Mr. Ziffy Does Not Know Canada

 As Rex Murphy has so eloquently states it, Mr. Ziffy just does not know or get Canada.
Mr. Ziffy believes that being out of the country for so many years has made him a" better Canadian."  Huh?   Because I haven't been a world traveler and out of the country for years, does that make me "less of a Canadian?

Mr. Ignatieff, in a recent Toronto speech, tried a little rhetorical judo on the Conservative ads. He tried to project the idea of Canada as a place in continual evolution, as the most internationalist of countries, and went so far as to say his "being out of the country" actually made him a better Canadian.
This last claim was merely excess and nonsense since, in logic, he'd be the perfect Canadian, by his terms ... if he'd never come back at all.

You need to know the country on a basic local level. You need to feel it. Rex thinks Mr Ziffy doesn't feel it thus the success of the "Just Visiting" ads the CPC put out were successful. You need to get out and get to really know the people and they are all about. What we're thinking, what we're feeling. Ziffy just doesn't get it.  In other words, you need to connect to the people, the surroundings etc. You need to know what makes the country tick.

Let me be clear on this point. His absence is not a disqualification for our highest office, but it is a mighty obstacle. The common-sense response to having lived "out of country" for so long is that he cannot know it. We are, we Canadians, very much where we live. We learn our country by living in it, by absorbing the flow of its events, by acquiring an emotional as well as an intellectual grasp of its rhythms and moods. We inhabit this country, and it returns the favour: It inhabits us.
What's implicit in Mr. Ignatieff's picture of Canada is that there's nothing fixed, common and settled here. This is ludicrous. Canada is not a centreless void: There is, very much, a here, here. We have our social and civic codes. There are, beneath the multitude of our separate and diverse peoples and regions, great central patterns of common attitude, shared value, a signature take on the outside world and an understanding of our entwined interrelationships.
Canada isn't a blank slate waiting for the inscriptions of unending diversity. There is an essence to this country. What we have in common, the core, is that which enables the embrace of diversity in the first place. Mr. Ignatieff may understand some of this, but does he feel it? Does he perceive the strength and depth of the common endeavour which has been and is this country since its founding? Canadians are far more patriotic than, outside hockey triumphs, they let on.
The public then is perhaps anxious that the man aspiring to be prime minister, while abundant of intellect is impoverished of experience, that he lacks the emotional knowledge and feel for this country that is the product of daily lived encounter with it and its people. Can he give it a "local habitation and a name?"
So at both ends of the political scale, the district and the national, the question of understanding and really knowing the people and country is the central one. Proportional representation is a step away from full engagement of the representative and the people he or she represents. Michael Ignattief's core weakness is that so many Canadians are withholding assent to him as their leader because they do feel that, at the most profound level, perhaps he does not know their country.

Here is one example of him being out of touch with the country's mood, abortion. This from John Snobelen, the Toronto Sun

So why are we suddenly talking about abortion? Michael Ignatieff.
Ignatieff would like you to believe there is a vast right wing, neo-con, radical right, fundamental Christian conspiracy to ban abortion. Desperate for a wedge issue, he has dusted off the old, tired hidden agenda stuff.
Trouble is, Ignatieff managed to wedge himself. The boy is sharp.

Mr. Ziffy at one time compared our flag to a beer commercial. He said the only thing he missed about Canada was Algonquin Park.  Times have changed. The country is different than when he was here before. Maybe he should go out and smell some more barns.