Prime Minister Stephen Harper has suggested he is widening an investigation into a leaked diplomatic memo that has caused cross-border furor over the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Harper made the suggestion on Thursday in the House of Commons, where opposition MPs hounded the government over the reports of the apparent involvement of Ian Brodie -- the prime minister's chief of staff -- in the so-called NAFTA-gate affair.
NDP Leader Jack Layton claimed Brodie interfered in the U.S. Democratic primaries, saying he may have leaked damaging information.
"This was clear involvement in American politics," said Layton.
"So will the prime minister show some backbone and show Mr. Brodie the door immediately?"
"I'm not going to comment on rumours," Harper responded.
On Tuesday, Harper told the House of Commons that Brodie wasn't responsible for the leak of the memo -- which observers say harmed the campaign of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, who lost recently to Hillary Clinton in the Ohio and Texas primaries.
The memo claimed that a senior adviser to Obama told Canadian diplomats that the presidential candidate isn't serious about renegotiating the NAFTA trade deal -- and suggested comments Obama would make on NAFTA are more about political posturing than a real policy plan.
The Clinton campaign used the reports to claim Obama was making false promises to win votes.
The prime minister had previously said the probe into the leak would only involve the Foreign Affairs Department. On Thursday, he suggested the investigation would widen with an internal security investigation.
"The Clerk of the Privy Council will inquire into the entire affair. We're going to investigate this entire matter and take whatever action is deemed to be necessary based on the facts that we are able to discover."
Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, meanwhile, accused Harper of protecting his chief of staff and avoiding the issue. He reminded the House that Harper on Tuesday denied Brodie was the source of the leak
"Was the prime minister misleading the House, or was his chief of staff misleading him?" asked Dion.
Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff went on to accuse the government of trying to "skew the vote in Ohio." "We have found that their partisan games have gone international," Ignatieff told the Commons.
Harper said the Liberal questioning "completely misses the story," and complimented the NDP leader for asking "solid questions" to which the probe will find answers.
Later on Â鶹´«Ã½net's Mike Duffy Live, Layton repeated his call for Harper to apologize for damaging remarks made by his chief of staff.
"Here is a Canadian prime minister's office, taking a step and casting aspersions on a presidential candidate, a Democrat, in the United States," said Layton.
"It clearly had an effect on the (primary) results in the U.S., and for another country to intervene in such a fashion is completely unacceptable."
Layton, whose questioning on the matter in the House of Commons have been posted on Obama's campaign website, appeared Thursday night on CNN's Lou Dobbs to discuss the NAFTA deal. He described it as a pro-business deal that is bad for the middle class.
He said Canada exports logs to China, where it is milled and then turned into products that are often shipped back to Canadians -- and some of the products don't meet safety standards. He made his call for "fair and sustainable trade."
"What a wonderful expression, 'fair and sustainable trade,'" Dobbs told Layton.
