OTTAWA — Call it the Crimson connection.

Michael Ignatieff has taken a lot of political grief for spending almost three decades living outside Canada, including five years teaching at Harvard University.

But as he prepares for a brief meeting Thursday with fellow Harvard alumnus President Barack Obama, the Liberal leader stands to reap some dividends from the Ivy League connections he made at one of the world's most prestigious universities.

Ignatieff never crossed paths with Obama, who is 15 years his junior, at the august institution. But he did forge friendships with people who are now among the key movers and shakers in the Obama White House.

Just how important those friendships may be in developing a rapport with the new president remains to be seen.

Certainly, Liberals think it will give Ignatieff an advantage over Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was closer ideologically to the late, unlamented administration of George W. Bush.

Ignatieff himself has several times alluded to his ability to pick up the phone and call "friends" in the White House. And his advisers say that gives him "easy relationships, . . . instant connections" to people who have the ear of the world's most influential leader.

"The bottom line is (Ignatieff) is a guy the Americans not only respect but they know," said one Liberal insider.

"It does matter. This is our largest trading partner and most important relationship."

Not to mention that it can't hurt to play up links, however tenuous, to a leader who is basking in public adulation in Canada and around the globe.

Conservatives, however, dismiss the notion that sharing mutual friends with the president will have any influence on the diplomatic, economic and trade relationships between Canada and the United States.

"I don't think it will have any bearing whatsoever," said Kory Teneycke, Harper's director of communication.

He predicts Harper and Obama, despite their lack of social connections, "will get along well." But he added the purpose of Thursday's visit "is not primarily to have a social relationship, it's to work together in the interests of both of their individual countries."

As for Ignatieff's connections to Obama's inner circle, Teneycke scoffed: "It is not surprising, given that he spent most of his professional life in the United States, that he would know more Americans than Stephen Harper, who's spent his professional life -- in fact, his entire life -- living in Canada."

Actually, Ignatieff worked only five years in the U.S., as director of the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. For most of his almost 30 years abroad, Ignatieff was based in the United Kingdom.

Nevertheless, the Harvard connections are of the most immediate interest as Ignatieff prepares for what's expected to be about 20 minutes of face time with the newly installed president.

Ignatieff is good friends with Samantha Power, a senior adviser to Obama during his presidential campaign, a member of his transition team and now a member of the National Security Council.

Ignatieff met Power, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, journalist and academic, when he became director of the Carr Centre. Power was the centre's founding executive director.

He also became friends with Power's husband, Cass Sunstein, a Harvard professor and constitutional law expert who now heads up the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

And he got to know Larry Summers, president of Harvard during Ignatieff's stint at the Carr Centre. Obama has appointed Summers as director of the National Economic Council.

Ignatieff also enjoys a number of connections with the Obama White House that pre-date his time at Harvard.

For instance, as a journalist, Ignatieff accompanied Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to the Balkans for then-president Bill Clinton, as he attempted to head off the 1999 Kosovo war.

Holbrooke, now Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, featured prominently in Ignatieff's subsequent book, Virtual War.