♪ >> Hello and welcome to another edition of Canada Files .

I'm Jim Deeks.

Our guest on this episode is Michael Ignatieff.

A familiar face to our Canadian viewers and familiar name to Americans who read and follow discussions of political philosophy, human rights and world affairs.

I suspect to all viewers, he's someone they don't know much about.

Michael currently lives in Vienna, Austria where he teaches history at the Central European University.

He recently stepped down as its president.

Michael's body of writing, teaching and broadcasting and his brief foray into Canadian politics a decade ago has made him one of Canada's most respected academics and intellectuals of the past 40 years.

>> Michael, it's very good to see you.

Thank you for joining us on Canada Files .

>> Pleasure, nice to be here.

>> I'd like to start by asking about your family background.

You would agree that it's unique and impressive.

I'm sure it's had a major influence on who you are today.

Take us back about 100 years and briefly describe the background that you come from.

>> I come from a story on the Russian side on my dad's side of aristocrats who were big shots in the Shirin regime before the Revolution.

Lost everything in the Revolution.

Went into exile, came to Canada in 1928... had to start over.

So I'm a story of an immigrant boy made good.

That's what happened to my father.

That's my father's side.

On my mother's side, I'm a descendent of the Grants and Parkins.

The Grants were school teachers, and Presbyterian ministers.

At one point, explorers of Canada in the 19th century.

I have a Canadian and Russian story.

They come together and here I am.

My dad did all the things a dad has to do.

Which is he radiated affection and love.

So I aspired to do as well as he could.

I didn't feel pressure.

I felt attraction to his career.

He was a Canadian diplomat, worked for Mr. Pearson for many years.

I grew up in a Canadian public service family.

That certainly had a big effect on who I became.

I knew I loved to write-- had a journalist in me.

I thought I may have a politician and academic in me.

I was pulled in three different directions.

Getting through my 20s in one piece was a bit of a miracle.

>> You became a writer, journalist, columnist, lecturer, teacher, broadcaster and a novelist.

We'll get to the politics in a moment.

Primarily you were based in London, England in the 1980s and '90s.

In 2000, you were appointed as the chair of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard.

Among many other appointments and honours along the way, what were the highest achievements you acquired, up to 2005?

>> I don't know about achievements but I do know what gave me the most pleasure.

That was writing.

I wrote some books in the 1980s.

I can still return to, without embarrassment.

I open them and think, "Some of this is pretty good!"

In terms of doing things, I was proud of writing books.

I was very proud of The Needs of Strangers, Blood and Belonging.

>> I mention 2005 specifically because at that point, you made a major career change.

You had spent over 30 years writing, observing, critiquing world affairs and political philosophy.

What made you in 2005, decide to enter the game of politics back in Canada.

Which you hadn't lived in for nearly 3 decades?

>> They never allowed me to forget that either.

>> They never did!

>> That turned out to be a big problem.

Why did I do it?

Because I'm my father's son.

Because he had a public service career, and I always felt that I should do it.

Because I'd been observing politics as a journalist and suddenly thought I should get off the stands and into the arena.

Because I was seriously self-deceived as well.

Politics is much tougher than you can imagine.

The transition from being a journalist where you're only responsible for your own words.

And suddenly you're responsible for a whole party and whole political movement.

The change is brutal.

The public scrutiny was very tough.

I was a real baptism of fire .

But hell, I'm glad I did it.

>> Did you have genuine interest in serving constituents?

That is a major part of the role of a politician, or a Member of Parliament, as we have in Canada.

Or was your entry of politics more from a sense of personal manifest destiny?

In that you really had your eye on becoming prime minister of Canada.

>> To be honest, I certainly went in because I thought I had a shot at the top job.

No question, personal ambition was the driver.

I think the surprise was when I got into elected, representative politics.

I was a MP for a Toronto riding I got very fond of.

If you're a Member of Parliament in opposition, about the only useful thing you can do is help constituents.

I had a wonderful constituency office and I got such satisfaction from politics, I got from helping people.

Getting them visas, help them through the maze of the Canadian bureaucracy.

It gave me a very realistic view of the expectations that citizens have of their MP.

Frankly how little MPs can do for their people.

I saw the emptiness at the heart of our representative democracy.

It was concerning to me, I have to say.

>> It's a long complicated story, your political career.

Let's condense it by saying you did become the national leader of the Liberal Part of Canada.

The Conservatives were running the government at that time.

You had every chance of deposing the Conservatives and forming the next government.

Unfortunately it came crashing down in May 2011.

In the federal election of that year.

You lost your own seat.

Not only did the Liberals not win the election but you lost your seat in Parliament.

You later wrote a book about that whole experience called, Fire and Ashes, Success and Failure in Politics.

Looking back now a decade later, is it a painful or wistful experience?

>> It's painful and wistful, if those are my choices.

Painful because it's hard to face failure.

