Two camps are emerging in the Liberal leadership race.
Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison - right leaning and accused of being collaborators with the American empire for their support of the Canadian military mission in Afghanistan (approved by the former Liberal government, in which Brison was a minister. It’s noteworthy that other ministers in the former government,including Joe Volpe, Maurizio Bevilacqua, Caroline Bennett, Ken Dryden.
All the others - those listed above plus Stephane Dion, Bob Rae, Martha Hall-Findlay, Gerard Kennedy, Hedy Fry - want to cut-short the Afghanistan campaign and/or significantly alter its objectives and mandate.
The Liberal Party has a record of being more concerned with international affairs than the Conservatives but few would have predicted, when Paul Martin announced his retirement last autumn, that foreign affairs would become the “split” issue in the party and one that the Conservatives would exploit to destabilize the Opposition.
