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OTTAWA — Former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff says Quebec “eventually” will become an independent country and that a victory for Scottish separatists in an expected 2014 referendum will launch a new effort by Quebec nationalists to fulfil their sovereignist dream.

Ignatieff, an author and academic who left the Liberal leadership after his party was badly beaten in the 2011 election, made the comments in an interview being broadcast Monday on BBC Scotland.

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He also said Quebec and the rest of Canada have little to say to each other and that the two already are “almost” separate countries.

Ignatieff told BBC Scotland that devolution of central powers, whether from London to Edinburgh or from Ottawa to Quebec City, likely will be only temporary.

“It’s a kind of way station. You stop there for a while, but I think the logic eventually is independence — full independence,” Ignatieff said in an interview in his home last month.