During a closed-door roundtable with Toronto media, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his hard line on foreign policy is being undermined by Canadian bureaucrats and diplomats.
The Toronto Star obtained a recording of the prime minister made at a June 15 roundtable with ethnic-Toronto media.
Harper complained at length about the reluctance of public servants to defend his stance on foreign policy, the newspaper reported.
Specifically, Harper's comments came in response to questions about his 2006 decision to recognize the deaths of about 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in 1915 as genocide.
"What is not acceptable, and it does happen on occasion, is for a public servant to say, `That may be the position of the elected guys, but that's not the position of the government,'" Harper said in the meeting.
The head of the union representing Canada's foreign service said he was "shocked" about the prime minister's comments and that Harper had not made any formal complaints in the past.
The move was touted as a significant departure from previous governments and so angered the Turkish government that it recalled its ambassador to Canada and pulled out of a May 2006 joint military exercise.
Turkey has long upheld a position of denial, saying the mass killings were not a systemic genocide, but part of broader ethnic clashes as Armenians sided with Russia during the First World War.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry issued a stern statement in April 2006 stating it "regretted" Harper's remarks over the killings that occurred more than eight decades ago.
"Statements concerning disputed historic events by foreign parliaments or governments nearly a century later will not change the nature of what happened in reality," the statement said.
"Such statements do not contribute to the environment of dialogue between Turkey and Armenia, and have a negative effect on Turkish-Canadian relations," it added. "The stagnation of relations between the two countries after the Canadian Parliament's decision ... is the clearest example of this."
In 2004, the House of Commons voted 153 to 68 to adopt the Bloc Qu锟絙锟絚ois motion which stated, "This House acknowledges the Armenian genocide of 1915 and condemns this act as a crime against humanity."
During the June 15 roundtable, Harper compared his struggle with public servants and garnering support for foreign policy to the difficulty of captaining a massive ship making a tight turn.
Harper said shifting Canada's foreign policy takes great force and requires ample amounts of time.
"Canada's recognition of the Armenian genocide, frankly, was a major change in policy for the foreign service of Canada, not an easy one to understand," he confided. "It has been difficult for some people."
Harper said it's difficult for public servants to become accustomed to a new government's policies when it has defended the previous government's stance for years.
"That's difficult for them because they tend to believe in what they've been doing," he said.
"All I can say is this: The way we overcome this is to provide very strong direction."