And you have to face up.

Wistful because there were a lot of things we could have done, had we had a chance at the top job.

We had an incredible team, many of them now working for the current Liberal government in power.

I feel I trained a whole generation of kids who now have extremely important jobs.

It's wistful in that I would have been okay in government had I got there.

I just wasn't very good at Opposition.

You have to confront yourself, your limitations and weaknesses.

You have to look yourself in the mirror, not fool around.

That can be painful.

Hey, I'm here 11 years later.

I had a good life.

Feel very committed to tell other young Canadians as crazy as I was to go in there!

Put your name on a ballot.

>> Do you regret the experience at all?

>> I regret being as naive and trusting as I was.

I regret being as over-confident as I was....

But I don't have regrets for having done it.

I don't have regrets for having taken the risk.

For putting my whole reputation and career on the line.

I'll live with it for the rest of my life.

I think I would have regretted my life had I not done it.

Let's put it that way.

>> Let's talk about your latest book, On Consolation .

Neither a memoir nor a book on political philosophy or geo-politics.

Tell us what this book is and why you wrote it.

>> It started as a kind of accident.

I was asked to give a lecture, about justice in the Book of Psalms .

I thought I don't know anything about the Psalms but I'm going to learn.

I gave this lecture as part of a weekend concert.

Where all the psalms were performed in beautiful settings, Bach, Handel...

I found myself deeply moved by the psalms.

I began to ask myself why I was comforted by the psalms.

I'm not a believer although I respect religious belief.

My dad was, and my brother is, a believer, but I'm not.

So the search for consolation began with trying to understand why religious language continues to move and comfort someone like me who is not a believer.

From there, I spread out to the Romans, medieval folks.

I read Dante, Montaigne.

The result is a book of 18 essays that tries to understand why a great work of consolation came out of a life in torment or turmoil.

I try to connect a great work of consolation to the conditions and life situation that made someone want to write it.

I hope people enjoy the sense of recovering the lives that made consolation possible.

>> Tell us what you mean by consolation.

I assume you're not talking about the art of patting someone on the back.

And saying everything will be fine.

>> I think it's useful to make a distinction between comfort and consolation.

If I was to comfort you, I wouldn't have to say a word.

We'd just sit together.

I'd bring you a beer.

I'd put my arm around you and give you a hug.

I'd just listen and wouldn't say a word.

I wouldn't try to make you feel better.

I'd just be there.

If I was trying to console you, I would try to give some meaning to your experience.

If you had failed at something, I would say, "You gave your best and couldn't have done anything more."

"You left nothing on the table."

I'd try to give some meaning to make you feel better about your experience.

The key to consolation is to provide meaning to give you hope so you can go on.

It's propositional.

It requires meaning.

Comfort is just physical.

Consolation is much more propositional.

The problem with consolation which we all know when we've had to try to console someone who's lost a loved one, is words fail us.

It's a moment where we come up to the very edge of what words can do.

That's why I found it such a fascinating and difficult subject.

Because it is at the limit of language.

All of the people I'm writing about are working at the limit-- how language can console us.

>> Was writing and thinking about consolation a cathartic or psychological exercise for you at the time you were putting the book together?

Perhaps in the aftermath of the biggest setback of your life?

That is the political one.

>> There's no point denying that you don't write a book about consolation unless you've been kicked in the teeth a couple of times.

Politics is a good kick in the teeth.

There was much more to it than that.

I don't think my political defeat was the most serious issue in my life.

I think the death of my parents was much more of a blow to me.

There have been a number of things that I've sought consolation for in my life, not just politics.

It was cathartic to write it.

I hope it will be cathartic for readers.

One of the points I'm trying to make is, with the waning of religion we often have to seek for consolation alone.

I wanted to restore these great books so people knew that there are voices from the past that can be deeply consoling when in a tough situation.

I hope the book will be consoling to read.

Because it certainly was consoling to write.

> We're at a time in our history when it would seem our problems are greater and more insurmountable than ever before.

Climate change, geo-political confrontations, the pandemic.

Do you think collectively we need consolation more than ever before?

>> There's no doubt through COVID, I saw a massive global search for consolation.

You couldn't go onto the internet without seeing some poet reading consoling poetry.

Or an artist performing, a musician playing.

They were all trying to reach out to an audience that was clearly in need of comfort.

The number of people who died in Canada and the US is still an incredible shock!

People listening to this program may have lost loved ones.

In the most literal visceral way, people are in need of consolation.

Then there's this bigger issue, which you mention, which is... we're not quite sure what kind of future we've got at all.

We're not sure whether climate change will end our future.

Whether these pandemics are a sign that we're going to be faced with a succession of increasing devastating global health challenges.

Somebody said recently that being in middle of COVID is like driving in the fog.

When you turn on your high beams, it just gets worse.

We feel in the fog.

