The Canadian Embassy also re-confirmed their denials of this story. It's quite suspect, kind of like the McCain NYT story.

As I've said before, even if someone in Obama's campaign did say something to someone in the Canadian government, it was meant as nothing more than "calm down, don't get so worked up over it, we'll cross that bridge when we get there", which makes sense because both Canada and Mexico have gotten agitated over all the talk of killing NAFTA from people like Tim Russert. There is absolutely no reason to believe Obama is not serious about renegotiating NAFTA. And NAFTA will be renegotiated, Canada and Mexico have little say in the matter, so the threat of killing NAFTA is really a non-issue.

benjamin, I thought I mentioned the denials pretty prominently. they are in the first paragraph. and incidentally, the embassy only said that they had not had any conversations with anyone about this -- the chicago office is a different office

Goolsbee doesn't deny or confirm. He flat out refuses to respond. That really is not a good sign. I watched Obama's foreign policy advisor last night on TV (Sorry, I don't recall her name) anyway when she was asked she didn't deny it, but said that she would take the Canadian Embassy "at their word." That is another evasive answer in my mind.

I like Obama too, but you have to admit that responses by his campaign are hinky.

here you go again, who cares about a Murdoch's owned TV stations says....

which makes sense because both Canada and Mexico have gotten agitated over all the talk of killing NAFTA from people like Tim Russert.

The idea of reopening negotiations would be fine by the average Canadian for the right issues, but I don't think the pro-business PM Harper would want to.

Ambinder has a different take:

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/02/ctv_retracts.php

We all know that CTV stands for Clinton TV!!! Just ask Bill Cunningham.

As Josh posted on the frontpage yesterday a Latin American studies professor from a US university pointed out that there is huge dissatisfaction down south (and probably in Canada too) with NAFTA, CAFTA and these other trade agreements among the population. Big US agribusinesses like Kraft are wiping out small cheese producers in Mexico. Small farmers can't compete on price with huge mechanized, subsidized US operations. What environmental laws they have are overridden by big multinationals under these agreements.

The winners in these trade deals are the fatcats with huge economies of scale and access to Wall St. capital. The losers outside the US are just like the hog farmers in IA and small job shops in OH. They either play the rigged game the way the big boys have set it up or they get blown away.

This has got to stop for a whole host of reasons not the least of which is because it's built on an unsustainable model which endangers the world's food supply. I trust Obama more to fix the problem than the wife of the guy who carried NAFTA over the goal line. She herself has voted for more of these laissez-faire trade deals that living and environmental standards down everywhere to make big business's bottom lines look better.

I'm an Obama supporter, but I'll admit that this certainly doesn't look or sound good. Of course, that doesn't mean that anything actually *happened* (and Clinton supporters who've been quick to rush to her defense at every new embarrasment would do well to show some restraint until the discrepancies in the story have been resolved - but I don't see that happening. Fair enough.), but non-denial denials set my teeth on edge regardless of who they happen to come from.

Despite all of the "Obamabot" rhetoric being thrown around, I don't believe Obama to be the second coming, or "The One." I don't think he's without flaw, and I've never been naive enough to imagine that I'll be pleased with every aspect of his campaign or policy stances. However, I do believe Obama to be by far the best choice out there, and this kefluffle hardly constitutes a "Macaca Moment."

For the record, my prediction is that Obama will win TX and lose OH (but not by the margin required for it to matter for HRC's chances at the nomination). PA is iffy, but I think he'll sweep the remaining states.

What I'm really looking forward to is the inevitable back-peddling after a Clinton loss in TX - it's a red state, so it doesn't matter; we never said we had to win TX (and if we did, we were just kidding); we never said it was a "firewall;" it's not fair that there are so many black people voting for their candidate of choice; people are mean to Hillary and it's all the media's fault. Graciousness in defeat isn't in the Clinton playbook, so the aftermath of the Tuesday results promise to be a bullshit-fest of epic proportions. Good stuff.

I've been trying to figure out how this particular problem for Obama will turn out to be traced back to the Clinton campaign. Most probably just some vague, stupid comment regarding how "slimy" the Clintons are. And most likely, it will undoubtably soon be shown to have racist overtones. Thank heaven for the Kool-Aid.

