The Bow Valley’s federal representative in Ottawa is facing increased pressure to apologize for remarks he made in the House of Commons about his opponent in the upcoming 2015 election.
Progressive Conservative Blake Richards, who represents the riding of Banff-Airdrie, made remarks earlier this month in the House based on quotes attributed to Liberal candidate Marlo Raynolds in a column by Sun Media commentator Brian Lilley.
Richards also used the statements in a fundraising letter sent out in the riding to drum up financial support.
The comments were secretly recorded at a meeting held in Canmore by Raynolds, however, were actually said by resident Tam McTavish, and not Raynolds.
Sun Media has since corrected the wrongly attributed statements, however, Richards has not publicly addressed the fact that his statement in the house and the fundraising letter are incorrect or apologized to the Liberal candidate.
Raynolds said the whole situation could have been avoided if Sun Media double-checked its sources and questioned how much more evidence Richards needs to correct the record.
“I honestly don’t understand why he wants this to follow him right through the election,” he said Wednesday (Nov. 26) in an interview with the Outlook. “I decided to enter into this race because I felt that we had lost some of the common elements all Canadians really want to see in politics, like a basic level of honesty, integrity and just being courteous – good ol’ Canadian courtesy. If we can bring that back to politics I think we can get to a much better space for making good decisions.”
CBC identified the young woman who secretly recorded the conversation between Raynolds, McTavish and another man as Alexandra Constantinidis, a former parliamentary assistant to Conservative MP Rob Anders.
Richards did not respond to a request for an interview and his Facebook page still has the post of his statement in the house on it.
On Tuesday (Nov. 25) during question period, Liberals demanded the four Conservatives who used the comments to accuse Raynolds and Liberals of not trusting parents to spend tax savings on their children, including Richards and Employment Minister Jason Kenney, apologize.
Raynolds said he would like to put the situation behind him and focus on debating the issues in the next election. However, he expressed serious concern about being secretly recorded by a Conservative operative while trying to have open discussion with residents.
“For me, the whole component of having a person secretly record me and leaking it to the media, that whole part of it does not encourage open discussion,” he said. “That kind of atmosphere again is not a healthy atmosphere for really trying to tackle the issues. Politics seems to be about attacking people as opposed to attacking the problem.”
