‘Clumsy’ — Murphy,

“How bad is it?”

“How bad is it …? Well, I hear they’re planning a second trip to India. With brighter costumes and longer dances. That’s how bad. To kick it off they’re going to rename the Rideau River ‘Ganges West.’ ” — Mutterings from the Glebe rumour mill Equipoise ( n.): a perfect balance of forces.

We are in a rare moment in Canadian politics, a moment of equipoise. It’s rare because equipoise, even in the state of nature is, at least, infrequent. But in politics, it’s a once-in-a-century event when a lone backbench member of Parliament who is, crucially in this case, both female and Aboriginal, holds a power potentially on par with the prime minister.

It is of course Jody WilsonRaybould who is this phoenix, and it may be of use to outline why, and how, she has come to own such centrality.

Mainly because her prime minister, Mr. Trudeau, through clumsiness, inadvertence and possibly malice, has bestowed it upon her. To begin, all stems from Scott Brison’s flight to a job at BMO, triggering the fatal cabinet shuffle that abruptly banished “Jody” (as the prime minister prefers to call her) from the highest position an Aboriginal woman has ever achieved in cabinet — justice minister and attorney general — to veterans affairs, a portfolio badly mauled and mismanaged by Mr. Trudeau’s friend and colleague, Seamus O’Regan.

Then on the heels of Globe and Mail revelations about the SNC-Lavalin affair, the series of ever-evolving slippery rationalizations for why she was demoted — variously equivocating, self- contradictory, rude, insulting and completely one-sided — has deeply offended Canadians’ sense of elementary fairness.

Among these, the most dangerous was Mr. Trudeau, as this affair reached full boil, fastening on that “she was still in cabinet” as proof all was well, nothing to see here. The lethal formulation given was “the fact she’s still in cabinet speaks for itself.”

Within hours of that comment, Ms. Wilson-Raybould was not in cabinet. She resigned. Ten thousand laptops tapped in unison “well then, her resignation speaks even louder.” And all of them were right.

The very key, however, was that during all the prime minister’s soliloquies, random press briefings and changing storylines, his “victim,” the lone female Aboriginal MP, bound still by the solicitor-client privilege of a former attorney general, was forced to be silent.

The treatment of Ms. Wilson-Raybould put a big, bold, strike-through line on the absolute core elements of the Trudeau brand. It crisscrossed so many cardinal Trudeau pretensions it was almost enough to tempt belief in trendy “intersectionality.” (Almost.)

It had been vowed that, in the sun-drenched days of a male-feminist Justin Trudeau administration, women would be treated better, more respectfully and above all fairer than in all the Neanderthal darkness that preceded it. Mr. Trudeau branded himself as the feminist- equity principle made flesh. Athena herself in pinstripes.

Skipping past the prelude of the recently surfaced groping allegations from before he was prime minister, Mr. Trudeau’s treatment of Jody Wilson-Raybould, far from being a milestone of modern male- feminist sensitivity, could have been hauled out of a script for Married with Children.

It simply has not been fair. He can speak and has spoken many times. She can’t, and hasn’t. Unfair. He characterizes her motivations. He tells of conversations with her. And has done so with full knowledge that she is bound to silence, and he knows it is unfair. How unfair? Even some of his most loyal feminist allies have reached for that demon-phrase: “Harper level unfair.”

Farewell, male- feminist halo.

But of all the issues this prime minister has boasted of being closest to his heart, surpassing even feminist equity, the most “moral” of them all is Aboriginal relations. This, as he has said, is why he is in politics. On this file, most central to Canada’s moral integrity, he was going to be the leader.

You may listen to the chorus of Aboriginal leaders, the near-rage of Ms. WilsonRaybould’s father, and voices within Mr. Trudeau’s party and even cabinet, to see where that pretension lies now. The Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs has called upon the prime minister “to condemn the racist and sexist innuendo about Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould that is being spread by unnamed elected officials and staff of your government.” A furious op-ed from other prominent Aboriginals catches the tone of the tactics deployed in a blistering characterization as “practising character assassination … (which has) cost us the first Indigenous female justice minister.”

What Mr. Trudeau promised most to advance, he has most set back. It has been shown that how Mr. Trudeau speaks and poses on feminism and Aboriginal concerns when nothing’s at play, and how he acts on them when his own interests are at stake, are two banks of an Amazonwide river. The torrent rushing between them are the waters of hypocrisy.

If it is possible, the external factors in this matter — those beyond the immediate circumstances of Ms. WilsonRaybould and SNC-Lavalin — go even deeper to the fate of this government. They hinge on the sacrosanct concept of the “rule of law.”

The SNC- Lavalin case, the heavy lobbying preceding the insertion of deferred prosecution agreements into the omnibus Budget bill, the Liberal eunuchs of the justice committee preparing to call nearly everyone BUT the former justice minister herself, the absolute centre of the matter — do not all of these factors and more put unbearable strain on this government’s high claims of stringently adhering to the rule of law? That standard, so lately lauded and mightily invoked, as an absolute in a near-equal crisis, the Meng Wanzhou case?

Jody Wilson-Raybould’s fate here intersects brutally with the government’s high moral defence of the arrest. If Canada was a shuttlecock between the world’s two great powers before, how we are going to be buffeted now is painful to contemplate. The Beijing media will probably declare a second Chinese New Year over this mess.

And is there not simultaneously the preliminary hearing of the Admiral Norman case, with its question of one rule for the admiral, another for every other leaker? Rule of law is being tested there too.

At the cabinet level, at the national level, at the international level, this matter spirals out and intersects with the predominant themes and issues of the entire Trudeau administration and its key component, Mr. Trudeau’s personal brand.

And so, we are back to the rare instance of equipoise. This is a Samson-clutchingthe-pillars-of-the-arena moment for the Trudeau government.

Ms. Wilson- Raybould’s silence has been her great handicap. So far. By taking unfair advantage of that silence and issuing so many definitive characterizations of her conduct, Mr. Trudeau has supremely elevated the drama of the moment when she decides, or is released, to give her version. This will be (pace Baghdad Bob) the Mother of All Press Conferences. People will turn off hockey to watch and listen when Ms. Wilson-Raybould speaks.

And, conditional on what she has to reveal, to counterassert, or challenge what her prime minister has said, the election that will take place on the 21st of October may be settled in the grey midweeks of February.

The irony at play here is massive. The great power this former justice minister has accumulated flows utterly from the treatment that the government of Justin Trudeau has afforded her. Her words could cut to the very centre of the government’s credibility.

And whatever she says, the soft, vague, virtue-spouting brand of a sunshine government is mired beyond repair or redemption.