Harper, Warner and the 2006 AIDS Conference in Toronto

“Conservative officials have been actively resisting Warner's emphasis on housing, health care and cities issues, he said, even blocking him from participating in a Star forum on poverty earlier this year and pointedly removing from his campaign literature a reference to the 2006 international conference on AIDS in Toronto – which Warner attended but Prime Minister Stephen Harper did not. ....

Plett [Conservative party president] didn't argue with Warner's characterization of the dispute.”

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/272579

This is the offending passage

“and am proud to have been a delegate to the XVIth International AIDS Conference held in Toronto in August 2006.”

http://www.markwarner.ca/

Why would the Conservatives ask Warner to remove this passage? Well one could argue that the Conservatives did not want to draw attention to the fact that Stephen Harper did not attend. Of course that would not be much of an explanation because such a response would only beg the question as to why Harper did not attend in the first place.