PM apologizes for Ignatieff attack

Share

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has apologized to Michael Ignatieff for questioning the Liberal Leader's support for Canadian international interests, saying he based his attack on a quote Mr. Ignatieff never uttered.

"During that press conference, I attacked Mr. Ignatieff for some things he had allegedly said about Canada and the G8," Mr. Harper said this afternoon at a wrap-up news conference of the Group of Eight major industrial nations.

"This was not a quotation of Mr. Ignatieff. I regret the error and I apologize to Mr. Ignatieff for the error."

During the news conference, Mr. Harper attacked Mr. Ignatieff, saying he was irresponsible for comments he allegedly made about Canada's position within the Group of Eight industrial nations. Mr. Harper was basing his criticism on a fragmentary quote supplied to him by a staff member before the news conference began. The quote, uttered by an academic, that Mr. Ignatieff is alleged to have said suggested a new configuration of the world's big powers to replace or augment the G8 might leave Canada out.

"Mr. Ignateff is supposed to be a Canadian," Mr. Harper said. "I don't think you go out and float ideas like this that are so obviously contrary to the country's interest and no one else is advocating them."

The Harper Conservatives have attacked Mr. Ignatieff's commitment to Canada in an extensive ad campaign recently for his 34 years away from the country.

"I don't know where he's getting this idea. Nobody, but Mr. Ignatieff, in the world has suggested excluding Canada from a meeting of major countries. Nobody."

"I think it's an irresponsible suggestion. … I would suggest he look carefully at this comments and withdraw those. Frankly, they'd be irresponsible coming from anybody, but they're particularly irresponsible coming from a senior Canadian parliamentarian."

Speaking from London via a spokesman, the Liberal Leader acknowledged the Prime Minister's act of contrition.

"I accept the Prime Minister's apology," Mr. Ignatieff said. "It's unfortunate that these remarks have come at the end of the G8 meeting when Canada's efforts would have been better spent engaging with global leaders on shared issues."

The quote attributed to Mr. Ignatieff reads: "It is really important that Canada be on top [of]this because otherwise … somebody will come up with the idea of creating an entirely new group. A group that would certainly include key countries like China and India, but no particular reason why it would include Canada."

The mix-up occurred when Mr. Harper's press secretary, Dimitri Soudas, misread an e-mailed transcript of a TV interview with University of Victoria foreign policy expert Gordon Smith.

CTV News Channel played a clip of Mr. Ignatieff just before Mr. Smith spoke, and Mr. Soudas read the transcript as though it the words were Mr. Ignatieff's, not Mr. Smith's.

Regardless of who uttered them, Mr. Smith said Friday, the comments were not knocking Canada.

"It's hardly un-Canadian," he said. "I think what it does is reflect Canadian interests, and the need to ensure that Canadian interests are pursued."

Mr. Smith, a former senior bureaucrat who was deputy minister of foreign affairs, was warning that world leaders are looking to transform the G8 into something that includes major developing countries, and if Canada does not take the lead in changing the summit membership, it could be left out.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called on Canada to expand the G8 to the G14 when it hosts the summit next year, and U.S. President Barack Obama has indicated the world needs to rationalize the tangle of multiple summits.

"Somebody could well develop a case for a new summit membership - which could be six, eight, ten countries, which China and India would be part of, and we would fall out," Mr. Smith said in a telephone interview with The Globe and Mail.

Canada, Mr. Smith noted, only got into the G7 "by the skin of our teeth" because the United States wanted to balance the four European countries.

It was former prime minister Paul Martin who led the call for a G20 summit of leaders, precisely out of fear the G8 was growing out-dated and could be replaced by a new group that did not include Canada, but Mr. Harper seems to have been cool to the idea.

Mr. Soudas, for his part, was also contrite.

"Firstly I have to apologize to the Prime Minister for misinforming him and ill-advising him to attribute a quote to Mr. Ignatieff that is not Mr. Ignatieff's," he said.

"Secondly, and more importantly, I have to apologize to Mr. Ignatieff."

Mr. Soudas said he will accept whatever consequences come to him. He did not say whether he has offered his resignation.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae, meanwhile, said the matter showed Harper's true character.

"I think all Canadians have to recognize that we have the smallest man on the world stage that it's possible to imagine, and that's Stephen Harper," Mr. Rae told CTV.

"He never misses an opportunity to stoop. Not to conquer, just to throw mud."