OTTAWA - Michael Ignatieff was the centre of unwanted attention Friday as the Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Quebecois joined forces to pillory the new Liberal leader.
The gang up came as Liberals ponder whether to try to force a summer election. Their enthusiasm for a snap vote has increased lately amid opinion polls suggesting Liberals have edged into a slight lead, fuelled largely by a resurgence in Quebec.
Ignatieff has said he'll decide next week -- after analyzing the government's second progress report on the economy -- whether to try to topple the minority Tories. However, he'd need the Bloc and NDP to join forces with the Liberals to defeat the government.
Friday's pile-on suggests neither opposition party is any mood to do Ignatieff any favours -- at least not until they've burst his bubble in vote-rich Quebec.
Bloc and New Democrat MPs went on the attack over Ignatieff's assertion Thursday that there's no need to devolve more powers to Quebec.
"It's totally scandalous," huffed Bloc MP Pierre Paquette.
Paquette said Ignatieff boasts about being the spark behind the 2006 parliamentary motion recognizing the Quebecois as a nation. Yet he balks at doing anything concrete that would give meaning to the resolution.
He called Ignatieff's stance hypocritical but said it's in keeping with the heavy-handed centralizing tradition of previous Liberal leaders, including Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien.
"It's the same good old Liberal Party of Canada that wants to put Quebec in its place," Paquette charged.
Thomas Mulcair, the NDP's sole Quebec MP, echoed that sentiment. And he further blasted Ignatieff for appearing "spectacularly out of contact with Quebec" during a major fundraising speech Thursday night in Montreal.
"It shows that he's not only been out of Canada for 35 years, he's never known anything about Quebec except what he learned at Upper Canada College and, frankly, I'm not afraid of him a bit."
Mulcair said Ignatieff "always folds like a cheap suit" when it comes to defending Quebec's interests. As proof, he cited Ignatieff's support for creation of a single national securities regulator and his opposition to the application of Quebec's language-of-work law in federal workplaces in the province.
The Bloc and NDP jabs echoed some of the themes used by the Tories in television attack ads launched several weeks ago. The ads portray Ignatieff as an elitist who's "just visiting" Canada with little commitment to the country and a penchant for making impolitic remarks during his years abroad.
In the House of Commons on Friday, Tory MPs piled on.
Quebec Tory MP Jacques Gourde went so far as to suggest Ignatieff's refusal to consider more powers for Quebec is in line with Trudeau's imposition of the War Measures Act and the sponsorship scandal under Chretien.
However, Gourde was unable to say later what additional powers the Conservatives are prepared to give Quebec.
"The power, maybe, eh, federal spending power," he finally offered after repeated questions.
Indeed, Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised two years ago to legislate limits on the use of the federal spending power but no bill has yet materialized.
Alberta MP Chris Warkentin professed outrage over Ignatieff's assertion, during Thursday's speech, that Canada has become "the laughingstock of the world" on environmental issues under Harper's watch.
"How dare he?" Warkentin fumed in the Commons, dredging up some of Ignatieff's more controversial comments from the distant past.
"How dare he come back to Canada after being away for 34 years, after calling himself an American, after accusing his fellow Canadians of living in a fantasyland, after calling our flag a pale imitation of a beer label, and call Canada a laughingstock?"
The attacks from all sides were taken by at least one Quebec Liberal MP as evidence that rival parties are afraid of the inroads Ignatieff is making.
"Maybe they're really scared," said Alexandra Mendes.
She maintained Ignatieff's refusal to transfer powers to Quebec is simply a recognition that now is not the time to reopen constitutional debates.
"We're not going to reopen constitutional debates and I think most Canadians would agree with that," Mendes said, challenging the other parties to specify what they'd do differently.
