a little help". Index for Free Expression. Retrieved 2006-04-20.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
7. Aguierre, Mariano (July 15, 2005). "Exporting Democracy, Revising Torture: The Complex Missions of Michael Ignatieff". Open Democracy. Retrieved 2006-04-20.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
8. Antonia and Jane at IMDb
9. "Musings, warrenkinsella.com". Retrieved 2006-04-20.
10. CTV.ca News Staff (November 27, 2005). "Toronto group opposes Ignatieff's election bid". Retrieved 2006-04-20.
11. "Ignatieff blasts 'transparent' attempt to sow Liberal dissent". The Globe and Mail. November 28, 2005. Retrieved 2006-04-20.
12. "Nov. 28 2005 Ignatieff" (Press release).
13. Geddes, John (March 29, 2006). "Bill Graham's big job". Maclean's.ca. Retrieved 2006-04-20.
14. Clark, Campbell (April 6, 2006). "Liberals queue up for their day at the races". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2006-04-20.

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