Barbara Kay Rips Iggy a New One for Throwing Quebec Anglos Under a Bus

In the nascent days of separatism, Charles de Gaulle had the gall to show up in Quebec and fan the flames by shouting "Vive le Quebec libre"! But Chuck, after all, was a foreign buddinsky who could drop his stink bomb and decamp post haste to Paree. How does one account for Michael Ignatieff, who is not only the previous leader of the Liberal Party (helicoptered in by a sly few to be our Iggy-ex-machina, he was ignominiously rejected by Canadians in a mortifying election loss), but who, after decades of being a rootless cosmopolitan, now actually lives here? Barbara Kay (with whom I had a lovely chat at Steynamite! yesterday) writes about it here:

In February, Justin Trudeau shocked Canadians when he told a Radio-Canada interviewer that if the Canadian government put any constraints on abortion or repealed gay marriage, “maybe I would think about wanting to make Quebec a country.” The blogosphere and Twitterverse went ballistic. Most people expressed incredulity that the scion of Canada’s most ardent and influential federalist could so casually – so publicly – consider aligning himself with the notion of Canada’s breakup.

The only explanation his defenders could scrape together for this diamond-studded gift to the ever-shrinking base of Quebec’s grizzled, ember-stirring ultra-nationalists was his youth, naiveté and political inexperience.

What excuse, then, can anyone offer Michael Ignatieff for yesterday’s monumental gaffe? During a BBC Scotland broadcast of an interview about Scotland’s independence referendum, Ignatieff was heard to say, when asked if he foresaw full independence for Quebec, “I think eventually that’s where it goes.” He elaborated on his remark with the explanation that Quebec and Canada have very little to say to each other any more and the two are “almost” separate countries.

What excuse? Sour grapes, perhaps?