OTTAWA -- An aide to International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda stamped her automated signature on a bureaucratic memo in 2009 because she was travelling and scribbled the word “not” on it to signify she was rejecting the advice from her bureaucrats, the Conservative government says.

After several days of controversy surrounding the actions of the embattled minister, senior government officials sent a background document Saturday to members of the Conservative caucus to outline how the controversial memo -- which political critics say was “doctored” -- was actually prepared.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his senior ministers have come to the defence of Oda in the House of Commons, but they have repeatedly sidestepped questions on how the memo came to be altered.

With Oda now facing the possibility of being found in contempt of Parliament, the government is keen to get some of the details out.

“The internal memo in question was sent to Minister Oda by CIDA public servants who were seeking a decision from her,” the Tory MPs are told in the document obtained by Postmedia News. “Across government, hundreds of these internal memos cross ministers’ desks everyday. This is how elected officials transmit their decisions to the public service in our system of government.”

At the heart of the affair is the Nov. 27, 2009 memo signed by Oda and two bureaucrats, including the head of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), in which it was proposed that $7 million be provided to KAIROS, a church-based group that had been doing aid work in the developing world for decades.

While CIDA wanted KAIROS to get the money, Oda is under attack from critics for altering the memo by seemingly ordering the insertion of the word “not” before “approve” to make it look as though her bureaucrats recommended against extended funding.

Opposition parties are also complaining that she later misled Parliament by publicly suggesting CIDA’s recommendation was against the funding, and that she misled MPs at a committee who wanted to know about her involvement in the insertion of the word “not.”

According to the background document distributed Saturday, government officials say Oda was “the only person with authority” to make a decision about the application from KAIROS for funds.

“In this case, the Minister’s decision was to reject the recommendation provided to her, and direct that CIDA not provide funding to KAIROS,” it read. “The Minister had reviewed the memo, made her decision not to approve the funding application, and asked her staff to follow through on it.

“The Minister was travelling out of Ottawa on the day that her staff completed the paper work to implement her decision, so they, with the minister’s authority, applied her automated signature, which is used when required because a minister is unable to personally sign a document, and indicated her decision on the memo by clearly indicating that she did NOT approve the funding application.”

According to the background document, the memo was then returned to the “very officials” who had sent it to Oda for a decision. Because of that, says the government, the two bureaucrats whose names were on the memo “could not have been misled” because they knew that the word “not” had been inserted.

It’s far from certain that opposition parties will be satisfied with this explanation, especially since Harper and Government House Leader John Baird have not been forthcoming when asked publicly to explain what happened. It is suspected that Oda agreed with her bureaucrats’ recommendation to approve the funding request and signed it — only to be told by the Prime Minister’s Office later to reverse her decision.

Opposition parties also note that in the spring of 2010, the Liberals asked Oda in a written question in Parliament why CIDA had decided not to fund KAIROS.

Oda replied by referring to “the CIDA decision not to continue KAIROS funding,” leaving the impression that it was a bureaucratic decision.

Still, the government maintains otherwise, saying that only Oda had the authority to make the decision and “once she made a decision, it became CIDA’s decision.”

And the Tories say Oda did not lie when asked at a Commons committee last December if she knew who inserted the word “not” on the memo, because she didn’t know which staff member was responsible.

Opposition MPs say that’s an overly legalistic response, because she could have told them then — rather than waiting until last week — that the staff member did it on her orders.