Ottawa

Nycole Turmel disappoints Stephen Harper

The Prime Minister says he is profoundly saddened by Nycole Turmel’s associations with sovereignists.

“I think it’s very disappointing,” Harper said when asked about Turmel by reporters while handing out scholarships at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. “I don’t know that I have a lot to say but I do think Canadians will find this disappointing. I think Canadians expect that any political party that wants to govern the country be unequivocally committed to this country. I think that’s the minimum Canadians expect.”

Mr. Harper’s own historical attitude toward Quebec politics might be said to be somewhat complicated. The NDP says, for instance, that there are two ministers in Mr. Harper’s cabinet who were previously associated with sovereignists. There is, as well, whatever he and Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe discussed in 2004 and what he and Tom Flanagan wrote in 1997 about the role Quebec nationalists might play in bringing a conservative government back to power.

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