For God's sake, this kind of background ("not for attribution") discussion occurs all the time in diplomacy. Obama is neither the official candidate yet, much less the president, and there is no evidence that Obama asked Goolsbee to talk to the Canadians. And even if Obama did ask Goolsbee to speak to the Chicago envoy, this shows he already has an understanding of how diplomacy works.

One notes that the CTV story originally claimed that both the Clinton and Obama camps had contacted the Canadian government to make these assurances. Does CTV have any follow up on the Clinton half of this story, or are they retracting that claim? Does their "source at the highest levels of Canadian government" continue to claim that Clinton's campaign contacted the Canadian government to make reassurances, or is the source backing away from that assertion?

Here's the new article from CTV:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080228/turkey_Gates_080228/20080229?hub=TopStories

Note a few items:

1. The CTV article, buried in the 2nd half of the story, is a CTV admission of ambiguity in that what the "Canadian official" said could be a miscommunication.

2. This article is somewhat fishy because in the television report, they name the official: Ambassador Michael Wilson. He is based in Washington.

In the follow-up article, this is changed to an unnamed Canadian official BASED IN THE CHICAGO EMBASSY.

The contradictions are a little too much, and I feel that this story is suspect. I am not using the "Clinton had also contacted them about this" defense, because you better be better than the other guy.

If true, I would be a little disappointed, but not enough to not support Obama, as it is Goldbee's wording that is in question, not Obama's.

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!

1) CTV is owned by CTVglobemedia which is owned by Bell Canada Enterprises, not Rogers. BCE is a publicly traded company on the TSX and its largest shareholder is the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund. Hardly a right wing conspiracy, people.

2) The Embassy official said they have communicated with the campaigns on economic policy. It's hardly substantive as to whether the tip off happened by phone, by email, in a meeting, etc. or if it was the Chicago Consulate or the Embassy. The tip off is what matters.

3) Contrary to some statements, there is no "official" channel for tip-offs from political campaigns and the Canadian government. The Ministry of Wink-Wink-Nudge-Nudge has been closed for years.

4)As for those who think Canada will have "no say" in renegotiating NAFTA, I'd be careful what you wish for. Canada is now the number one source of oil imports for the US, and many oil fields in Alberta have been snapped up recently by Chinese petroleum companies. Opening up NAFTA would mean open the doors for the US to lose its guaranteed shipments it currentl enjoys. A policy, of note, currently unpopular in Canada.

It's obviously that both Clinton and Obama have phony indefensible positions about NAFTA renegotiations. Obama has indefensible position about driver licenses for illegal immigrants. Both of them have indefensible positions about Iraq. Good luck.

Yes, the post is true, Nieddu. Now if you'd only read it.

CTVGlobemedia sold a bunch of TV stations to Rogers.

Note--Rogers Media is a division of Rogers Communications. CTVGlobemedia is ... well, it's CTVGlobemedia. Another company entirely...Otherwise, it would be paying itself $137.5 million to sell itself 10 TV stations.

May I say here, completely off topic but nonetheless relevant, that I do not like having to enter my password to post a comment even though I am already signed in, and I do not enjoying having the relevence stripped of my responses by having them posted at the bottom of the string instead of below the post I am responding too.

If the commenting system didn't work correctly, it should not have been implemented until it did. You should have kept the old system until the new system worked, not thrown out the old system before you even know if the new system is capable of performing.

But then again, what should I expect of a news site so cultishly devoted to promoting Barack Obama? ;)

Bill45 said "Canada and Mexico whose people have benefited tremendously from NAFTA." Sorry, but that's just false. The "people" of Canada and Mexico and must other nations covered by NAFTA, CAFTA, and WTO deals have been harmed directly and substantially by outsourcing, declining real wages, privatization of national and environmental assets and union-busting, to name just a few direct effects of the "free-trade" ideology.

It's not "the people" who benefit from the NAFTA ideology, it's the greedy multinational corporations who have extracted exorbitant profits.

This is a very important story to follow closely because it is an early trial of well-orchestrated disinformation campaigns that Obama or ANY Democrat will face in the general election.

Despite frankly0's constant repetitions, the facts are not getting any better for CTV or for the IAM which aided and abetted this disinformation campaign. The original CTV story has been completely discredited; only persons desperate to smear Obama would persist in protecting CTV's reputation.

