National Post (National Edition)
For Trudeau, not being Harper just isn’t good enough any more
Justin Trudeau apparently believes he can win the upcoming October election the same way he won the past one, by not being Stephen Harper.
After Jody Wilson-raybould spent several hours Wednesday outlining in detail the hounding she received from the highest people in the Trudeau government to put aside her principles and rescue SNCLavalin from a corruption trial, Trudeau emerged to offer a response.
Wilson-raybould was clear, credible, straightforward and eminently convincing. Anyone outside a hardened partisan would have to conclude this was a strong woman who held firm beliefs and had stood by them under extreme duress from powerful men.
Trudeau was something else. “Sincere” wouldn’t be it. Smarmy is a word that seems to cling to him. He placed a big bet on the power of his personal stature. His position amounted to the old Marx Brothers line: Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?
The prime minister said his recollection of events did not match his former minister’s. Absolutely nothing improper took place in his view. There was no “consistent and sustained effort ... to seek to politically interfere” in her refusal to mount a rescue mission. No veiled threats. No ignoring her entreaties to back off. Sure there was some talk about the jobs that would be lost if Lavalin closed up shop in Montreal, but that’s just natural — it’s part of his job to worry about such things.
But, he insisted, “I … completely disagree with the former attorney-general’s characterization of events.”
He accompanied his denial with references to Harper, the man brought down by voter disappointment and a scandal he couldn’t explain away. If he recognized the similarities he didn’t let on. He’d delivered the same line in question period that afternoon, over and over, no matter how opposition members phrased their questions. He would never apologize for “protecting Canadian jobs.” A Liberal government was about jobs, jobs, jobs. And, hey … I’m not Stephen Harper.
His position should perhaps come as no surprise, considering the notably similar explanation he offered last summer when accused of groping a reporter. “I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way. But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently,” he said at the time.
“Often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate, and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently,” he added, apparently a fact he’d just discovered.
In the Wilson-raybould matter, he would have us believe it’s her who misunderstands events. The trouble with his view lies in those hours of testimony, and the fact Canadians got to evaluate her believability with their own eyes. The former minister didn’t just throw out a few vague allegations. She provided names, dates, direct quotes of what was said, and how she responded. It was a compelling performance, and carried a strong ring of truth. Canadians suspicious of the cynicism of high politics have no reason to doubt she was reporting things exactly as they happened.
And what a tale it was. The former justice minister said she made up her mind very early in the proceedings not to bow to the demands to overrule the director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, who had decided not to apply a rescue plan for Snc-lavalin the Liberals had slipped through the House last year.
She said she made clear to Trudeau in September there would be no “deferred prosecution agreement,” or DPA, for the Montreal firm. Between that meeting and her transfer to another job in January, she was bombarded by appeals to change her mind, seek a “solution,” find a way around her principles or do whatever had to be done to let the company off the hook.
It started with Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s chief of staff, carried on to clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, and eventually to Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s close friend and then-chief adviser. The message was consistent: find a way. Do your part. Help us out.
She explained the reasons for her position, but the barrage continued, encapsulated in the very first warning from Morneau’s aide: “If they don’t get a DPA they will leave Montreal and it’s the Quebec election right now so we can’t have that happen.”
Fear of a backlash in Quebec ignored the fact the legislation — crafted by Trudeau’s own government — specifically excluded economic concerns as consideration for a DPA. Yet it was the core of the case brought to her: do something for Lavalin or they’ ll pull up stakes and the government will take a hit. Most startling of all was when it came from the very top, in a session she’d arranged with Trudeau on another matter.
She found him accompanied by Wernick. Trudeau went straight to the Lavalin situation. He wanted her to “help out … to find a solution here for SNC.” She found herself in the perverse position of explaining, to the prime minister of the country, “the law and what I have the ability to do and not do under the Director of Public Prosecutions Act.” She informed him “I had done my due diligence and made up my mind on SNC and that I was not going to interfere with the decision of the DPP.”
They ignored her. Wernick pointedly indicated there was a Lavalin board meeting soon, that they might pull up stakes, “and there is an election in Quebec soon,” at which point “the PM jumped in” to stress that “I am an MP in Quebec — the member for Papineau.”
Still she held her ground. Options were offered: an outside counsel — a former supreme court justice maybe — could be brought in to provide cover for a retreat. The PMO could whip up some op-ed pieces for friendly newspapers to indicate she was doing the right thing. It was suggested Roussel might not appreciate the full gravity of the situation. There were “veiled threats” of what might happen if Lavalin didn’t get its DPA.
She had a sit-down with Butts, and informed him “the barrage of people hounding me and my staff ” must end. Instead, he told her chief of staff “there is no solution here that does not involve some interference.” She was dropped as justice minister a few weeks later.
It’s clear what puzzled Trudeau and his people. They saw the political issue as paramount: Lavalin must stay in Montreal at all costs, whatever the legalities. Steeped in the politics of self-preservation, they simply couldn’t fathom why she’d put mere principle ahead of potentially lost votes.
So far-reaching are Wilson-raybould’s accusations that a blithe “I see it differently” from Trudeau is unlikely to suffice. After her testimony it’s very much up in the air whether his word can be trusted.
When she told Butts, after her ouster, that — despite Trudeau’s denial — she felt it was related to her Lavalin stand, he shot back: “Are you questioning the integrity of the prime minister?” She said nothing at the time, but her testimony Wednesday was loud and clear. Not being Stephen Harper may not be enough this time around. Canadians will be judging Trudeau instead.