With this week’s return of Mike Duffy promising another barrage of banner headlines and awkward campaign-trail questions, Harper struck a defiant tone as he defended putting Canada front and centre in the global fight against militants in Iraq and Syria.
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Prime Minister Harper in Quebec City, and this morning he addressed a group suggesting that he would like to beef up national security by restricting travel to terrorist regions.
A new campaign promise from Stephen Harper’s Conservatives is to make it a criminal offence for Canadians to travel to regions with hostile terrorist activity. Similar laws exist in Australia, which has designated parts of Iraq and Syria as no-travel zones.
Trudeau and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair have previously taken aim at Harper over civil liberty questions arising from the Conservatives’ controversial anti-terrorism law, Bill C-51. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is also in the Toronto-area today while Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is sticking to Montreal.
“Canada is a country that respects people’s rights”, Trudeau said.
But yesterday, Harper told an Ottawa rally that he never told Wright he was, quote, “good to go” with the 90-thousand dollar payment from Wright. “As soon as I learned that, I made that public”.
The organization works to strengthen human rights reporting in countries such as Jordan and South Sudan and that could be impacted, Pulfer said.
Harper said there may be limited legitimate reasons for a Canadian to travel into declared areas, like for humanitarian aid or professional journalism.
Left-wing activist and author Linda McQuaig, a star NDP candidate in Toronto, handed Harper a gift with radical remarks about Alberta’s oilsands.
That is in contrast to Mulcair’s view in which he is open to oilsands development provided there’s rigorous environmental protection. Mulcair does, however, support a west-to-east pipeline for moving oilsands crude to market.
“I don’t for a moment pretend, no leader should ever believe that everything is going to go well”, Harper said.
“Our plan is to kickstart our economy, and to strengthen the middle class”. If the vote is split, they may be forced to get along.
Harper, Trudeau and Mulcair continued to exchange barbs over natural resource development. “Canada’s reputation is being hurt on the world stage, simply because we’ve been working against the planet”.
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“Sustainable development is not a slogan, it’s something that has to become very real”, he said.
