Liberal leadership candidate believes move is ill-defined, open to interpretation

With a report from Alex Dobrota

OTTAWA -- Gerard Kennedy will break ranks with his party to become the only major contender for the Liberal leadership to oppose Prime Minister Stephen Harper's motion to recognize Quebeckers as a nation, in a move that could revive fears of a divided convention.

Mr. Kennedy will release a statement today expressing his opposition to the resolution as the wrong choice for Canada, according to campaign insiders, because he believes it is ill-defined and has raised a variety of interpretations that could lead to greater misunderstanding between Quebec and the rest of Canada. The motion raises expectations of future constitutional change, he believes.

He becomes the only one of the four major contenders for the Liberal leadership to oppose the motion, although Stéphane Dion and Bob Rae sought to distance themselves from it yesterday. Front-runner Michael Ignatieff has endorsed the motion.

It could reignite a divisive convention battle that the Liberals thought they had narrowly avoided when Mr. Harper unexpectedly introduced a motion calling for Quebeckers to be recognized as a nation within a united Canada -- countering a Bloc Québécois version.

Mr. Kennedy, who acted as peacemaker in that battle and preached a calming of emotions, may now emerge as the only contender against the resolution, although campaign insiders said he does not want to be a rallying point for opponents.

Mr. Kennedy will argue that Mr. Harper put forward the motion for political gain and that the country should be focusing on what it means to be Canadian, and not nations within nations, they said.

As a guest on CBC's Cross Country Checkup, where the controversial motion was the topic of conversation, Mr. Rae said Parliament would not be voting today if he were leading the country.

"If I was Prime Minister of Canada, is this something I would have presented to the House? No," Mr. Rae said. "I would simply have voted down the Bloc resolution."

All of the federalist parties would have voted against it, he said. "If that's what Mr. Harper and company want to do, we will all have to live with it. But I think it's important to stress this cannot become a fixation for Canada."

Stéphane Dion, another top contender for the Liberal leadership, was a guest on the same radio show. He reminded listeners of his work against separatism as the minister responsible for national unity in Jean Chrétien's government.

"I don't think it's a priority for us to count the number of nations we have in our country," Mr. Dion said. "As leader of the Liberal Party and I hope prime minister of Canada, I will have another priority than to do that."

Before doing the radio show, Mr. Dion campaigned in London, Ont., to support Liberal candidate Glen Pearson's bid to win a federal by-election.

Separately yesterday, Mr. Kennedy received a boost with an endorsement from Thomas Axworthy, a high-profile Liberal and former principal secretary to prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

Mr. Axworthy, the brother of former foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, said he waited until the campaign's final days to reveal his preference because of his position as co-chair of the party's renewal commission. He said he was swayed partly by Mr. Kennedy's intention to increase grassroots involvement in the party.

"Both [Mr.] Kennedy and I believe that the membership of the Liberal Party should have a strong role in making policy for the Liberal Party and holding leaders accountable," he said.

Mr. Ignatieff, the leading candidate for the Liberal crown, kept a lower profile yesterday, telephoning delegates from the privacy of a Montreal hotel room.

Some initially interpreted Mr. Harper's motion as removing an albatross from around Mr. Ignatieff's neck, but Mr. Rae said the Conservative move would not hurt his campaign. "I don't think, by the way, this whole thing has affected the leadership race one way or the other frankly," he told CTV's Question Period.

Mr. Rae had already been fighting to keep a Quebec resolution off the floor of the Liberal leadership convention in Montreal -- a motion that Mr. Ignatieff had endorsed, potentially costing him support outside Quebec.

With the Conservative motion set to pass in the House today, Mr. Ignatieff can lay claim to initiating the discussion that now has all-party endorsement.

One possible sign that the wheels are rolling again for Mr. Ignatieff was last week's defection to his camp by as many as 20 former Dion delegates. But Mr. Rae said he remains unconcerned.

There's "a lot of fluidity," he said. "We're getting a lot of calls from people in all camps about what they might do or what they might not do. There's a lot of movement between delegates about what they're going to do after the first ballot."

There has been a lot of "spinning" from the various leadership teams about who is gaining strength, the former Ontario NDP premier said, adding that he could have held his own press conference to say he had received calls from defecting Ignatieff delegates.

"I don't do that kind of thing," he said. "There will be several ballots, and the proof is in the pudding. It all depends on what happens on Saturday."

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