The Liberals say Harper blamed bureaucrats for the Ritz crisis. You be the judge. Here's what Harper said in Trois Rivieres during a question-and-answer period with reporters after announcing tax cuts for seniors:

First, he responded to CBC's Paul Hunter, who asked if Harper was concerned that a bureaucrat apparently was trying to sabotage the campaign by leaking this information in the middle of an election:

"I gather Minister Ritz said this on a conference call which a number of people were on. It was a private conversation. But just the same, I think he recognizes that it was still inappropriate, private or otherwise. Look, I suspect everyone in this room, if they're honest with themselves, will admit in private conversations they probably said things pretty insensitive and inappropriate if they shone a light on it. On the question of how concerned am I about the leak - I would say this: If this was the real tenor of Minister Ritz's comments at the time I would have been concerned. It obviously wasn't or it wouldn't have been brought to our attention long before now.
It obviously was an inappropriate joke by a minister who was under a lot of  stress. My concern is not about the leak per se because I think when you deal with a large number of people, even privately, I've always told our people, even privately in this business, I've told our people you should always be prepared for the fact that whatever you say could be repeated and you should be very careful about what you say and think very very carefully.
So Minister Ritz has apologized and I don't think we want to point fingers and blame people. I will say this: The real question during that whole period of time was making sure everybody was doing their job. Not just the company that took full responsibility for the listeriosis crisis but all government officials in all departments were working round the clock to make sure they were fixing the problem. Certainly, I would like to know that that, and that alone, was the priority of officials and I think it was the priority of the vast number of government officials. I'm obviously disappointed that some have some other priorities.
I think it's important that when we have a crisis, we all focus on working together, not trying to, down the road, score political points on each other. "

Then a few minutes later, Sun Media's Greg Weston, asked a similar question, suggesting that what happened to Minister Ritz is the result of a Liberal-stacked bureaucracy? Harper replied, in part:

"I think public servants have generally worked very well with this government. I'm very pleased with the assistance I've received from the senior public service. It's not to say we haven't always agreed, it's not say we haven't in fact butted heads from to time. I don't think this government has suffered from leaks anymore frequently than any other government. There's always people in the bureaucracy who do leak for whatever reason but I think it you look back at the Martin government in particularly, I don't think you'll see any greater frequency in this government than in that government. So I don't think that's a fair accusation.
I think the Minister has to and has taken full responsibility. The most important thing when we're in this kind of crisis is that we act to get it resolved."