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OTTAWA — Tom Mulcair says he has nothing to learn from Conservatives about how an official Opposition leader should comport himself when travelling outside Canada.

Indeed, the NDP leader says the Tories — who’ve been bashing him all week for allegedly “trash talking” Canada during a visit to Washington and New York — seem to have forgotten the way they behaved in Opposition.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Mulcair points out Harper denounced the government abroad (over the Iraq war) when he was in Opposition Back to video

“All of a sudden there’s a rule that they’ve decided that you’re not supposed to talk about the government [while abroad] now that they’re the government but when they were the Opposition there was no problem talking about the government,” Mulcair said in an interview at the conclusion of his trip.

“So people can take that with a grain of salt.”

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Mulcair’s shoes, he didn’t hesitate to denounce the Liberal governments of the day to American audiences.

He co-wrote a 2003 article in the Wall Street Journal bemoaning Chretien’s “serious mistake” in refusing to join the U.S.-led war in Iraq.