*This story has been updated from a previous version.



HALIFAX—The cost to travel with Stephen Harper’s campaign? $10,100 a week.

The number of questions Harper takes each day? Five.

Looking like an overcontrolling politician? Priceless.

The bright yellow fence that kept reporters penned in far from the Conservative leader Thursday during a campaign event here was an apt metaphor for his first week dealing with the media — controlling and restrictive.

Now Stephen Harper is facing questions about his questions. Namely, why he isn’t willing to take more.

And he’s refusing to answer.

Harper takes only five questions from the media each day — four from the reporters on his tour and one from a local reporter — unlike his political rivals, who place little restrictions on how many questions they take.

That’s produced tensions between the Conservative leader and the journalists following his campaign tour as it criss-crosses the country.

Harper has settled into a routine in his first week — a morning announcement, followed by a media availability. Journalists on the tour get four questions — usually two in English and two in French — and a local reporter is given the chance to lob a question at Harper as well.

But the situation boiled over Thursday when Harper was asked — using one of the four questions — why he refused to take more than a handful of questions each day.

He refused to answer but when pressed, suggested he’d be open to addressing any issues he hadn’t already discussed. But he never explained his rationale for not fielding more questions.

“In terms of questions, is there any specific issue that I haven’t addressed that you want me to address?” Harper asked.

“If there’s another subject, I’ll answer,” the Conservative leader told journalists behind the fence, more than 10 metres away.

Later Harper supporter David Cameron, who was at the event, came up to the journalists to express his frustration with their questions.

“You guys reporting the news or making it?” he said.

Senator Michael MacDonald, a Harper appointee, tweeted, “Lovely day on Halifax waterfront for PM’s trade status. CBC reporters (Terry) Milewski and (Jennifer) Ditchburn were like attack dogs afterward — pathetic!”

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In fact, Ditchburn works for The Canadian Press. Before his Senate appointment, MacDonald was the vice-president of the Conservative Party of Canada

The New Democrats soon issued a news release noting that MacDonald, who was vice-president of the Conservative Party of Canada before Harper put him in the Senate in 2009, earned $132, 300 last year and rang up expenses totalling $257,142.

Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas said later that the Conservative leader has several media interviews with radio and television stations this week across the country.

What he was questioned on

Here are five topics that Stephen Harper got quizzed on by journalists Thursday:

1) Conservative support for a Labrador power project.

2) How support for the project may upset Quebec.

3) Patronage at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

4) Canada’s role in Libya.

5) Why there are limits on the number of questions.

Bruce Campion-Smith

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