Leading thinkers and doers have converged in Montreal for the three-day federal Liberal policy renewal conference, Canada at 150.
The three-day "thinkers-conference" aims to generate discussion and ideas as participants look ahead to what 2017 might hold for Canada as the country reaches its 150th anniversary of Confederation.
But former Liberal Party president Mike Eizenga said that there are no expectations the party will emerge from the conference with an immediate clear course to chart.
"We'd like to engage Canadians; we'd like to hear what they have to say," he told CTV's Power Play Friday night. "We won't come out of this conference or even immediate aftermath of the conference with a neatly tied little package. That'll take some time, as we move toward the next election."
The conference has been billed as a non-partisan event, with Derek Burney, former chief of staff for Brian Mulroney, among the speakers.
But Conservative strategist Tim Powers said the conference fits nicely into the narrative that criticizes Ignatieff as being out of touch because of his background as an academic.
"He has the elite there -- he doesn't have the citizens of the country," Powers told Power Play. "He wants to connect to the people, but he doesn't have the people there."
In his address to the audience, Ignatieff called for participants to share their ideas and speak from the heart, CTV's Roger Smith reported.
"He said he doesn't want a dialogue of the deaf or the decided," Smith said Friday afternoon. "He wants to hear passion; he wants controversy. The ideas that come out of this conference will be thrown into the sort of policy hopper that the Liberals will start developing over the next few months before the next election."
Only about 10 Liberal MPs were in attendance, but the proceedings are being webcast live to about 60 satellite events in ridings across the country, Smith said.
After the first few speakers of the morning painted a portrait of Canada as a country facing a series of difficult challenges in the future, Ignatieff told a news conference that it was important to have a political space to examine potentially dire situations.
"My sense is that we need to have a political space in which we can look at some scary scenarios," he said.
"What those people are saying in the room is if you don't face those questions, look out. So, it's a wake-up call and I think the political system needs it, the party needs it and the country needs it."
Ignatieff said the opening speakers reaffirmed his belief that the country needs, first and foremost, to invest in education and training, even as it buckles down to tame a record $54-billion deficit.
"These things aren't optional. These aren't kind of interesting things we might do, you know, if we had a world enough and time, as Shakespeare said."
The Liberals are hoping this policy conference will have the same kind of positive outcome as two fabled past Liberal policy conventions, Smith said. A conference in Kingston in 1960 and a second in Aylmer, Que., in 1991 were followed by the party's return to power within three years.
With files from The Canadian Press
