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Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton never gave Canada any secret assurances about the future of NAFTA such as those allegedly offered by Barack Obama's campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office said Friday.

With the NAFTA affair swirling over the U.S. election and Canadian officials skittish about saying anything else that might influence the race, it took the PMO two days to deliver the information.

After being asked whether Canadian officials asked for — or received — any briefings from a Clinton campaign representative outlining her plans on NAFTA, a spokeswoman for the prime minister offered a response Friday.

"The answer is no, they did not," said Harper spokeswoman Sandra Buckler.

That response will come as a relief to the Clinton campaign, which has angrily denied that it has engaged in the kind of double-talking hypocrisy of which it accuses Mr. Obama.

The so-called NAFTA-gate affair took a bizarre twist this week that threatened to ensnare Ms. Clinton after having already damaged Mr. Obama at a critical phase of the U.S. election.

Mr. Obama had stinging criticism for the North American Free Trade Agreement while campaigning two weeks ago in Ohio. That rust belt state has lost thousands of jobs and the unions courted by Mr. Obama have blamed the trade pact for their job losses. Ms. Clinton was also unsparing in her criticism of NAFTA, stating flatly that the United States should withdraw from the agreement if it could not be renegotiated.

Suggestions of hypocrisy cost Mr. Obama critical votes in the Ohio and Texas primary — both of which were won by Ms. Clinton — and put a stop to his streak of a dozen straight primary wins.

The Associated Press obtained a Canadian government memo that suggested Austan Goolsbee, Mr. Obama's senior economic policy adviser, met Canadian diplomats the consulate in Chicago last month.

It was revealed this week that Mr. Harper's chief of staff Ian Brodie initially tipped off CTV News to the story on Feb. 26, when in an off-the-cuff conversation he suggested Ms. Clinton's attacks on NAFTA were less than sincere.

After investigating the story, CTV reported the next day that the Clinton and Obama campaigns had both offered Canada assurances that they would leave NAFTA untouched. Both camps issued denials.

But Mr. Obama's campaign was further torpedoed by the leak of the diplomatic memo. Mr. Goolsbee insists the Canadian memo mischaracterized his position.

Mr. Harper has called in an investigation unit to find out who leaked the document to the American media — a probe that will see government employees interviewed and their electronic records searched.

But the opposition says that's not good enough.

They want Mr. Brodie fired or suspended for his alleged indiscretions.

And they want the Mounties called in to determine whether any security-of-information laws were broken — just like they were called in when a junior staffer at Environment Canada allegedly leaked climate-change documents to the media last year.

NDP Leader Jack Layton says this incident is far worse.

"It created a political storm," Mr. Layton said.

"It has changed the dynamic of the U.S. primary for the Democratic party and it has given a club to the Republican candidate which he can use time and time again to go after whether it's Senator Clinton or Senator Obama."

The revelations about Mr. Brodie's conversation with CTV have left a key unanswered question that holds some implications for the U.S. election.

Sources who overheard that conversation say he specifically mentioned that Canadian diplomats did get assurances from the Clinton camp — and he never raised Mr. Obama's name.

That begs the question: why was Ms. Clinton's name raised at all?

Mr. Brodie does not deny downplaying the Democrats' anti-NAFTA rhetoric in a conversation with CTV, but he says he cannot recall mentioning any specific presidential candidate.

Ms. Clinton's team reacted furiously to the Brodie story and offered the Canadian government "blanket immunity" to publicly release the name of any campaign official who might have offered such back-channel assurances.