As I was leaving the conference today, Michael Ignatieff was participating in a quick interview with the online audience and, asked for his impressions of the event so far, he ventured an interesting attempt to split the difference between the ideas of big and small government. The segment is not yet online—it will hopefully appear here at some point—but Susan Delacourt has the gist.
As I was leaving the conference today, Michael Ignatieff was participating in a quick interview with the online audience and, asked for his impressions of the event so far, he ventured an interesting attempt to split the difference between the ideas of big and small government. The segment is not yet online—it will hopefully appear here at some point—but Susan Delacourt has the gist.
“I think the really interesting thing that’s coming out of the conference for me—and I’m still still trying to formulate it—is a different vision of government, that is not command and control,” Ignatieff said in an online interview on Saturday afternoon. “We can’t do it from Ottawa. And an activist government doesn’t mean another big, high-ticket federal program. What it means is getting a network of deciders together to face common problems.”
This was, by his own admission, not yet a fully formed idea. But he is due to deliver remarks to close the conference tomorrow afternoon. And that speech may prove to be an interesting one.