OTTAWA – The Liberal Party is standing by a candidate caught in a Twitter tizzy about a mistakenly-sent tweet.
Darshan Kang is running for the Grits in the Calgary Skyview riding, but Tuesday a tweet was sent to his followers criticizing Prime Minister Harper for hiding in a closet during last fall’s shooting attack on Parliament Hill.
The tweet was quickly removed from Kang’s account on Tuesday, and his office insists it was posted by a volunteer and not the candidate. A Liberal spokesperson says the party “thinks the tweet was inappropriate and that Mr. Kang did the right thing by removing it.”
In an email to Global News, Kang’s campaign manager Robert M. Schuett reiterated that the tweet was sent out by a campaign volunteer who had access to Kang’s campaign account and that the access has since been revoked.
“Furthermore, Darshan views this tweet as an unfortunate error in judgment on the part of the volunteer as it was inappropriate and should not have been posted without prior consent of the campaign,” Schuett said.
“As soon as our campaign became aware of the tweet we acted quickly to have it removed and acknowledged that it was inappropriate and it does not reflect Darshan’s view of the Prime Minister.”
The tweet in question showed the prime minister peeking through a pair of closet doors, accompanied by Harper’s statement on Canadian special forces’ engagement with ISIS militants in Iraq: “And if those guys fire at us, we’re going to fire back and we’re going to kill them.”
The tweet added the caption: “There’s only been one instance of Stephen Harper being anywhere near gunfire, and how did that go?”
The prime minister reportedly hid in an office closet on orders of his security detail the day Michael Zehaf-Bibeau stormed Parliament.
After killing Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial, Zehaf-Bibeau ran across the street and was able to get into the Centre Block of Parliament where MPs were gathered for caucus meetings. He fired several shots before being killed by security personnel.
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