OTTAWA-A defeated Conservative candidate who recently left his job as a regional adviser to the federal heritage minister says he hasn’t turned his back on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government policies.
“I’ve never questioned that in any way shape or form,” Saulie Zajdel, a former Montreal city councillor, said Wednesday.
Zajdel mysteriously left his government job in the wake of allegations he was being used as a “shadow MP” to undermine and elected Liberal, Irwin Cotler, in the Montreal riding of Mount Royal.
But Zajdel declined to answer questions Tuesday about whether he was disappointed about recent government policies and actions.
He said Wednesday, he had misunderstood some questions in a brief phone conversation with Postmedia News. He also acknowledged that he was not enthusiastic about answering questions about the matter and wanted to end the conversation.
“If you had asked a straight question, and I was still listening, I would have answered you correctly and as succinctly as I did right now,” Zajdel said.
The riding of Mount Royal was once held by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. The Tories had identified it in an internal party document as a winnable seat in a list of “very ethnic” ridings that it believed it could gain by appealing to its Jewish population.
The original interview can be found below.
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