New details in NAFTA memo leak

All the attention may be on the former foreign affairs minister at the moment,  but there's another important story in the Star today, in Jim Travers' column, which deals with nothing less than suggestions of a high-level cover-up surrounding Canada-U.S. relations.

Travers has exposed a bombshell of a detail, which was glossed over in the government's report on Canada's meddling in the Democratic presidential race in the U.S.

Multiple sources confirmed to Travers that even before a sensitive, diplomatic document found its way to the U.S. media in what's being called (tiresomely) NAFTA-gate, it first landed with a Republican contact, by the name of Frank Sensenbrenner, who has ties to a number of people in the Harper government and even worked briefly at the Canadian embassy.

Why was someone in the Canadian government keen to get this to a Republican source? Why wasn't this little piece of information pursued in the report by Privy Council Clerk Kevin Lynch? 

No doubt Barack Obama will want to know the same things, especially if he becomes president. In the meantime, we here in Canada will  watch for possible answers today in Question Period.

UPDATE: Apparently, the folks at the PMO/PCO are not among nearly half of Canadians who would like to see Obama as president, according to a new Angus Reid poll (.pdf).

Comments

[Darwin O'Connor]

Isn't exposing hypocrisy the duty of all reasonable people, even if it hurts people we would normally support? Even if they did the right thing for the wrong reasons we shouldn't be excessively critical of them.

[Vid]

To Darwin O'Connor: why do you assume that what was leaked was accurately reported by the Conservatives to their Republican friends in the first place? I wouldn't for a second put it past certain people to "embellish" a little. Smearing opponents isn't something Stephen Harper is above - look at the offensive Dion attack ads. And I would criticize such low-level discourse no matter which party it was coming from.

The problem is the whole atmosphere of paranoia, secrecy and control that has overtaken Ottawa since the election of Harper. The consequences hurt us here in Canada as well as internationally.

[Darwin O'Connor]

Vid, that is a very good question, although attacking NAFTA without intending on doing anything about seems like the kind of thing a politician would do. We seem more then our share of that in Canada.

Leaking a lie really would be an interesting scandal. I wish I had some way of contacting a Senior Writer for a newspaper's Ottawa bureau to suggest that angle should be given more focus.