A Tory insider and close confidante of the prime minister says he's sorry for suggesting Governor General Michaelle Jean can't be trusted to be impartial in a constitutional crisis.
In an online article published Tuesday, Tom Flanagan questioned Jean's political sympathies, and he described her as a politically inexperienced broadcaster chosen by former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin.
"Could Mr. Harper count on fair treatment from this Governor General in a constitutional crisis?" wrote Flanagan in C2C: Canada's Journal of Ideas.
"Suppose he was defeated in the House and asked for dissolution of Parliament and a new election? Would she comply with his request, or would she accept his resignation and then invite the Liberal leader to form a government?"
Jean hasn't commented publicly on Flanagan's attack, but the University of Calgary professor followed up his comment Wednesday afternoon with an on-air apology on CTV's Mike Duffy Live.
"Several well informed people have said to me that they don't agree with (my comments)," Flanagan said in an interview with Duffy.
"They think Madame Jean's impartiality is without question, and I think I'd like to take the opportunity to apologize to her if I have questioned her impartiality."
Flanagan, who was Harper's former leadership campaign manager and 2004 election campaign director, said it was an "abstract possibility" that Jean would make such a partisan move as he suggested in his article.
"But her record doesn't make us think that she wouldn't be fair," he said.
"So you know, sometimes I'm wrong. I guess about once every hour I'm wrong, so I'll take the opportunity to admit it."
Flanagan's article coincides with the release of "Harper's Team," his revealing book which outlines key strategies used in the past two federal election campaigns. One of those strategies was an effective , a technique which Flanagan said the party learned the hard way.
"We learned it from the masters. ... We learned it from the Liberals who crucified us with negative ads in 2004," said Flanagan.
"I think we responded well in 2006. I would call them fact-based ads really, rather than negative ad ads. We just took statements that Paul Martin or other leading Liberals have made and played those statements as part of the ad.
"Call it negative if you like, but it's political hardball, and the other parties play it against us and I think we have no choice but to respond."
The Liberals let loose on Wednesday their own response to Flanagan's book. Liberal Leader Stephane Dion suggested the book is proof that Harper and his Tory government have a hidden, right-wing agenda -- a claim the Liberals under Martin used to great effect in the 2004 election.
"This hidden agenda will be stopped," Dion told reporters after a Liberal caucus meeting on Wednesday.
"This hidden agenda, confirmed again by a close advisor of the prime minister, Mr. Tom Flanagan, (confirms) that if there were a majority government, they would be a Thatcherite government, a Reagan government, a Bush government. It is written in it."
Dion said those changes will start with the elimination of the gun registry, the Canadian Wheat Board, and agricultural supply management.
Duceppe also joined in on the hidden-agenda charge.
"What does (Harper) want to do with Afghanistan, first of all? We don't know," he said. "When you don't say what you have to say, you have a hidden agenda."
Flanagan called the opposition's claims "pathetic."
"They used to attack me when I was (Harper's) campaign manager and nobody cared. And now they're attacking me when I'm back at the university and I'm not even connected to Mr. Harper anymore," Flanagan told Duffy.
"All I said in the book was that in order to do well in politics, we have to appeal to the moderate centre. That's not exactly news. That's what Mr. Harper said at the time of the (Alliance-Progressive Conservative) merger and that's all I've said in the book."
Flanagan wrote in C2C magazine that the government has failed so far to dismantle the wheat board and gun registry because it does not have a parliamentary majority.
But in his online article, he also points to Canadian contentment as another key factor that could prevent the Tories from initiating drastic change right away.
Unlike Thatcher's Britain and Reagan's America -- as well as Ralph Klein's Alberta, and Mike Harris's Ontario -- Flanagan writes that Canadians are generally happy and aren't in the mood for any radical changes.
"Stephen Harper . . . was not voted into office on any great wave of discontent," Flanagan wrote.
"Canadians were troubled by Liberal corruption, and they were not impressed by Paul Martin's incoherent style of leadership, but they did not perceive Canada as being in deep trouble.
"Indeed, after some difficult years in the 1990s, the first decade of the 21st century has been a good one for Canada."
Flanagan also says historically low unemployment, a high dollar, a clean government balance sheet, and a weakened separatist movement are other reasons the Conservatives can't move too quickly on sweeping change.
"Mr. Harper would be quickly defeated in Parliament and in the next election if he undertook a Thatcher-like program to beat back a crisis that Canadian voters are unaware of," he wrote.
With a report from the Canadian Press
