Canada's Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt speaks during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa June 8, 2009.CHRIS WATTIE
Prime Minister Stephen Harper "has confidence" in Lisa Raitt and dismisses the furor surrounding the Natural Resources Minister as "cheap politics."
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff stopped short of calling for Ms. Raitt's resignation Tuesday, saying that is an issue Mr. Harper.
"I think Canadians are disappointed," he said in the wake of the public release of a recording in which in which the Natural Resources Minister disparages a cabinet colleague and describes the isotope crisis as a "sexy" story.
"The deal is if you play these remarks to a woman awaiting a cancer test and her doctor is telling her she can't have a cancer test because Chalk River is shut down and the government had 18 months to do something about it, and didn't do something about it, what does she think about a minister saying, 'Oh, this is a sexy file. I'm going to secure promotion handling this issue,'" Mr. Ignatieff said as he left the Chateau Laurier hotel after delivering a speech to the Teamsters convention.
"[Ms. Raitt]hasn't handled it at all. We have no alternative supply for isotopes. We don't make cheap politics out of this. This is a health-care crisis. And the bottom line is: Is that woman waiting for treatment being treated decently by this government? And what they are getting is this kind of cynical, arrogant, 'this is a good career move.' It is not a good day for Canadian politics."
In Question Period, Mr. Harper dismissed the attacks, saying Ms. Raitt has been at the forefront of trying to sort out the isotope shortage and "no one has worked harder" to solve the problem.
Earlier, his spokesman, Kory Teneycke, said the tape controversy is not the issue that Canadians are concerned about.
"What everyone agrees is that the serious issues are the challenges with the Chalk River reactor and the shortage of medical isotopes," Mr. Teneycke told the Globe and Mail on Tuesday morning. "That's what the public expects us to work on, that's what we are going to be spending our time working on."
Mr. Teneycke said it is no surprise that opposition MPs "are going to try to make political hay out of what was an embarrassing private conversation." But it is important to consider what was said in context, he said, adding that Ms. Raitt's comments about isotopes were made "in a much different time and a much different place."
The conversation that was captured on the audiotape took place in January - long before the shutdown of the aging reactor at Chalk River that has created a shortage of medical isotopes and jeopardized cancer and heart treatments.
"The Prime Minister has confidence in Minister Raitt," Mr. Teneycke said.
Mr. Ignatieff, meanwhile, refused to comment on the essence of Ms. Raitt's remarks about her colleague, Leona Aglukkaq.
"In a moment of crisis you don't want to have one minister squaring off against another and making cheap comments about another. That's not what Canadians want. They want the Minister of Natural Resources and the Minister of Health to get together, to work together as colleagues and try to get a solution to a health care crisis, because it is a health care crisis."
The recording was made public Monday night, adding new difficulties for a minister who is accused of racking up big expense bills in a former job and who lost a staff member over the mishandling of secret documents.
That same former staff member, Jasmine MacDonnell, was the source of the recording, which was apparently made by accident and then ended up in the hands of a reporter.
Lawyers for the 26-year-old argued Monday to keep the material secret, but Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Gerald Moir refused to extend an injunction which prevented the Halifax Chronicle Herald from revealing the recording on the weekend.
On the recording, Ms. Raitt called the medical isotope crisis a "sexy" story because it had "radioactive leaks" and "cancer," the paper reported Monday night.
The minister called into question the competence Ms. Aglukkaq, who was also working to resolve the crisis caused by a shortage of medical isotopes after the recent shutdown of an aging Canadian reactor.
"I'm so disappointed," Ms. Raitt said in the recording posted at the Herald's site. "... She's such a capable woman, but it's hard for her to come out of a co-operative government into this rough-and-tumble. She had a question in the House Monday, or two days ago ... that plant. I really hope she never gets anything hot."
The material was recorded in late January while the Minister and Ms. MacDonnell, who was then her director of communications, were on government business in British Columbia.
With a report from Oliver Moore in Halifax