Ignatieff just gave the "Isaiah Berlin" [u][url=http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/07/08/liberalism-is-not-a-bloodless-breviar... in London. (Berlin was one of Margaret Thatcher's favourte "thinkers" -- Ignatieff has written a biography of him).
In the speech, Ignatieff shows he still hasn't shaken off American/British style individualism (the kind he made his living for 30 years propigating):
Liberalism is a family of common allegiance. [b]We believe in limited government in the service of individual liberty and fiscal responsibility in the service of social compassion[/b]. Our creed is a pragmatic vision of good government that adapts to context.
Note that Ignatieff's problem is not the "fiscal responsibility in the service of social compassion" bit. (Canadian Liberals have always adhered to this line). It's the "We believe in limited government in the service of individual liberty" type thing -- that is very much a minority view in Canada. But it is the mainstream of small-l liberal thought in the US and Britain.
Still, Ignatieff should be given the benefit of the doubt. Later on, he does acknowledge that politics in Canada also serves collective needs:
The enduring character of our linguistic, cultural and national differences has also shaped our philosophy of government....From the beginning, we had to make a complex unity out of these differences. We had to anchor collective rights to language and education in our constitution... We had to learn to compromise, to reach out across divides that have broken other countries apart...[W]e have sustained the whole edifice of our federation on the constant practice of conciliating difference across languages, identities and cultures.
This, however, seems to be a minor part of his speech -- as if the Canadian reality is kind of an afterthought he grafted on to the US/UK-style Liberalism. It is not well-integrated into the larger philosophy.
But the I guess that has been the story of his career since he returned to Canada.