VANCOUVER-Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has gotten a wide range of questions and requests at open events throughout the election campaign.
Here’s one of them:
Ignatieff took questions from a hall full of supporters in North Vancouver for about an hour, dealing with a wide range of issues including peace in the Middle East, science, separation of church and state, arts and culture, as well as Canada’s place on the world stage.
He ended the event with his call for Canadians to “rise up” and defeat the Harper government.
Earlier he took questions in Surrey, B.C. during a round table discussion with multicultural media outlets, noting that it was the anniversary of the establishment of the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms.
He also criticized Conservative leader Stephen Harper over the proposed Bill C-49 legislation on human smuggling.
Ignatieff said it would have violated the rights of refugees by imposing mandatory detention for up to a year, instead of punishing smugglers.
“It is our view that many of those measures violate the charter (of rights) and that’s why we didn’t support them in the House of Commons,” Ignatieff said. “We need tough refugee determination policies, but it’s based on (the principle that) every refugee has a right to state their claim.”
All this after starting his day with former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin who joined his campaign in Edmonton and defended the former Liberal government’s efforts to slay the federal deficit in the 1990s.
Ignatieff has pledged to hold a federal-provincial summit on healthcare within two months of forming a new government to tackle long-term funding issues and set home care and pharmacare as priorities.
The Liberal leader was scheduled to wrap up his day with another event in Victoria, B.C., before flying north to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories for campaign events on Monday.
mdesouza@postmedia.com
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