OTTAWA (AFP) — Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief of staff, who was accused of leaking a government memo that cast aspersions on US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, will soon resign, media said Thursday.
The daily Globe and Mail said Ian Brodie was planning to quit in July, just before a Privy Council and Foreign Affairs Department joint investigation reports on the possibly illegal leaking of the government memo.
The newspaper cites unnamed sources close to Brodie.
The affair embarrassed Canada's diplomatic core and may have cost Obama votes in the crucial Ohio and Texas primaries in March.
Opposition parties, worried about future souring of Canada-US relations if Obama becomes the next US president, had demanded Brodie's resignation, fingering him as the most likely source of the leak.
But Harper in March denied his involvement and refused to fire him.
The memo detailed a meeting between Democratic candidate Obama's chief economic advisor Austan Goolsbee and officials from the Canadian consulate in Chicago.
It reportedly said Goolsbee reassured Canadian diplomats that Obama's attacks on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were political rhetoric, and not serious plans.
Free trade and NAFTA in particular is a fiercely contentious issue in Ohio, which has been badly hit by the flight of blue collar jobs abroad, and increased global economic competition.
The 1994 trade pact created the largest trading bloc in the world by eliminating import tariffs on goods circulating among partners Canada, the United States and Mexico.
A spokesman for the prime minister was not immediately available for comment.
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