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Opposition leader’s “wife” comments spur complaints

Edmonton MP says former leader Stephen Harper spoke to the party's caucus, the CBC's Catherine Cullen reports

It was a joke that some didn’t find very funny.

Interim Conservative Opposition Leader Rona Ambrose sparked some social media outrage with comments in a recent magazine profile about finding a “wife” to take care of the household duties in her new Ottawa residence at Stornoway.

“This is a beautiful kitchen but I have absolutely no time to cook,” Ambrose, the former status of women minister and now the Opposition critic for the portfolio, says in the interview published in the latest issue of Maclean’s magazine.

“This will probably be where I will have cereal and fruit and that’s about it.

“Should we put an ad in the paper for a wife?”

She goes on to explain that her partner, J.P. Veitch, takes care of the household while she attends to her new role as interim Opposition leader.

“I left everything to him. J.P.’s the wife but he also has a really busy career in Calgary. It’s a huge amount of work for him.”

Some were not laughing.

“’Should we put an ad in the paper for a wife’ @RonaAmbrose Seriously? #becauseits2015 guess what, women work FT & take care of kids, home,” wrote @StokesMeg on Twitter.

“Can’t even begin to note all that is wrong with this. Calling her spouse ‘the wife’? Good grief,” added @TammyQuigley.

“So not feminist,” offered Janine Gliener.

Three years ago, then-status of women minister Ambrose sparked outrage when she supported, during a rare free vote in the House of Commons, a private member’s motion to study the legal rights of fetuses.

Thousands of people signed an online petition demanding her resignation from the post.

The motion, which would have reopened the issue of whether a fetus should have legal rights while in the womb prior to birth, was defeated.

At the time, Ambrose linked her yes vote to her previous denunciation of sex-selective abortions and her support for a bill that would have criminalized harm to a fetus caused during illegal assaults on pregnant women.

There was no immediate response from Ambrose’s office regarding the controversy.