Prime Minister Stephen Harper takes part in a press conference on the final day of the G8 Summit in L'Aquila, Italy on Friday July 10, 2009.Sean Kilpatrick
Prime Minister Stephen Harper held up Canada as a model of accountability and restraint Friday at the close of a G8 summit - then had to issue an apology for falsely slagging a domestic political opponent on the international stage.
Mr. Harper closed out the three-day Group of Eight meetings with a ringing demand for the world's major industrialized countries to make realistic promises and then fulfill them.
"It's not just a moral question," Mr. Harper said after referencing issues from climate change to African aid.
"When we as the G8 make commitments and we don't fulfill them, this undercuts the credibility of our process. And that is a serious problem."
As host of next year's summit in Huntsville, Ont., Mr. Harper said Canada wants to see accountability near the top of the agenda.
His message of rectitude was undermined, however, by a nasty, personal tirade in both official languages against Michael Ignatieff.
The Prime Minister teed off on the Liberal Leader for allegedly suggesting Canada could be excluded from some future international summitry.
"Mr. Ignatieff is supposed to be a Canadian," chided Mr. Harper, a message perfectly in tune with current Conservative attack ads that question Mr. Ignatieff's links to Canada.
Mr. Harper and an aide both later apologized because the comments in question were not Mr. Ignatieff's.
The Prime Minister's errant detour into domestic mudslinging took the shine off what was otherwise a good day for the Canadian government.
International aid groups offered relative praise to Canada for actually meeting previously set G8 targets on increasing aid to Africa.
"Canada's doubled its aid, but it needs to set a new, more ambitious target into the future," said Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam Canada.
"For the other countries, quite frankly, their performance varies from poor to - in the case of France and Italy - borders on the criminal."
"Africa has got short shrift at this G8 and so there's a real expectation that next year in Muskoka they will deliver," Mr. Fox added.
The Prime Minister made no promises for the 2010 agenda, but he did repeatedly sound a note of determined realism.
"Every year I've come to the G8 - actually far less so this year - but in the past every year we came here and we were under pressure to make more commitments," said Mr. Harper, who was attending his fourth such summit.
"This is how some countries ... try and cover the fact the they haven't fulfilled their commitments, by making a bigger commitment."
He said Canada has a reputation for making modest promises and then keeping them - although Mr. Harper couldn't resist pointing out the notable exception of Canada's Liberal-based Kyoto targets on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
As for African aid, Mr. Harper bluntly responded that he heard no convincing reason from other leaders why they haven't fulfilled the promises they made four years ago at the G8 summit in Scotland.
"I haven't heard any explanation on that. I'm not trying to single out countries here, but we've been very clear that, if anything, we will be taking the accountability theme ... in terms of G8 commitments to the next step next year."