I do agree that anyone who is convinced (like me) that CTV is dirty on this needs to investigate this a little harder. We should be able to find out who this Prof. Goolsbee is, who did he actually talk to, did he speak directly to an employee of the consulate in Chicago, or was it just some friend-of-a-friend who passed along some remark Goolsbee made? Or, even more attenuated, was there some remark about NAFTA in some paper or journal article the Professor wrote before anyone had ever heard that Obama might run for president? It is not difficult to drill into the Professor's academic publications, there is probably an archive on the U of C website. Would also be elementary to identify all current employees of the Canadian consulate in Chicago and spend a little time on the phone.

UPDATE II: (From Larry Johnson) ... "it is important to help younger readers understand that Goolsbee’s conversation with the Counsel General (CONGEN in State Department speak) is a senior Canadian Embassy official. A Consulate is a place where folks go for a visa or to work on immigration problems. The Consulate is subordinate to the Embassy in Washington. Best to think of it as a branch of the Embassy. Clearly the CTV report confused Embassy with Consulate. Bottomline is the same–a senior Obama advisor told a representative of the Government of Canada (in this case, the CONGEN) to ignore Obama’s rhetoric."

AvoMonster said: "Sounds like a typical disinformation kind of hit job being shoveled out by the Clinton campaign. This is more of the same triangulation."

So now the Clinton campaign is responsible for the Canadian press?

The desperation with which you will defend Obama NO MATTER WHAT is pathetic. And the whole "even if the story is true, so what?" angle proves it.

If the story was that Clinton was saying one thing and secretly assuring another government that she didn't really mean it, you'd be railing against her and saying how this is just more evidence of how insincere and political she is. But since it's Obama, who is never insincere and never political, it's no big deal.

Here is Goolsbee CV from the U of C website:

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/austan.goolsbee/website/research/vitae.htm

Anyone see any reference to NAFTA anywhere?

The guy is obviously some kind of genius, he got both his Bachelor's and Master's at the same time from Yale and his Ph.D. from MIT four years later. He is incredibly prolific, but is very focused on the economic effects of the Internet and attempts to regulate or tax the Internet. Not foreign trade, per se.

Here is a link to archives of his economics columns for the NY Times, Slate and other publications:

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/austan.goolsbee/website/research/columns.htm

Anyone see any reference to NAFTA? Anyone?

Any evidence this Professor has any academic expertise or professional qualifications to represent anyone's views about NAFTA?

Again, he is obviously a genius of the type U of C is rightfully proud. But no NAFTA expert, thus very unlikely to have said anything authoritative to any foreign govt. about any politician's views toward NAFTA. And if he did utter some vague speculation, I agree he needs to say so today, and renounce it, before the end of the news cycle.

Goolsbee is also on an economics advisory panel for the Congressional Budget Office, but the CBO publications mentioning his name appear to mention his name only in footnotes citing his academic journal articles, and none of those CBO publications appear to cover NAFTA. CBO is at www.cbo.org , you have to drill into the site to find the limited references to his name.

So Obama is familiar with the consulate channels, where they bring foreign workers in for American jobs.

Nope, no reason for concern there....

Obama's NAFTA proponent is former NEC Cutler.

The guy who covers his work in that spectrum of profiteering by adopting anti universal health care talking points now.

He was a member of Bill Clinton's economic team, and gave the OVP its daily economics brief.
Probably the guy helping convince this about change instead of putting new wool on old wolves.

Thanks for at least covering CTV's side of things. A lot of people aren't.

Greg,

I think your analysis of the campaign responses is dead on.

Regardless of what did or didn't happen - and I think something hapenned, you always need a grain of truth, this remains a total non-issue because the US cannot afford to quit NAFTA, the loss of free imports of oil from the Alberta tar sands would send the economy into a total free fall.

I think the real question here is why aren't comments open on the Chuck Cadman piece - now that's something worth talking about.

gjh, you're right, but regrettably Canadian scandals don't generally get much attention paid to them south of the U.S.' northern border.

However, I did make a rather extensive blog post about the context in which the Cadman affair came to pass on my TPM blog, so check it out.