Conservative hypocrisy more damaging than the message: Harper
While in government, the Conservatives were the first to howl “treason” when other parties spoke out south of the border — just as the Tories did last week on the Omar Khadr file.
Let’s cast back a few years, to a long-forgotten episode in the life of the last Stephen Harper government.
Tom Mulcair, then the country’s Opposition leader, landed in Washington for meetings, and in the course of his visit he outlined the NDP view of the Keystone XL pipeline.
He told an American audience that his priority for Canadian energy was an east-west pipeline, that Keystone would export Canadian jobs and the NDP would do a better job than Harper in building support for pipelines.
The Conservative government of the day reacted as if Mulcair should be shipped back north of the border in leg irons and shackles.
A senior minister of the day, John Baird, accused Mulcair of “trash talking” and “badmouthing” Canada. Another former minister, Joe Oliver, marched to the microphones in the Commons foyer to denounce Mulcair for not leaving politics at the border. He also took to the keyboard for the Globe and Mail to tell the country “a responsible politician would not travel to a foreign capital to score cheap political points.”
Baird and Oliver are gone, but Michelle Rempel and Peter Kent were part of that government. It appears they missed Oliver’s op-ed.
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