Liberal leadership candidate and former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said on Sunday that former prime minister Stephen Harper asked him to join his cabinet as finance minister in 2012.

The former central banker then said it “wasn’t appropriate” for him to proceed with the offer because he didn’t feel it would be right to “go directly from being governor into elective politics.”

Harper’s former director of communications Dimitri Soudas said in a statement to CBC News that “Mark Carney is not telling the whole story, and prime minister Harper certainly does not support Mr. Carney in any way.”