NOW WE KNOW THAT NOVA SCOTIA IS TO BLAME FOR THIS WHOLE MESS.

Almost none of cabinet shuffle’s stated goals met

They needed a cabinet minister from Nova Scotia, you see. In Gerald Butts’s telling, that was the genesis of this whole crazy mess — and the reason various Liberals, including Butts on Wednesday, keep insisting that Jody WilsonRaybould would still be minister of justice and attorney general had the former Treasury Board president Scott Brison, who represents the Nova Scotia riding of Kings-hants, not decided to retire.

Trudeau was chuffed with his cabinet, Butts told the Commons justice committee on Wednesday. The PM fully intended to captain it into next year’s election. So the PMO tried to convince Brison to stay on. But when those efforts failed, a shuffle became necessary. According to Butts, because Trudeau was so happy with his cabinet, one priority was to make the shuffle as small and non-disruptive as possible.

Jane Philpott, then minister of Indigenous Services, rocketed to the top of the list to replace Brison. “She had been vice-chair (of the Treasury Board), so she had the experience to do the job,” Butts said. And WilsonRaybould then slotted naturally in to replace Philpott, because … well, here’s Gerry:

“The prime minister spends a lot of his (time) on Indigenous issues. A lot. He cares about the relationship deeply. He was preoccupied with the fact we had the child and family services legislation coming up. He thought it would be one of the most important bills that the government would pass.

“He wanted a person in Indigenous Services who would send a strong signal the work would keep going at the same pace, and that the file would have the same personal prominence for him. The right and perhaps only person who could do that was Minister WilsonRaybould.”

As Wilson-raybould was a high-profile minister and herself Indigenous, this made superficial sense — and only superficial sense, as it turned out. WilsonRaybould spent her whole life before politics opposing the Indian Act, which the appointment would have put her in charge of administering. Mary Ellen Turpel-lafond, the prominent Cree lawyer, likened it on Wednesday to putting Nelson Mandela in charge of administering apartheid. Wilson-raybould declined the post and was sent to Veterans Affairs.

Butts conceded that if he had put some thought into the matter, he would have realized the problem in advance. Apparently Trudeau, despite spending a lot of time — a lot — on Indigenous issues, didn’t twig either.

But you can understand their distraction, surely.

“My main political concern was our position in Nova Scotia,” Butts told the committee. “(Amherst MP Bill) Casey had announced his retirement, and (Central Nova MP Sean) Fraser had told us he was thinking of not running again, but he had not yet announced. I knew that if the prime minister chose a minister from the class of 2015, (veteran Nova Scotia MPS Rodger) Cuzner and (Mark) Eyking could interpret that as a signal and perhaps not run again either.

“In the span of a few months, we would go from holding all 11 seats in Nova Scotia with strong incumbents to having five of them open in the next election.”

At this point, Butts’s clean, exculpatory shuffle narrative — in which SNC-LAVAlin plays absolutely no part — breaks down. The warm Nova Scotian body ended up being Bernadette Jordan — a member of that class of 2015, by the way — who landed the brand new Rural Economic Development portfolio. That left myriad possible permutations for a shuffle that wouldn’t involve savagely demoting Canada’s first female Indigenous justice minister, with whose performance the prime minister was deliriously happy.

Butts said he couldn’t allow a precedent to be set in which an MP turned down a cabinet post — even, apparently, if you’ve accidentally offered Nelson Mandela the Ministry of Apartheid. But Wilson-raybould did turn down the post. The precedent was set. So why not leave her at Justice?

If you want to “send a strong signal” that Indigenous Services is a burning priority for your government and the PM personally, you certainly do not appoint the not-very-accomplished Seamus O’regan, who had developed a reputation at Veterans Affairs for accidentally outraging our former servicemen and women. But if he was good enough after the botched WilsonRaybould appointment, why wasn’t he good enough before?

Almost none of the stated goals for this shuffle was achieved. It certainly didn’t send a reassuring message to Indigenous Canadians. It wasn’t a big shuffle, but it was at least one person bigger than it needed to be: Philpott to Treasury Board, O’regan to Indigenous Services, whatshername from Nova Scotia to Rural Economic Development, literally anyone to Veterans Affairs (sorry, veterans). WilsonRaybould could so easily have stayed put, and her account of sustained pressure on the Lavalin file remains more than credible enough, post-butts, to do the party serious damage.

To be fair to Butts, though, it does seem plausible that he might have been so preoccupied finding a suitable Nova Scotian that rather more important considerations — expertise, demonstrated competence, not grievously insulting an important team member — fell way down the list. Imagine having a cabinet with no one from Nova Scotia. Inconceivable! That’s the way cabinets have always been made, after all. Why would we expect him, and Trudeau, to do politics any differently?

WILSON-RAYBOULD SPENT HER WHOLE LIFE BEFORE POLITICS OPPOSING THE INDIAN ACT, WHICH THE APPOINTMENT WOULD HAVE PUT HER IN CHARGE OF ADMINISTERING. — CHRIS SELLEY