An hour and a half before Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion unveiled his platform this morning Liberal candidates got a sneak peek.

It was a chance for them to get a jump-start on questions they will likely face in their home ridings in the coming days.

James Fitz-Morris

Some community organizations were also invited to participate by conference call — so we may never know who recorded and then leaked the call.

What we do know is the briefer was Liberal MP John McCallum, who, before deciding to run for politics, was the chief economist of a big bank.

And judging by the answers he provided fellow candidates, McCallum perhaps spent very little time with his communications people.

Some examples of the exchanges on the tape:

[After a question on social housing]

MACALLUM: And on the question of housing, thank you, it's on Page 40. [Sounds like he's reading] A Liberal government will tackle the housing crisis by helping to provide for 30,000 new social housing units and refurbishing another 30,000 existing units.

[Some discussions as people search for page]

Unidentified voice#1: OK… So we're not calling for a national housing strategy … we're just creating more housing units, but we're not going that far?

MCCALLUM [Sharp breath in, pause]: "Well, I suppose you could call it a national housing strategy… but we're committing to…"

[Chuckles around table]

MCCALLUM: "But we're committing to those specific numbers of units…"

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE#2: "We definitely have a strategy…"

[laughter]

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE #1: "Thank God!"

And then there was discussion about the platform's bottom line:

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE#1: "What's the total package worth?"

MCCALLUM: "15-and-a-half-billion dollars over five years… but that's a little bit misleading because…

"That's the truth, what I've just said, but that counts the Green Shift for nothing because the Green Shift is revenue neutral."

Note to McCallum: you may not want to encourage fellow candidates to call the platform "misleading" when they are campaigning door-to-door. You can be sure you opponents will take care of that.

—James Fitz-Morris