Canadians have seen and heard their share of gaffes

Ashley Terry
Canwest News Service

A Conservative party official said Sunday that leader Stephen Harper would not be answering questions from reporters. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)

Two days before the election, a Conservative party official said leader Stephen Harper would not be answering questions from reporters.

The official was quick to note that the decision was not being made to avoid gaffes in the final hours, but because the Prime Minister had a tight schedule.

When he was still taking questions from the press, Harper avoided any major missteps that could have threatened his campaign. Instead, his team filled in and dished out a few gaffes themselves.

The infamous puffin that appeared pooping on Dion on a Conservative website kicked off the campaign, and Harper doled out the first Tory apology. Only two days later, Harper’s communications director Ryan Sparrow apologized for saying criticism of the Prime Minister by a dead soldier’s father was politically motivated.

The Conservatives had five gaffe-free days before Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz’s tasteless comments came to light and Canadians heard Conservative apology No. 3.

The next day, officials in Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon’s office told aboriginal protestors they could meet with Cannon “if you behave and if you’re sober” – apology No. 4.

Before the end of September, two Conservative candidates had resigned and Canadians heard apology No. 5 from the Tory camp, this time from staffer Owen Lippert. He lifted an Australian speech on the war in Iraq and gave it to Harper to read in the House of Commons in 2003.

Harper himself took some heat for his comments about the floundering economy and Dion’s flubbed CTV interview two days before the moratorium on questions. But with the campaigns at an end, it appears the Conservative team should not have been muzzling Harper, but that he should have been muzzling them.

The Liberals had a slightly better record, but had a few gaffes of their own. Grit staffers, assailed for being disorganized and unprepared for this election, managed to avoid saying or doing anything worthy of apology. Their candidates, however, did not.

Liberal candidate Ricardo Lopez pulled out of the Beauharnois-Salaberry riding over comments he made about aboriginals and on the same day, Simon Bedard quit his Quebec riding over comments he wrote about aboriginals in the Oka crisis.

The Liberals dumped candidate Lesley Hughes after she apologized for an article she wrote several years ago saying there was a 9/11 conspiracy and Israeli businesses were alerted before the attacks.

The NDP also lost three candidates to gaffes. Two Vancouver candidates quit after they were shown in videos using illegal drugs, and candidate Julian West quit after a complaint emerged alleging he exposed himself to young women 12 years ago. 

But all of the parties emerged without the kind of major, campaign-ending gaffe that Canadians have seen in the past.

Harper’s comments about Dion’s CTV interview fail to compare to the Conservative attack ads on Jean Chretien that essentially killed Kim Campbell’s flailing campaign in 1993. The ads were interpreted by many as an attack on Chretien’s facial deformity rather than his competence and the Liberals cried foul – as they have done this time around – citing Dion’s hearing problem.

In the debates where he was literally attacked from all sides, Harper avoided looking like John Turner in the 1984 leaders’ debate, where a flustered Turner lost the election by failing to explain Trudeau patronage appointments.

Even puffingate was tame compared to a Tory communications department gaffe during the 2004 campaign – a press release with an overzealous headline that accused Paul Martin of supporting child pornography. The Tories retracted the headline but Harper refused to retract the release and the Conservative campaign went from professional to ugly.

Visually, there was nothing on par with Robert Stanfield’s famous football fumble in 1974 on a North Bay, Ont. tarmac as his plane was refuelled. There wasn’t even anything to compare to Harper’s leather cowboy outfit of 2005, or Duceppe’s photo op at a cheese factory in 1997 where he sported a hairnet that looked like a shower cap.

When it comes to gaffes, although the Tories ended up with egg on their faces more than any other party during the campaign, Canadians have seen much worse.