With Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologizing to the Obama campaign for the leak of a memorandum on a meeting between his economic adviser and a Canadian consulate official, the Nafta-gate story is just getting stranger.
Take, for example, this story from Toronto’s Globe and Mail:
What is now a swirling Canada-U.S. controversy began on Feb. 26, when the usually circumspect [Ian] Brodie [Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Harper] was milling among droves of Canadian media on budget day in the stately old building that once housed Ottawa’s train station.
Reporters were locked up there all day, examining the federal budget until they were allowed to leave once it was tabled in the House of Commons at 4 p.m.
Since the budget contained little in the way of headline-grabbing surprises, some were left with enough free time to gather around a large-screen TV to watch the latest hockey news on NHL trade deadline day.
Mr. Brodie wandered over to speak to Finance Department officials and chatted amiably with journalists — who appreciated this rare moment of direct access to the top official in Mr. Harper’s notoriously tight-lipped government.
The former university professor found himself in a room with CTV employees where he was quickly surrounded by a gaggle of reporters while other journalists were within earshot of other colleagues.
At the end of an extended conversation, Mr. Brodie was asked about remarks aimed by the Democratic candidates at Ohio’s anti-NAFTA voters that carried serious economic implications for Canada.
Since 75 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S., Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton’s musings about reopening the North American free-trade pact had caused some concern.
Mr. Brodie downplayed those concerns.
“Quite a few people heard it,” said one source in the room.
“He said someone from (Hillary) Clinton’s campaign is telling the embassy to take it with a grain of salt. . . That someone called us and told us not to worry.”
Government officials did not deny the conversation took place.
And then CTV ran with it but, somehow, instead of focusing on what was an apparent communication between the Clinton campaign and the Canadian Embassy, they focused on the Goolsbee meeting in Chicago.
If there is something going on here, it started with Hillary, not Barack.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Shame (again) on the American media! Only MSNBC has reported this story showing that it was the Clinton’s who made contact with the Canadian government and initiated what they so hypocritically call NAFTA-Gate. Good to see belowthebeltway pick up on it.
This story has been all over the Canadian media today (Just as all the phoniness of the ‘evidence’ for invading Iraq was widely covered in Canada). What’s the matter with the American media!