Part of what I'm trying to say is, we need to show solidarity for each other in the here and now.

But we also need to show solidarity in time.

We need to reach back to the ancients-- to these wise people behind us.

Because we really need them now.

And they are there.

They're as close as our library shelves.

They're part of our tradition.

Because the key thing about consolation, is you feel alone.

You feel bereft.

That no-one has gone through what you have.

These books help to remind you that you're not alone And you've never been alone.

>> On Consolation is your 20th book.

Congratulations on the publication.

I would think you are of an age and at a stage in your life when people wouldn't be surprised if you and your wife, Zsuzsanna, decided to call it a day.

Maybe buy yourself a nice villa in the south of France and sip wine looking at the sunset until you both breathe your last.

Is that a dream of yours?

Or do you see yourself studying and writing until your head literally slumps down on the keyboard?

>> I like the latter story.

I'm certainly big on a glass of wine on a terrace looking at a beautiful view especially if my wife is close by.

I love writing and always have.

I didn't write 20 books... that wasn't a mistake.

That's what I wanted to do with my life.

And I've done it!

Every time I write a book I come out with a sense I've understood something.

And possible helped someone else understand something.

I've been a teacher all my life.

That gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction.

Being a teacher is the role of all the roles I've played that I don't want to lose or leave.

I'm not ready to retire yet.

>> Do you look back at your past books or columns and say, "Yes, I was right on this subject"?

Or conversely, was I ever wrong.

>> I don't look back too much.

.. the things that bother me are the mistakes.

Sometimes I look back at an old book and say that runs pretty well.

I like the flow and prose here.

It's going good.

What keeps you awake at night are the mistakes you've made.

I've made plenty of mistakes.

That is, mistaken political judgements.

Which ended up in a column or something.

Any examined life gives you a guilty conscience at times.

No question about it.

>> For most of the last 100 years, the world has looked to the US for its democratic principles, wealth and innovation and its power to maintain the world order.

With the presidency of Donald Trump, if not before, that power and influence has eroded.

What's your feeling about the future?

Can the world survive the decline of America?

>> The world can survive the decline of America.

But we will be in a multi-polar world.

A world where China is the ascendant power.

The problems in the US began in the early 60s.

I often date the decline of America oddly from the assassination of Jack and Bobby Kennedy in the 60s.

Which were traumatic events and began an unwinding that's accelerated.

There's been a great deal of institutional decline and decay in American democracy.

In some ways, the entire story of my adult life from age 21, has been the story of gradual decline of American power.

We just have to get used to that.

Empires rise and fall and this empire is clearly declining.

It doesn't mean that American innovation will cease.

America still has a huge advance in certain key technologies that define the modern world.

American science is fantastic.

I taught for 15 years in American universities.

They remain the best in the world.

It's not a universal story of decline and fall.

Inexorably, we're moving into a world that will be possibly less stable because there's no single hegemon .

There's no single boss on the block.

I don't think a world in which America is in relative and absolute decline is a world that is impossible to manage.

It just means we're all going to have to step up.

Canada has spent the whole of my lifetime as the sidekick to this power.

We rose with them.

Now it's a lonelier, much more frightening world.

That poses big questions for Canadians.

We've got to stand up and shoulder more weight.

>> Can Canada do it?

Can we survive with a declining America.

>> There's no question we can both survive and prosper.

Let's remember we have the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic.

We've got more natural resource wealth than almost any other country I can think of.

Huge country.

We've made a fantastic success of multicultural immigration.

From guys like my dad coming in 1928 to the folks from the Caribbean, China and Africa.

We've made such a success of so much.

I don't doubt that Canada has a bright future.

We can't count on the protection of the US.

Nor cross-border trade being uninterrupted in perpetuity.

Nor Big Brother coming to our help.

We have to play some pickup games with some new friends.

We've got to strengthen our relationships with the Europeans.

Strengthen our friendships with the Pacific countries.

With Latin America.

We've got to make new friends quickly.

We can't do it alone.

>> My last question which I ask all our guests on Canada Files.

From your perspective, very multi-national, you've observed world politics and leaders, but you're still Canadian.

What does being Canadian mean to you?

>> It means an incurable optimism.

Because God has been good to our country.

It means open to the stranger because we're constantly welcoming people from outside.

It means understanding how problematic our history is.

It's always a work-in-progress.

Right now, we're struggling to adjust and accept that our Aboriginal brothers and sisters don't see themselves in the history we tell.

It's a kind of decency, modesty and openness to the world.

A curiosity about the world.

I see Canadians all over the world doing incredible things.

It's also cold winter mornings.

That shared experience of going to school as a kid and hearing the sound of snow under your boots.

That's Canada.

>> Thank you so much for this.

Really appreciate your thoughts.

Good to see you again.

>> Nice to see you, Jim.

>> And thank you for watching.

We hope you'll join us again on another edition of Canada Files .

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