NDP Leader Jack Layton issued an emphatic denial he'd done anything wrong when he was found in a Toronto massage parlour during a police raid 15 years ago.
"There was no wrongdoing at all," Layton told a news conference.
"I went for a massage at a community clinic, the police advised that it wasn't the greatest place to be, and I left and I never went back."
Layton has been assuring voters he would run a responsible government and now is fending off what he termed a "smear campaign" from a news organization with Conservative connections.
Sun TV reported Friday that Layton was found in the Chinatown parlour but said the former Toronto city councillor was neither arrested nor charged during the 1996 incident.
The television network attributed the information to notes taken by police officers at the time.
Layton's wife, MP Olivia Chow, issued a statement saying her husband merely wanted a clinical massage at a registered clinic.
"I knew about this appointment, as I always do," she tweeted.
"No one was more surprised than my husband when the police informed him of allegations of potential wrong doing at this establishment. He told me about the incident after it happened."
Now the circumstances surrounding the television report are the focus of an investigation by Ontario Provincial Police.
They were asked by the Toronto force to determine whether notes taken by officers at the time of the raid were the source of the leak, OPP Insp. Dave Ross said Saturday.
"Toronto police has requested us to conduct a criminal breach of trust investigation into the disclosure of information in that matter," Ross said in an interview.
Layton cautioned supporters in Burnaby not to be deterred by attacks from desperate rivals as his surging New Democrats enter the last hours before Monday's national election.
The NDP leader said the old-line parties are directing attacks toward him and his party as polls suggest the New Democrats are a close second to the Conservatives going into the vote.
He said the allegations are not the kind of politics that Canadians appreciate.
"It's innuendo, smear politics. I've seen this kind of thing before."
He said he and the party would consider legal recourse after the election is over.
