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March 4, 2008
Right Wing Canadian Prime Minister Tied to Leak Slurring Obama
By Rob Kall
yesterday I speculated that there was no reason to trust the Canadian right wing leadership regarding reports of Obama signaling a different message regarding his stand on NAFTA to the Canadian embassy. Today, that speculation is supported by...
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Yesterday, I wrote Do You Trust Bush Appointees? How about his Canadian Right Wingnut Ally's Appointees?I posted it with some trepidation because I’m no expert on Canadian politics.
Today, my judgment was confirmed when I saw on the news, the head of the liberal opposition party, Jack Layton, telling Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper to fire the source of the leak that interfered in the Democratic primary.
To check it out further, I contacted Canada’s NDP (New Democratic Party) and spoke with their press seccretary, Ian Capstick, who agreed, I’d nailed it yesterday, telling me, “There is no reason to trust Mr. Harper.”
Now, the beauty of Canada’s parlaiment is there’s a “Questions Period” when, for 45 minutes, in which government must respond to Opposition questions. Yesterday that meant that Prime Minister Harper had to face questions from NDP leader, Jack Layton:
"The prime minister’s office has been interfering in the democratic primaries, trying to silence Barack Obama, who simply wants to amend the NAFTA. IT is completely unacceptable for that kind of interference to take place. Will the Prime Minister fire the source of the interference, fire his chief of staff.”
Harper gives a tepid reply, avoiding the question of firing his chief of staff., replying he,
“regretted the fact that information has come out that would imply that Senator Obama has been saying different things in public than in private. The government of Canada does not condone this and certainly regrets any implication.”
View the short exchange here:
My contact at the NDP tells me that Layton was referring to Harper’s chief of Staff , Ian Brodie, who BBC identified as the source of the leak.
The International Herald Tribune reported,
Harper told Parliament he was amused by the suggestion "we are so all powerful that we could interfere in the American election and pick their president for them. This government doesn't claim that kind of power. I certainly deny any allegation that this government has attempted to interfere in the American election."
Sandra Buckler, a Harper spokeswoman, denied Monday that Brodie or anyone in Harper's office leaked word of the memo or meeting.
Harper and the Canadian Embassy, meanwhile, expressed regret about how the discussions from the memo have been interpreted. Embassy officials said in a statement "there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA."
Bob Shrum, who has advised former Democratic presidential candidates, accused Canada's Conservatives of "actively interfering" in the U.S. election campaign on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday.
"You've got a right-wing government in Canada that is trying to help the Republicans and is out there actively interfering in this campaign," Shrum said.
Analysts in Canada believe Harper does not want a Democrat in the White House, a development that could encourage Canadian voters to cast their ballots for a more liberal government in an election that will be held before 2010.
Harper said last week that the United States should not reopen talks on NAFTA and warned that reopening trade negotiations could lead to Canada raising some matters of its own.
The NDP Press Secretary, Capstick, reported, “Our leader will continue to demand the resignation of the Prime Minister’s chief Ian Brodie, who BBC news alleges was the source of the leak. “
He described the sequence of events from the Canadian side:George Rioux , consul general in Chicago, had a meeting with Mr. Goolsbee. That meeting was written up in a diplomatic cable. That diplomatic, we believe, would have been marked secret. That cable would have then been sent to Washington D.C., where our conservative ambassador there, the former finance minister for a conservative government here in Canada, Michael Wilson, who has scandals of his very own, I might add, then had a conversation and passed diplomatic cables to the chief of staff, allegedly passed the information to our chief of staff Ian Brody. Mr. Brody then passed it along to Canadian News media, thereby creating quite the storm in Ohio.
We haven’t seen the memo. ABC news has. They are the ones who have received the memo."
ABC reported, in an AP article by Nedra Pickler:According to the memo obtained by The Associated Press, Obama's senior economic adviser told Canadian officials in Chicago that the debate over free trade in the Democratic presidential primary campaign was "political positioning" and that Obama was not really protectionist.
The adviser, Austan Goolsbee, said his comments to those officials were misinterpreted by the author, Joseph DeMora, who works for the Canadian consulate in Chicago and attended the meeting.
The memo says: "Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign."
It went on: "He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."
Goolsbee disputed the characterization.
"This thing about 'it's more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,' that's this guy's language," Goolsbee said of DeMora. "He's not quoting me.
"I certainly did not use that phrase in any way," he said.
The source of the information that has worked it’s way into the Dem primary needs be identified and fired, by Mr. Harper and that we need, as Obama and Clinton have suggested, that we need to re-negotiate, take another look at NAFTA . We need NAFTA 2.0."
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
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He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
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more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
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Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table
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