OTTAWA – Conservatives and Liberals duelled today for the favour of women voters but it was the NDP that fired the most sensational shot.

However, it eventually turned out that Irene Mathyssen, a New Democrat MP from London, Ont., was firing blanks.

Mathyssen stunned all sides by complaining that she'd seen Tory MP James Moore checking out a "scantily clad" woman on his laptop computer in Parliament.

Moore, a parliamentary secretary from British Columbia, vehemently denied the claim. And late Wednesday, Mathyssen apologized to Moore.

NDP spokesman Ian Capstick said Mathyssen phoned Moore and he explained to her that the photos she'd seen on his laptop were of his girlfriend.

"Ms. Mathyssen has accepted the explanation and offered her apology to Mr. Moore," Capstick said.

"Ms. Mathyssen will be making a formal statement in the House of Commons at her earliest opportunity."

Mathyssen's titillating assertion capped a day in which Liberals and Tories competed over which party cares most about Canadian women – all of it occurring on the eve of the 18th anniversary of the massacre of 14 women at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique.

Liberals set off the contest by unveiling the second volume of their so-called pink book, a set of policy proposals developed by their female MPs aimed improving the lot of abused, aboriginal, immigrant and rural women.

Liberals hope the proposals will help cement the party's position as the favourite among women voters, well ahead of the Tories in most opinion polls.

In the Commons, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion blasted the Tory government for ignoring women's issues.

"Women continue to suffer discrimination, they continue to suffer abuse and violence, they continue to struggle for basic equality and on all of this the government's track record is abysmal," Dion charged.

He rattled off a litany of Conservative sins, including removing the word equality from the mandate of Status of Women Canada, abolishing the previous Liberal government's child-care program, cutting women's programs and eliminating the Court Challenges Program.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper shot back by noting that Dion has not committed to adopting the pink book proposals in the Liberal platform for the next election.

"I wonder if this is just another example of him retreating from his own positions," Harper scoffed.

Dion later said he doesn't want to disclose his platform before an election but added that the pink book gives "a good idea" of what will be in it.

Harper argued that his government has given new child-care benefits directly to parents and has "taken programs that used to spend money on offices and bureaucracy and spent it directly on Canadian women." The Liberals, he added, would end all that.

"That is why men and women are going to vote against that party and re-elect this government," he declared.

The Tories also charged that the worst cuts to social programs, including those aimed at helping women, were made by the Liberals in 1995, in a bid to tame the national deficit.

The jousting between Liberals and Tories dominated question period. With the exception of Dion, all Liberal questioners Wednesday were women.

But Mathyssen stole the show shortly after question period with her accusation that she saw "an image of a scantily clad woman" on the screen of Moore's laptop – in clear view of other MPs and the public gallery on Tuesday evening.

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"This is not only disrespectful of women, but it is disrespectful of this House," she said.

"It reflects an attitude of objectifying women and we know that when women and other human beings are objectified and dehumanized, they become the object of violence and abuse."

Mathyssen, who sits several rows behind Moore in the Commons, later described the image she saw as "soft porn, Playboy type stuff," a full-screen view of a woman dressed in "very flimsy lingerie."

She said no one else saw the image. When Moore noticed her whispering about it to a colleague, Mathyssen said he closed the window and she saw what appeared to be 16 to 20 similar pictures in the file.

Moore flatly denied spending his time in Parliament viewing risqué photos.

"I don't have the faintest idea what my colleague is talking about," he told the Commons.

"I've taken great efforts throughout all of my political career to treat all of my colleagues with the deepest of respect," he said.

"I don't know where this attack is coming from; where these allegations are coming from. It is utterly baseless; utterly nonsensical.

"I would never do anything that is being ascribed to me today. I take great offence to what's being alleged here."

Speaker Peter Milliken refused to pursue Mathyssen's complaint, saying it is "not a matter of House procedure." Tory whip Jay Hill said he takes Moore at his word and will not check his laptop.

The matter became moot a few hours later when Mathyssen apologized.