Canada’s Government is Interfering in U.S. Election, Says Strategist

WASHINGTON – Canada’s Conservatives are "actively interfering" in the U.S. election campaign by floating the notion that Barack Obama isn’t serious when he says he’ll renegotiate NAFTA, a Democratic strategist said Sunday.

Bob Shrum, who has advised former presidential candidates, told NBC’s Meet the Press that he thinks the Canadian government is trying to help Republican John McCain reach the White House.

"You’ve got a right-wing government in Canada that is trying to help the Republicans and is out there actively interfering in this campaign," said Shrum.

It was the latest round in a cross-border controversy that has ballooned from a news report citing anonymous sources.

Last week, CTV News reported that aides for Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton told Canadian officials not to worry about the strong anti-NAFTA rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Any suggestion that Obama and Clinton aren’t serious about their pledge to reopen the trade deal could hurt them with voters at a critical time in the presidential nomination race.

The Canadian Embassy in Washington has flatly denied there were any such conversations.

"In none of our conversations has any campaign adviser ever signalled that a candidate would say things that they didn’t mean or that we should disregard," the embassy said in a statement Friday.

Obama has personally denied the report. Clinton, in a statement over the weekend, reaffirmed her commitment to changing NAFTA while questioning Obama’s sincerity.

The report originally said lower-level Clinton aides spoke to unnamed Canadian officials.

But the focus has been on Obama because CTV said someone in his camp spoke directly to Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson in Washington. They later amended that to say it was an aide who spoke to Canada’s consul general in Chicago.

Obama’s senior economic policy adviser said Canadian government officials wrote an inaccurate portrayal of his private discussion on the campaign’s trade policy in a memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The memo is the first documentation to emerge publicly out of the meeting between the adviser, Austan Goolsbee, and officials with the Canadian consulate in Chicago but Goolsbee said it misinterprets what he told them.

Goolsbee disputed a section that described Obama’s statements on the NAFTA as "more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

"I certainly did not use that phrase in any way," Goolsbee said.

The story became a political football as the Democratic camps try to woo Ohio voters who blame NAFTA for severe job losses. The Ohio primary Tuesday is pivotal in determining who wins the nomination.

Both Clinton and Obama have promised to reopen the trade agreement to include protections for workers and the environment.

McCain, meanwhile, has accused the Democrats of doubletalk. And he said last week that Canada could pull its military support from Afghanistan if Obama or Clinton insisted on reopening NAFTA.

In Ottawa, the Liberals have cited the story as evidence the Prime Minister’s Office is trying to sink the Democrats’ chances in the election.

Despite the denials from all sides, and the changing nature of the original news report, the issue has mushroomed to the point where it could be harmful for Canada, said Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae.

"If Senator Obama wins, he will remember this incident," he said in a statement on his website.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier fired back Sunday, saying the U.S. presidential election is a decision for Americans alone.

"The last time we checked, Mr. Obama is currenty running against another Democrat," he said in a statement.

"The Liberals, again, are looking for a straw man to deflect attention from their weak and out-of-touch leader."

(With files from The Associated Press)