Mulcair denies he trash talked Canada

Tom Mulcair says he has nothing to learn from Conservatives about how an official Opposition leader should comport himself when travelling outside Canada.

Indeed, the NDP leader says the Tories, who've been bashing him all week for allegedly "trash talking" Canada during a visit to Washington and New York, seem to have forgotten the way they behaved in Opposition.

"All of a sudden there's a rule that they've decided that you're not supposed to talk about the government (while abroad) now that they're the government but when they were the Opposition there was no problem talking about the government," Mulcair said in an interview at the conclusion of his trip.

"So people can take that with a grain of salt."

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Mulcair's shoes, he didn't hesitate to denounce the Liberal governments of the day to American audiences.

He co-wrote a 2003 article in the Wall Street Journal bemoaning Chretien's "serious mistake" in refusing to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

"For the first time in history, the Canadian government has not stood beside its key British and American allies in their time of need," he wrote.

He made his own obligatory trip to Washington in 2005, where he stoked American fears that Canada was soft on terrorism. Among other things, he accused Liberals of consorting with ethnic groups that were linked to terrorist organizations.