Alleged "anti-Ukrainian" statements by Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff have come under attack by Manitoba's senior Tory MP, while Grits are hitting back with a charge he's playing dirty.
Vic Toews, Treasury Board president and MP for Provencher, has issued a constituency pamphlet which highlights statements Ignatieff made in his 1993 book Blood and Belonging, about post-Cold War nationalism.
"I have reasons to take Ukraine seriously indeed," Ignatieff, an academic of Russian descent who had long lived in the U.S., wrote in the book.
"But to be honest, I'm having trouble. Ukrainian independence conjures up images of embroidered peasant shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phoney Cossacks in cloaks and boots, nasty anti-Semites."
Toews, whose parents and grandparents were born in Ukraine, said yesterday the Grit leader's written comments are shocking -- particularly in light of Canada's large Ukrainian population.
"How could he call them anti-Semites, and on that basis say they shouldn't have their own nation because it's somehow an artificial nationality?" Toews told the Winnipeg Sun.
"To deny the entire existence of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, it's just astounding."
The full transcript is to follow.....
Vic Toews, Treasury Board president and MP for Provencher, has issued a constituency pamphlet which highlights statements Ignatieff made in his 1993 book Blood and Belonging, about post-Cold War nationalism.
"I have reasons to take Ukraine seriously indeed," Ignatieff, an academic of Russian descent who had long lived in the U.S., wrote in the book.
"But to be honest, I'm having trouble. Ukrainian independence conjures up images of embroidered peasant shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phoney Cossacks in cloaks and boots, nasty anti-Semites."
Toews, whose parents and grandparents were born in Ukraine, said yesterday the Grit leader's written comments are shocking -- particularly in light of Canada's large Ukrainian population.
"How could he call them anti-Semites, and on that basis say they shouldn't have their own nation because it's somehow an artificial nationality?" Toews told the Winnipeg Sun.
"To deny the entire existence of the Ukrainian nationalist movement, it's just astounding."
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/ ... 1-sun.html
I would take with a grain of salt anything this asshole did or said