Sorry the hardest word for PM, Goodale

Last Updated: Friday, February 16, 2007 | 9:55 PM ET

CBC News

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has refused to apologize to Liberal MP Ralph Goodale over the income trust scandal, saying instead the Liberals owe the former RCMP commissioner an apology.

Harper made the comments Friday, a day after the RCMP concluded its 14-month investigation into an alleged 2005 leak of income trust tax details. One senior Finance Department bureaucrat was charged with breach of trust.

Liberal MP Ralph Goodale was finance minister when the income trust scandal broke. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has refused to apologize to Goodale.
(Tom Hanson/Canadian Press)

"I actually believe that Mr. Goodale … owes Canadians an apology. You will recall he told Canadians that no one in his office or his department was involved in any kind of activity," Harper said.

Goodale, in turn, told the CBC's Don Newman Friday that he had no intention of apologizing to anyone over the matter, countering that he and his party deserved an apology from all then-opposition MPs, including Harper, who wrongly connected him to the scandal.

"They were deliberately intending to have a political impact … but more importantly to damage reputations, to besmirch the good name of various people, including me," Goodale said.

"If you're not a bully, the decent thing to do is say, 'We were wrong.'"

But Harper said there is no reason to apologize to Goodale or Liberal party.

"In fact, I'd say they owe a particular apology to former [RCMP commissioner] Giuliano Zaccardelli," Harper said.

"You remember that they said there was nothing to this scandal, it was an invention of the RCMP, and I think now that we see someone charged, that frankly only confirms the newspaper headlines that we cite in our advertising campaign."

PM won't pull Quebec ads

A Conservative French-language ad campaign, launched earlier this week, includes a newspaper headline reading: "Goodale's office under investigation."

Goodale called upon Harper to "do the right thing" and pull the "insidious" ads.

"Those ads are now clearly false and he's paying money to purvey false information," Goodale said. "I would think that that should be beneath the prime minister."

But the Conservatives say they have no intention of taking the ads off the air, which led Goodale to say he was pondering possible legal action against the Tories for defamation.

"We will obviously examine whether other options need to be pursued," he said.

Turned tide of election?

The case dates from November 2005, when Goodale, then Liberal finance minister, announced the government wouldn't tax income trusts.

Opposition politicians and many market watchers noticed trading volumes and prices in many income trusts and dividend-paying stocks jumped in the two hours before Goodale made his announcement, and questioned whether the details had somehow been leaked.

A month later — just as the federal election campaign was getting underway — the RCMP announced it had begun an investigation into the allegations. Many believe news of the investigation turned the tide toward a Conservative victory.

At the time, Harper called for Goodale to step down, calling his handling of the finance portfolio "brutally incompetent."

Liberals criticized Zaccardelli and the RCMP for announcing the probe during a federal election campaign. Zaccardelli resigned in late 2006 after admitting he gave misleading testimony to a House of Commons committee into the deportation and imprisonment of Maher Arar.

The RCMP on Thursday concluded the 14-month probe, charging Serge Nadeau, the general director of analysis, tax policy branch in the Finance Department, with breach of trust. The RMCP allege the 50-year-old "used confidential Government of Canada information for the purchase of securities which gave him a personal benefit."