I took a quick trip to see Stephen Harper speak in Cambridge this afternoon on his whistlestop tour of the area. As such it was a quick speech hitting on a lot of the themes of his usual stump speech. That is not the big news however.
Attending the speech was David Mainse of Crossroads Christian Communications - better known to you and me as the host of 100 Huntley Street. Well that was too good an opportunity for the assembled media to pass up and after the Harper speech it became a full fledged...
Update: David Akin has corrected me on a couple of points
MEDIA SWARM - scratch that....Media Gathering, let's call it a scrum.
If you look closely you can see Julie Van Dusen of CBC, Lisa LaFlamme of CTV and Campbell Clark of the Globe and Mail (amongst others) vying to get that quote to link Stephen Harper with the "religious right"
I couldn't hear all of what David Mainse said but from what I could hear he was trying to be as diplomatic as possible. He mentioned that it is important for him to speak with all political leaders and he mentioned several times that he has had phone conversations with PM Martin.
From what I could tell the thrust of his message is that he wanted a truly free vote of the issue of same-sex marriage without the threat of repercussions like in what happened to kicked-out NDPer Bev Desjarlais.
I can't wait to see the news tonight to see how this one gets played.
Update: David Akin, who was also in the swarm, has a good post on this "event".
