Apologies over advisers' trip an 'embarrassment'
Ottawa — When two-high ranking federal advisers left for London in June, the stated purpose was to learn about British experiments in public-private partnerships.
But the outcome was far less clear-cut, leaving officials scrambling with damage control.
"A number of people in London who are important to Canada were not at all pleased," a federal source said of the visit.
In particular, the trip by Public Works advisers David Rotor and Douglas Tipple was marred by a series of cancelled meetings, forcing Canadian diplomats and senior officials to send six letters of apology to their British counterparts.
"I think it's an embarrassment that apologies had to be issued," John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said Tuesday after reading the story published in today's Globe.
"This is not how officials should be behaving and I think it is just a sorry story," he said, noting that the government is "circling the wagons to down play" the report.
There are also questions over the "trip notes" that were circulated by the pair upon their return, given that a large portion of the document was copied from British websites without any attribution. (The government said the document is still a draft, although the copy obtained by The Globe and Mail was not marked as such.) In addition, Mr. Rotor wrote in his post-trip report that he "attended a speech by Laura D. Tyson, Dean of the London Business School, on the convergence of the Canadian, American and English economy."
She made no such speech.
