OTTAWA - Various indiscretions caught on audio or videotape became fodder Friday for opposition charges that Stephen Harper's Tories say one thing in public but another in private.
Liberals pounced on an eight-year-old audio recording of Jason Kenney, now secretary of state for multiculturalism, making disparaging remarks about Sikhs.
In the recording, first reported in 2000, Kenney can be heard discussing a rumour that a member of a Canadian Alliance riding association might be a member of a neo-Nazi group. At the time, Kenney was co-chair of the 2000 election campaign for the Alliance, predecessor of the Conservative party.
Kenney suggests the rumour might have been concocted by "overheated Sikhs using the race card, which they so often do when their credentials are being questioned."
In the Commons, Liberals questioned how Kenney can square those eight-year-old comments with his current job as the minister of multiculturalism or with his partisan campaign to woo new Canadians into the Conservative fold.
Kenney made a brief apology before going on to cite similar or worse comments by Liberals and criticizing them for dredging up ancient controversies.
"I did use those remarks in a particular context and I do not think they were appropriate. I expressed regret at the time. I do so again," Kenney said.
But Kenney was only the first of a number of examples raised by the Liberals of Tories caught making unguarded remarks. They also pointed to:
- An audio recording of what appears to be Conservative Senator David Angus saying that Heritage Minister Josee Verner has privately told him she "hates" Bill C-10. Verner has publicly championed the bill, which includes a provision to deny tax credits to films or television productions deemed offensive.
Angus has refused to confirm that he is the person whose voice can be heard on the tape.
- A 1991 videotape that surfaced last week, in which Regina Tory MP Tom Lukiwski refers to homosexuals as "faggots with dirt on their fingernails that spread diseases." Lukiwski has profusely apologized.
- An audio recording of Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirming that Conservative representatives offered "financial considerations" to former independent MP Chuck Cadman in 2005 in an effort to persuade him to vote against the then-Liberal minority government in a crucial confidence test.
Harper has vehemently denied that the terminally ill MP was offered a $1-million life insurance policy, as alleged by his widow.
Liberal MP Bob Rae said Tories need to explain "a pattern in which things are said behind closed doors which are very different from what is said in public."
Liberal House leader Ralph Goodale said "tape recordings are a problem for the government."
"The Conservatives deke and dodge and try to change the subject but they are caught because it is their very own words, unmistakably, on tape."
Tory MP James Moore countered with a scathing recitation of the Liberals' own pattern of behaviour.
"Do members know what else is on tape?" he asked the Commons.
"Liberals supporting our budget, on tape. Liberals supporting our immigration reforms, on tape. Liberals supporting our environment initiatives, on tape. Liberals supporting our tax cuts, on tape."
Peter Van Loan, the government's House leader, scoffed that the Liberals are raising "imaginary scandals" to deflect attention from their refusal to defeat the government on bills that they profess to oppose.
"There is a pattern emerging of a Liberal party that has no policies, takes no positions on issues, does not even bother to vote in this House and raises imaginary scandals one after another," he said.
