OTTAWA - Justin Trudeau was absent from the House of Commons on Monday as the Ukrainian ambassador demanded an apology for the Liberal leader's tongue-in-cheek remark about the crisis in Ukraine while Conservatives and the NDP pounced.

The day after the Liberal leader was criticized for failing to make himself available to the media at the end of the Liberal party's weekend policy convention, Trudeau had no public events scheduled and didn't appear for question period.

That left Liberal MP Marc Garneau charged with defending Trudeau for his recent comments on Ukraine during a pre-taped appearance on Radio Canada's "Tout le Monde en Parle,'' a humour-infused current affairs program. Trudeau linked the upheaval in Ukraine to Russia's Olympic hockey woes.

Garneau accused Conservatives of "trying to take advantage of this for cheap partisan reasons.''

"If you look at the entire transcript, you'll see that Justin Trudeau spoke very seriously about the situation in Ukraine, and anyone who's been on 'Tout Le Monde En Parle' knows what kind of show it is,'' he said, adding in a post-question period scrum: "I smell fear.''

Garneau also noted that Liberal delegates at the convention passed an emergency resolution calling for support for a transition to democracy in Ukraine. The resolution also called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper not to allow any foreign power to interfere with the will of the Ukrainian people.

Nonetheless the Ukrainian ambassador to Canada called on Trudeau to apologize.

"You have to be extremely careful when you talk about 82 people who died fighting ... for their future and everyone's in danger,'' Vadym Prystaiko said on CTV's "Power Play.''

"You're just sitting in a nice room, and you're talking about things in such a light manner; it's inappropriate .... We hope that he will be able to apologize.''

A handful of Tory cabinet ministers, as well as NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, took aim at Trudeau, who's consistently ahead of the Tories and the NDP in public opinion polls.

"So Justin Trudeau, whose favourite regime is 'the basic dictatorship of China,' thinks the deadly crisis in Ukraine is a laughing matter,'' Employment Minister Jason Kenney wrote in a tweet.