Why do we care what Michael Ignatieff has to say?

Canadians cringed at the Harper government attack ads last year that portrayed Michael Ignatieff as an international elitist who only came back to Canada to become Prime Minister. The ads implied Ignatieff didn't really understand Canada or Canadians.

Perhaps they were on to something.

How else can you explain "Iggy's" comments on Quebec?

The former Liberal leader has taken a lot of heat over the past two days for telling a BBC documentary team that Quebec sovereignty was inevitable.

Citing natural resource, education, health, and immigration policies, Ignatieff said that domestically, Quebec acts as though it were already sovereign and that Scotland will do the same.

"Over time the two societies will move ever, ever further apart. That is I think what the Canadian example will tell you," he said.

"It's kind of a way station. You stop there for a while. But I think the logic eventually is independence, full independence."

On Wednesday Ignatieff backtracked on his comments but the damage was done.

In an email to the Canadian Press, interim Liberal leader Bob Rae appropriately distanced himself from Ignatieff's comments noting that provinces have always had jurisdiction over natural resources, education and health care, as initially provided in the BNA Act of 1867.

David Olive of the Toronto Star wondered aloud how Ignatieff could have gotten it so wrong.

"Ignatieff never has and never will understand the country of his birth. It is unfortunate that a portion of the intelligentsia of Britain and the U.S. continue to mistake him, as they once did Conrad Black, as in some way knowledgeable of Canadian realities and sentiments," Olive wrote.

"Canadians in their wisdom last year hugely rejected an Ignatieff government. For Internet readers looking in from London to Jakarta, Michael Ignatieff's thoughts on Canada should given as much weight as the Dalai Lama's assessment of Velveeta."

In his column for the National Post, Wayne K. Spear echoed Olive's comments but wonders why we even care what the defeated leader has to say on the topic.

He said that those who think separatists are buoyed by Ignatieff's comments are mistaken.

"The man who proved himself capable of sinking a political party had to be seen as capable of sinking a country also. This is a case of folly," he wrote.

"If Mr. Ignatieff possessed the power to direct the fate of a nation, he would not now be back at his other day job, leaving behind the also-rans of the Liberal Party of Canada."

Maybe Ignatieff was "just visiting."