Writer and Academic Is Poised to Lead Canada’s Liberal Party - Ian Austen

OTTAWA — Michael Ignatieff, a former journalist, documentary producer and academic, became the effective leader of the Liberal Party of Canada on Tuesday.

At a news conference, Mr. Ignatieff’s only remaining rival for the position, Bob Rae, the former Ontario premier, abandoned the party’s leadership race and backed the candidacy of Mr. Ignatieff, who was once his college roommate.

Mr. Ignatieff must go through several formal approvals, the first of which will be in his party caucus on Wednesday. But when those rituals are complete, Mr. Ignatieff will formally head a coalition of opposition parties that was on the verge of taking power from Canada’s Conservative government last week.

Canada now has a potential prime minister who has lived outside the country for most of the past 39 years, whose extensive résumé is short on political experience and whose past views on major issues were sometimes at odds with the broad Canadian consensus.

While the director of a human rights center at Harvard University, Mr. Ignatieff, 61, supported the invasion of Iraq, a position in opposition to the Liberal Party’s stance, though he subsequently retracted his support. Though Mr. Ignatieff has also lived in Britain, he has strongly identified himself with the United States and its values in a way that is unusual for a Canadian politician....