NDP Leader Tom Mulcair says he wasn’t personally invited by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to attend Sunday’s ceremony in France marking the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.
“Mr. Trudeau did not invite me to go to the Vimy commemorations and I would very much like to have gone,” Mulcair told CTV’s Power Play on Monday.
Mulcair said the prime minister did invite the NDP to send a representative to the ceremony, so the party sent its veterans affairs critic Irene Mathyssen.
“But I’d been invited by the prime minister to other important events in the past and I would have dearly liked to have been invited to this one. It didn’t happen,” Mulcair said.
“This is the type of courtesy shown to leaders of other parties, usually.”
Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose also did not receive a personal invitation, according to her press secretary.
In the past, opposition leaders have been extended invitations to non-partisan events that included the 2015 Paris climate change summit and the 2016 state funeral for former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres.
A PMO spokesperson told CTV News that invitations were “extended to both Opposition parties for a representative to attend the commemorations in Vimy as part of the official delegation.”
In addition to Mathyssen, Conservative MPs John Brassard and Rob Nicholson were also part of the delegation.
In response to Mulcair’s comments, Conservative Party leadership candidate Lisa Raitt tweeted that she was “disgusted” that Trudeau did not invite other leaders to attend the Vimy ceremony.
Much respect for @ThomasMulcair on @CTV_PowerPlay. Disgusted the PM didn't have courtesy to invite other leaders to Vimy- always about him.
— Lisa Raitt (@lraitt) April 10, 2017