OTTAWA - For most of his long career as an academic and journalist, Michael Ignatieff has lived and worked outside of Canada.
He returned to Canada in 2005, became a Liberal MP in 2006 and, almost immediately after that, was derided by his Conservative opponents who claimed he was "just visiting" Canada and that "he didn't come back for you."
Indeed, those are the main themes of the Conservative anti-Ignatieff attack ads in this election campaign.
Now, a new poll, done exclusively for QMI Agency by Leger Marketing, shows that the Conservative attacks appear to have had some success in key election battlegrounds but, overall, most Canadians - or 54% - think the issue is irrelevant or that Ignatieff's overseas experience is a good thing for an applicant for the job of prime minister.
But in Ontario, where Liberals must do well to have any hope of forming a government, 43% say it's "a bad thing" that Ignatieff has spent most of his working life outside of Canada, while 41% of Ontarians say it's irrelevant and 9% say it's "a good thing".
In B.C., 42% of respondents said Ignatieff's resume is a bad thing while 44% said it's irrelevant and 8% said it's a good thing.
Quebecers and Atlantic Canadians seemed the least susceptible to the Conservative attack line. In the provinces east of Ontario,
more than half of respondents said the Liberal leader's work record was irrelevant. And in Quebec, 16% said it was a good thing, a sharp contrast with Alberta where just 4% of respondents agreed it was positive.
The poll was conducted April 15 to 17, after last week's leaders debates. Leger surveyed 3,534 respondents selected randomly from its online panel of more than 350,000 Canadians. The pollster says results would be accurate to within 1.7 percentage points 19 times out of 20 for a similar-sized group selected randomly from among all Canadians.