National Post (National Edition)

PM’S statement light on contrition

- Matt Gurney

If this is the contrition option, it’s a bit light on contrition. Early on Thursday morning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a press conference on Parliament Hill. The prime minister’s remarks on Thursday came exactly one month after the original story in The Globe and Mail that set off this entire controvers­y. In those four weeks, the Liberals have tried repeatedly to find some defence — any defence — that would work.

Since the Globe alleged that the Prime Minister’s Office had pressured Jody Wilson-raybould, then the minister of justice and also the attorney general, to direct prosecutor­s to cut Quebecbase­d Snc-lavalin a break in an upcoming bribery trial, the prime minister and his team have tried claiming that Wilson-raybould was never directed to make a choice (that wasn’t the allegation); they’ve whispered off-therecord that she was difficult and selfish; they’ve apologized for those whispers; and they’ve lost another female minister, Jane Philpott, who resigned in protest this week, saying she’d lost confidence in the government’s handling of the entire affair.

In other words, it hasn’t been going great.

In recent days, reports had begun to emerge — placed by “senior Liberal insiders,” no doubt — that Trudeau now grasped the gravity of this situation. It was a crisis. Senior advisers were gathered with him. A statement of “contrition” was expected. Not an apology, per se, but an acknowledg­ment that mistakes had been made and that the government would do better going forward. On Wednesday, after the morning press event was announced, that message was sent again to the Ottawa press gallery — not an apology, not a surrender, but an acknowledg­ment of errors, and contrition.

That’s not really what Canadians got.

The prime minister spoke for about 15 minutes and took questions for longer. You can see that the tone was intended to signal contrition — the prime minister sounded serious, reasonable and concerned. He said that he had learned a lot in recent weeks and still had more to learn, including about his own leadership and ways he could potentiall­y improve. He assured Canadians that their government would be made stronger by all this.

But an apology? An admission of wrongdoing? Not only was there nothing like that, but the prime minister actually made a clear defence of his government’s conduct. Asked by Global News’ Amanda Connolly if he was apologizin­g, the prime minister said that he’d be making an apology to Inuit Canadians today, and then added, “but in regards to standing up for jobs and defending the integrity of our rule of law, I continue to say that there was no inappropri­ate pressure.”

And there you go. Canadians could have saved themselves 45 minutes of their morning by just watching that 30-second exchange. “I continue to say there was no inappropri­ate pressure.” Fair enough! And how’s that contrition approach coming along, sir?

The prime minister’s remarks Thursday were, in their own way, an echo of the testimony of his close friend and former principal secre- tary, Gerald Butts. Butts gave testimony to the House justice committee on Wednesday, and also took a thoughtful, serious and respectful tone. But if you burned away all the rhetorical flourishes and unnecessar­y verbiage, what Butts effectivel­y said was that there was no fundamenta­l failure on behalf of the prime minister or other officials. That everything they’d done was proper, if perhaps at times inelegant.

The PM’S statement is basically the same. About as far as he’d go in admitting any actual failure, on his part or anyone else’s, was to say that there was obviously “an erosion of trust” between Wilson-raybould and Butts, and between Wilson-raybould and himself. And that erosion of trust, Trudeau said, is something that he as a leader needs to reflect on and think about.

Well, hey. Everything’s a learning experience, I guess. Reflect to your heart’s content, Mr. Prime Minister. But as the press event went on, and the prime minister returned again and again to that phrase — “an erosion of trust” — I kept waiting for something else: an acceptance of responsibi­lity. There was none.

Erosion, of course, normally describes a natural process. With the goodness of time, the forces of nature gradually reshape the world. It ’s a blameless process. There’s no agency to winds whittling down mountain peaks or tides smashing stones into sand.

But this benign euphemism doesn’t really get at the central issue here, one that has now cost the government two senior female cabinet ministers, the prime minister his top adviser, and if the polls can be believed, the Liberals a whack of public support. There was an erosion of trust because of what the prime minister and his officials did, knowingly and repeatedly. This wasn’t some naturally occurring, slowmotion cycle. It was erosion by intentiona­l and sustained sandblasti­ng.

And the prime minister, in his own way, acknowledg­ed that. On Wednesday, Butts had insisted over and over that if Wilson-raybould had reached a final decision, no one in the government knew that, and she should have said so. He also said he didn’t even think she could reach a final decision, as per the law. Trudeau took that notion out ‘round the barn and shot it dead — he told the press gallery that Wilson-raybould told him her mind was made up and that he asked her to reconsider. And in what had to be the most jaw-dropping moment of the event, near the start of it, the prime minister said if he’d made any mistake, it was perhaps not personally intercedin­g again.

Because nothing says “no pressure” like the prime minister directly involving himself in an “independen­t” process for a second time, after already being told a decision had been made.

So there you have it. No apology. A vague commitment to learn from this all and consult with some leading Canadians on ways to do better. Confirmati­on of a central part of Wilson-raybould’s claims. And a clear statement that he still believes that nothing inappropri­ate happened.

I’m not sure exactly what the prime minister was hoping to accomplish this morning. But I have to assume this was not precisely it.

EROSION OF TRUST BECAUSE OF WHAT THE PRIME MINISTER AND HIS OFFICIALS DID.

 ?? LARS HAGBERG / AFP / GETTY IMAGES ?? Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on his way to a press conference in Ottawa Thursday on the Snc-lavalin scandal.
LARS HAGBERG / AFP / GETTY IMAGES Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on his way to a press conference in Ottawa Thursday on the Snc-lavalin scandal.

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