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By Jordan Press

The Canadian Press

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Conservative leader Stephen Harper says the three words from the Mike Duffy scandal that have hung over him — “good to go” — were not his.

It was Harper’s then-chief of staff Nigel Wright who wrote those words in an email to fellow staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office on Feb. 22, 2013, when the discussion in the PMO was about using Conservative party funds to cover Duffy’s questionable housing claims. At the time, it was thought that Duffy’s expense tab was only $32,000.

The email chain, outlined in RCMP court documents, show Wright wanted to speak with Harper “before everything is considered final.”

Then the notorious words that the opposition has used to repeatedly try to link Harper to the Duffy affair: “We are good to go from the PM.”

“The words you’re quoting are not my words. They’re somebody else’s,” Harper said when asked about the Duffy trial at a campaign event in Ottawa on Sunday.