Tories show video to play up Dion's language difficulties TheStar.com - Federal Election -
TOM HANSON/THE CANADIAN PRESS
Reporters covering the Conservative Party campaign view a television interview by Liberal leader Stephane Dion that the Tories provided outside the press room in Winnipeg, Oct. 9, 2008.
October 09, 2008 Tonda MacCharlesOttawa Bureau
WINNIPEG–Conservative leader Stephen Harper emerged shortly after a broadcast interview aired showing Liberal leader Stéphane Dion struggling in English to grasp a simple economic question, suggesting his answers showed he was unfit to lead the country.
Harper moved quickly to exploit what the Conservatives said is a damning, embarrassing piece of tape, in which Dion asked for three takes to answer what he would have done about the economy if he were prime minister now.
Harper told reporters that: "When you're managing a trillion-and-a-half-dollar economy, you don't get a chance to do do-overs, over and over again."
Harper said it shows that Dion and the Liberal party "really don't know what they would do about the economy."
"I don't think this is a question of language at all. The question was very clear, it was asked repeatedly. But what's important in the end after all the times the question was put, the answer was, from Mr. Dion, that he does not have a plan, that if he is elected he would spend 30 days trying to create one."
French reporters pointed out that Harper himself had used the incorrect word in French for trillion.
The party arranged for a television set to be brought to the hotel lobby so that party officials and the travelling media could view the scene.
Then, in a first ever for a campaign in which Harper has only made himself available once a day, early on, the campaign delayed its flight, and the Prime Minister met with reporters to say the fact Dion could not grasp a simple economic question betrays his inability to manage the economy.
The interview was aired by ATV, CTV's Atlantic affiliate, and later on by the national political show Mike Duffy Live.
In it, host Steve Murphy asks Dion: "If you were prime minister now, what would you have done about the economy and this crisis that Mr. Harper has not done?"
Dion struggles to understand the question's conditional subjunctive tense.
"If I would have been prime minister two and a half years ago?"
"If you were the prime minister right now?" responds the anchor.
"If I'm elected next Tuesday, this Tuesday is what you're suggesting?" asks Dion.
"No, I'm saying if you hypothetically were prime minister today," Murphy asks.
Dion attempts to answer, stumbling as he describes his 30-day, five point plan for post-election consultations as a "30-50 plan, in fact the plan for the first 80 days once we would have a Liberal government. Can we stop it now," asks Dion. "Because I think I was a bit slow to understand your question. And I don't think it would be good TV."
The anchor agrees to repose the question, and the it descends into a somewhat farcical and embarrassing encounter as Dion and the host try to make themselves understood.
On take two, Dion says: "Again I don't understand the question, because you ask me to be prime minister at which moment? Today? Or since a week or 60 weeks?"
Dion asks for a third take, and tries to understand as an aide explains off-camera what the question is. "Yes but if I would have been prime minister two years ago, I would have had an agenda," he says to his aide. "Let's start again."
On the third "Thank you for coming" by the host Steve Murphy, both Dion and Murphy chuckle and start over a fourth time.
"Give me a first day where I am prime minister that I can figure out what is your question is about," says Dion.
The television station said the Liberal party had asked ATV not to air the tape, but the CTV affiliate, and the national political show Mike Duffy Live played the whole thing.
Once Murphy asks the question again, Dion says: "I will assume that I have been elected today prime minister. The first thing I would do is to consult with the Privy Council office, minister of finance to know exactly in which situation we are according their data."
From that point on, Dion slips more comfortably back into his usual platform speech.
A senior Conservative official said it sounded like something "worthy of an SNL (Saturday Night Live) skit."
Earlier in the day, Harper had hardened his political message to move critical voter support in the final stretch of the campaign.
The Conservative leader conjured up what he believes Canadians will see as a scary prospect: "Prime Minister Dion."
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