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Ignatieff, appearing as part of a public panel alongside former Irish President Mary Robinson and Israeli author and journalist Amos Oz, said: “I do think we’ve got to have more free votes in parliament.”

He conceded that such a change “will make it much more difficult for prime ministers and party leaders,” but better for citizens if they are “represented by MPs who can think and act on their conscience and on your interest.

In a democracy, I think, we have no enemies. We have rivals. We have opponents. But we don’t have enemies

“And until we can break some of the power of parties in parliament,” he added bluntly, “I think parliament’s going to die.”

Ignatieff told Postmedia News by email that his message at the Free Thinking Festival was that, “what is in a party leader or prime minister’s interest is not always in the interest of democracy.”

He added that a “loosening of the party whips may be necessary to keep our democracy from suffocation.”

Ignatieff was a renowned writer and philosopher before his rocky term as Liberal leader ended in a decisive defeat in the May 2011 election, which left him ousted from his Toronto-area seat and reduced his once-powerful party to third place behind the NDP, led by the late Jack Layton.

Ignatieff had been memorably skewered by Layton during a leaders’ debate when the NDP leader pointed out that his Liberal counterpart had the worst attendance record of any MP in the country when votes were being held in the House of Commons.

Ironically, given Ignatieff’s weekend comments on free votes in parliament, one of his major achievements as Liberal leader came in September 2010 when he “whipped” his caucus to vote en masse to defeat a Conservative MP’s private member’s bill that would have scrapped the federal long-gun registry.