Industry Minister David Emerson (file)

NDP Leader Jack Layton (file)

B.C. Grit cabinet minister in blog controversy

Updated Thu. Dec. 29 2005 1:26 AM ET

Canadian Press

VANCOUVER -- The Liberal election campaign has taken another hit from the blogosphere after its star B.C. candidate used a possibly insulting term to describe NDP Leader Jack Layton.

Industry Minister David Emerson is quoted in a blog written by Jamie Elmhirst, the federal Liberals' B.C. president, as referring to Layton's "boiled dog's head smile.''

An NDP spokesman said the term is an English translation of a Chinese insult.

Elmhirst referred to the comment, made at a pre-election dinner, after suggesting Layton's friendly remarks about maverick New Democrat Svend Robinson during an early-December campaign stop in Vancouver were "a touch insincere.''

"How did Minister Emerson describe his style at our convention dinner?'' Elmhirst writes in the Dec. 5 blog entry.

"Oh yes, he said that Jack Layton had a boiled dog's head smile. That would have made even me wince if I hadn't have been laughing so hard.''

Stanley Tsao, an NDP campaign spokesman who handles Chinese media, said Wednesday the phrase is Cantonese in origin and can be taken a number of ways depending on the context.

Tsao said Emerson's remark showed "arrogance and disrespect,'' especially in light of comments about Layton and his wife that appeared in another Liberal's blog last week.

"References like that do not help the debate,'' he said.

News of the comment comes just days after a senior member of the Liberal Ontario wing resigned for disparaging remarks about Layton and his wife, Olivia Chow.

Michael Klander, the party's Ontario executive vice-president, in his personal blog compared Chow, a Chinese-Canadian and an NDP candidate in Toronto, to a chow chow dog. The blog also referred to Layton as an "asshole.''

In an interview Wednesday, Emerson said he made the remark about Layton in a speech at a dinner during the B.C. federal Liberals' convention the weekend before the election call. He said it wasn't meant to be disrespectful.

"It was in reference to his constant chattering away with this great big grin on his face, pasted on, kind of an over-extended grin,'' Emerson said.

"It's a Cantonese expression which I use on myself and my wife uses on me all the time when I have to pose for pictures.''

"I was referring to constantly seeing Jack Layton looking like a boiled dog's head, talking about some of these shallow, ideologically driven policies of the NDP.''

Emerson said he learned the jibe from his Hong Kong-born wife, Theresa Yeuk-Si Tang.

"She's got tons of them,'' he said. "We certainly use it in our family and my wife says it's commonly used in the Cantonese community. It certainly wasn't meant as disrespectful.''

Emerson insisted it was in jest and said there are other choice Cantonese phrases he could apply to Layton, such as "frog in the well.'' It refers to someone who draws conclusions about the entire world based on a narrow perspective.

Layton's press secretary, Ian Capstick, said the remark was indicative of Liberal arrogance.

"It's disappointing when they cannot find fault in policy or in our activism or in the way we do our work on Parliament Hill, but instead decide to attack the personality traits of either the NDP here or others,'' Capstick said from Ottawa.

Emerson is fighting for re-election in the Vancouver-Kingsway riding after first winning it in 2004.

The former forest company CEO and senior provincial bureaucrat became the Liberals' B.C. political minister under Prime Minister Paul Martin, helping deliver billions of federal dollars to the province.

The Liberals have given him the lead role in the B.C. campaign, pitching him as the man who helped end years of federal neglect of the westernmost province.

The Elmhirst blog appears on the Liberals' B.C. campaign web site (www.teambc.ca) and was highlighted on Bourque Newswatch (bourque.org), which describes itself as the Canadian answer to the muckraking Drudge Report.

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