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Harper Conservatives try to quash Rob Ford barbeque video: Liberal blogger

A YouTube video of Stephen Harper speaking at Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's summer barbeque is back on the Internet again.

In the video, Harper calls for a Conservative hat-trick in Ontario saying, "We've cleaned up the left-wing mess federally in this area, Rob's doing it municipally, and now we've got to complete the hat-trick and do it provincially as well."

Apparently, Conservatives don't want Canadians to see the video:

Every time the video has appeared on YouTube, it's been taken down - at the request of the federal Conservatives.

The Toronto Star reported the Prime Minister's Office placed calls to organizers as soon as the video went up in early August. Guest lists were sought in a bid to find who had posted it to YouTube and by the next morning, it was down.

A spokesperson for Harper would only say the video had been removed by the person who posted it.

The new version of the video, posted on Liberal insider Warren Kinsella's blog, claims "the Prime Minister's Office and Conservative party operatives hired lawyers to suppress the hat-trick video.

"Every time it shows up, the Conservatives sue and it gets taken down again," notes text in the video.

In a column in the Hill-Times, Kinsella says Harper's office doesn't want Canadians to view the video because it could hurt the Ontario PCs' chances in the upcoming provincial election.

"Harper's remarks were a disaster," he wrote

"The PMO scrambled, comically, to scrub the evidence from the Internet but it was too late. Ontario voters — female voters in particular — saw what he said, and they didn't like it . . . Ontarions do not want the same wrecking crew running everything."