Ottawa Citizen

Trudeau could lift the muzzle

- CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD in Edmonton

Whi let he other party leaders were slugging it out in Toronto at the first debate of the federal election campaign, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was basking in the warm glow of the already converted.

From Victoria, where he announced modificati­ons to the already announced firsttime home buyers incentive at a housing constructi­on site while photogenic babies played behind him and a

handful of local candidates cheered him, to a short visit to a candidate’s HQ in beautiful Kamloops to a big rally in Edmonton, he was surrounded by the adoring.

He had but one “media availabili­ty,” in the morning, wherein he mostly deflected tough questions or was, shall we say, disingenuo­us.

When reporter Michelle Zilio of The Globe and Mail, which has led the coverage of the SNC-Lavalin issue, asked why former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould and former Treasury Board boss Jane Philpott shouldn’t be able to talk to the RCMP about the Trudeau government’s fulsome efforts to get SNC a plea bargain “without being muzzled by cabinet confidence,” Trudeau replied: “We actually took an unpreceden­ted step in giving out a waiver that allows for all issues related to this matter to be discussed, investigat­ed and followed up on. … This is something we did that is unpreceden­ted because we know that it is important for people to examine what happened in this matter.

“And that’s why we took this step.”

Alas and alack, that’s not true, though he’s been singing the unpreceden­ted tune a while now, on Wednesday describing it as “the largest and most expansive waiver of cabinet confidence in Canada’s history.”

True, his government’s waiver for Wilson-Raybould included the waiving of solicitor-client privilege (necessary because of the nature of the dual portfolio she held, AG plus justice minister).

But the waiver was not unpreceden­ted in the way that Trudeau suggested Thursday and said outright Wednesday — i.e., that it was both broad and freeing for those, such as the nine witnesses Ethics Commission­er Mario Dion believed had relevant evidence to give but could not because of cabinet confidence, who wanted to tell him the truth.

The waiver allowed JWR and other witnesses to disclose only conversati­ons up to and including Jan. 14, when Wilson-Raybould was moved from the dual AG/justice portfolio to veterans affairs (after, insultingl­y, being offered the one job, the Indigenous file, that as a woman who has opposed the Indian Act her whole life, she couldn’t accept).

Both JWR and Philpott have said there’s much more to the story that should be told, but that these conversati­ons with either Trudeau or his senior staff which will tell it happened after Jan. 14.

This is the waiver Trudeau refuses to give — even for his own ethics commission­er and even, stunningly, for the national police.

(The Clerk of the Privy Council, Ian Shugart, apparently made the decision not to grant a broader waiver on his own, and the Liberals say they only learned about it later. The PM could have overruled him, but didn’t.)

The most liberating waiver — plural actually — dates back to Adscam, the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorshi­p scandal.

I covered much of the public hearings — they revealed such base and venal conduct on the part of Liberal government ministers, deputy ministers, staff and even volunteers (some of whom cheerfully cashed cheques from companies they’d never heard of ) that I actually wept hearing it — but didn’t remember the intricacie­s of the waivers.

There were two — both approved by then Liberal PM Paul Martin and former Liberal PM Jean Chrétien — issued so former justice John Gomery could have “a full inquiry” and learn how certain decisions were reached at the highest levels.

The waivers were dated Feb. 20, 2004 and Sept. 14 the same year. Together, they allowed witnesses to talk freely and relevant documents to get into the judge’s hands.

In the final chapter of his first report (there were two), Gomery also had this to say: “The concentrat­ion of power in the office of the prime minister is a phenomenon of modern Canadian government which has been noted with concern by academics and commentato­rs …

“The dangers created by that concentrat­ion are demonstrat­ed by the ‘Sponsorshi­p scandal’.”

From 1994 to 2003, the federal government spent $332 million — almost half of that going to the various private communicat­ion and public relations agencies, which inexplicab­ly were given the reins of control and dished out the dough, usually to themselves.

That doesn’t begin to speak to the damage done to democracy, and government accountabi­lity and transparen­cy.

Interestin­gly, the reporter who blew the lid off the sponsorshi­p inquiry with his access to informatio­n requests, was the Globe’s Daniel LeBlanc. He is also one of the authors on this week’s story that JWR was interviewe­d only this week by the RCMP on a possible obstructio­n of justice charge.

Team Trudeau may have got a new plane Thursday, after the team bus drove under and damaged the wing of the old plane at the Victoria airport Wednesday night. They ought to need more than that.

Give Martin and Chrétien their due: They at least let slip the choke chains of cabinet confidence, born of a need to do the right thing (Martin) or a sublime self-confidence (Chrétien). By not going to school on those examples, and offering instead the frequent nose-stretcher of “unpreceden­ted,” Trudeau looks like he’s afraid of the truth.

BOTH JWR AND PHILPOTT HAVE SAID THERE’S MUCH MORE TO THE STORY THAT SHOULD BE TOLD.

 ?? DENNIS OWEN / REUTERS ?? Members of the media, at top, inspect the wing of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s campaign plane after it was struck by a media bus in Victoria, B.C., on Wednesday evening. Trudeau, above, walks down
the steps from a replacemen­t aircraft, as he arrives for a campaign event in Kamloops on Thursday.
DENNIS OWEN / REUTERS Members of the media, at top, inspect the wing of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s campaign plane after it was struck by a media bus in Victoria, B.C., on Wednesday evening. Trudeau, above, walks down the steps from a replacemen­t aircraft, as he arrives for a campaign event in Kamloops on Thursday.
 ?? SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS ??
SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS
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