As Stephen Taylor noted, last weekend conservatives from across the country met in Ottawa for the annual Civitas society conference. Civitas is an organization of professors, activists, journalists and many others who gather once a year for a series of panel discussions on current affairs issues. (As Stephen wrote, the contents of the meeting are strictly off-the-record, so it was disappointing that the content of one speech ended up in a news story. A former editor of the National Post once tried to force me to write a feature story about the society and what goes on at the meetings, to which I refused.)
Anyway, I ended up getting interviewed by the CBC's Christina Lawand for what I was told was a story about Harper's first 100 days in office. You can click here to see the video, which ended up being all about Maurice Vellacott and his now-infamous comments about the Supreme Court.
Of course Vellacott's comments were a perfect contrast to the points made by both me and Janet Ecker: that the Harper government has so far shown a great amount of focus, clarity and message discipline.
Vellacott handled the situation correctly by putting out a statement apologizing and making it clear he represented no one but himself. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 10:32 AM
