The publisher Key Porter Books has prepared a "clarification" sticker for the inside front cover of all copies of former Ontario MP Garth Turner's memoir titled Sheeple: Caucus Confidential in Stephen Harper's Ottawa.
Stickers for the books and explanatory letters to booksellers were sent out early last week.
The clarification - three paragraphs in length, four sentences in total - was prepared in response to a complaint from Robert Russo, Ottawa bureau chief for The Canadian Press. It claimed that Turner, a former member of the federal Progressive Conservative and Conservative parties, was both incorrect and defamatory in his published recollection of a 2006 Tory caucus meeting.
CP reported that Prime Minister Stephen Harper got a standing ovation at the closed-door meeting after Harper reiterated that his government would continue to fly the Canadian flag at full mast on Parliament Hill as Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan. In Sheeple,however, Turner says the ovation, "standing or otherwise," never happened. Further, Turner claims CP's Ottawa bureau chief told him later that "information of this kind is never verified [by the news agency], never confirmed, because of the inherent difficulty of doing so."
In the clarification, which can also be found on Turner's website, the MP "accepts the assertion by [CP] that ... all [CP] stories [using] anonymous sources are double-sourced and cleared for publication by a senior editor." At the same time, he declares his "enormous respect" for CP and acknowledges he "never discussed [the flag-flying] issue or any other issue" with Russo, CP's Ottawa head since 2003.
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