Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Canadian PM Denies Top Aide Leaked Obama NAFTA Memo

The USA is not the only country where the Democrat primary race is causing political waves. It increasingly appears that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have deliberately tried to help the Clinton Campaign agaist Obama since his reactionary political cousins in the GOP greatly prefer Hillary as their opponent come Novemeber. Things are so hot in Canada that the opposition has demanded that Harper's chief of staff be fired. I for one am fed up with winning at politics by dirty tricks. Obama is no saint, but compared to Billary, he's is definitely Mother Theresa. The quickest way toward a beginning of the lessening this kind of cheap shots is to see Hillary knocked out of the primary race. Here are some highlights from CBCNews (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/03/04/harper-obama.html):
Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Tuesday denied the top official in his office leaked a memo of a meeting between an aide to Barack Obama and a Canadian diplomat over the Democratic presidential hopeful's NAFTA position. "It was not my chief of staff," Harper said during question period while under fire from NDP Leader Jack Layton, who demanded Brodie be fired if it is confirmed he tipped off reporters to the details of the meeting."The leak of this particular document is not only regrettable, as the Canadian Embassy in the United States has already said, it is completely unacceptable to this government and we will do our best to find out who did it."
Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae said it was clear the Tories are trying to help Republican friends at the expense of Canadian interests. "They will do what is necessary to help Republicans. They're a nasty, unprincipled bunch, who are incompetent to boot," Rae wrote in a blog. The controversy could play to the Republicans' advantage in November and hurt the Illinois senator in Ohio, a potential swing state where job losses have made the 15-year-old free-trade deal highly unpopular.

Obama and Clinton have both said they want to reopen the free-trade deal between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to ensure better environmental and labour standards.Trade Minister David Emerson and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said U.S. officials should not forget the benefits of the agreement and hinted Canada could respond to a NAFTA pullout by renegotiating U.S. access to Canada's oil.

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