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Immigrants vie for Liberal leadership |
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By Ethan Caleb » Two Italian-born MPs and one with a Russian family
history are vying to succeed former prime minister Paul Martin as the
next leader of the Liberal Party.
Former Immigration Minister Joe Volpe and ex-secretary of state
Maurizio Bevilacqua, both of whom came to Canada from Italy as
youngsters, want to lead the party into the next election. The early
front-runner, however, is believed to be Michael Ignatieff, whose
father George fled the Russian Bolshevik revolution in 1928 and settled
in Montreal.
Ignatieff is a rookie MP, having been elected for the first time in the January 2006 general election, but is a highly-regarded scholar who recently returned from the US where he was director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. He previously taught at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and the London School of Economics, among others.
All three MPs play up their immigrant roots. While announcing his candidacy, Bevilacqua spoke about how, as an immigrant, he embodies the "new face" of the country. At 45, he is likely to be among the youngest in the fray.
Volpe's own family background likely played a part in him being named immigration minister in the previous government.
As for Ignatieff, he wrote a book called The Russian Album, in which he explored the importance of memory and obligation to ancestry in the context of his own family's history.
Ignatieff's father went on to become a Canadian diplomat after moving to Montreal, while his grandfather, Count Paul Ignatieff, was the Russian Tsar's last Minister of Education and one of the few to escape execution by the Bolsheviks.
The Liberals will choose a successor to Martin at a leadership convention in Montreal in December.
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