VANCOUVER - Liberal leader candidate Justin Trudeau apologized Friday for anti-Alberta remarks he made in 2010 during an interview in Quebec.

"I'm sorry I said what I did. I was wrong to relate the area of the country that Mr. (Stephen) Harper is from with the people who live there and with the policies that he has that don't represent the values of most Canadians," said Trudeau, who was speaking at the Vancouver Art Gallery, on the final stop of his B.C. tour.

Video has emerged in which Trudeau says Canada is struggling because Albertans control the social agenda, and that the country would be better served with more Quebecers in power.

The French-language interview with Tele-Quebec was shot in 2010 and part of it has resurfaced only days after another Liberal MP, David McGuinty, set off a storm of controversy for saying Albertan MPs should take a nationwide view of energy policies or go home.

In the clip, which Sun media began re-broadcasting Thursday afternoon, the man who would become the Liberals' favoured leadership candidate, says, "Canada isn't doing well right now because it's Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda. It doesn't work."

Asked if Canada is better served when there are more Quebecers in power than when there are more Albertans in power, Mr. Trudeau replied: "I'm a Liberal so of course I believe that."

He went on to add: "certainly when we look at the great prime ministers of the 20th century, those that really stood the test of time, they were MPs from Quebec. . . . This country — Canada — it belongs to us."

Conservatives are holding up the video as proof of a long-held anti-Alberta bias within the Liberal party, which had been hoping to steal a seat in Calgary during a byelection next week.

On Thursday evening, Trudeau spokesman Gerald Butz went on the CBC to defend Trudeau's comments, saying they were taken out of context.

"It was a very long interview in French. . . . What he was saying was that Quebers see a government that doesn't share their values.

"It doesn't have to do with the fact that they are from Alberta. It is due to the fact that they are right wing and negative," Butz said.