Wanted: PMO adviser, must be reality-based
Slow drip of scandal eroding support for PM
I THINK WE’RE ALL AGHAST AT THE KIND OF COVERT AND OVERT DISCREDITING OF HER THAT’S GOING ON IN SOME LIBERAL CIRCLES. I THINK IT’S SHAMEFUL. — REV. STEVEN EPPERSON, A MEMBER OF JODY WILSON-RAYBOULD’S VANCOUVER GRANVILLE RIDING
One assumes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would prefer still to have Gerald Butts as his high-profile adviser. Close friends since their Mcgill days, they went on a six-and-a-half year journey together that saw Trudeau romp his way to victory in the 2013 Liberal leadership race, then win a comfortable majority government in Ottawa. Butts resigned Monday amidst the Jody Wilson-raybould/snc-lavalin mess with the Liberals in perfectly good position to win another majority next fall. And depending on how things shake out, he could wind up a key player in that campaign.
This is an opportunity for wholesale re-evaluation, though. And looking back on the dizzying past two weeks, nothing deserves more re-evaluation than the reputation of anyone involved whose business card says “strategist,” “political adviser,” or anything of the sort. The mess Trudeau’s team made of this file beggars belief.
To recap: Responding to a bombshell Globe and Mail story, Trudeau denies that he or anyone in his office “directed” Wilson-raybould to abandon the Snc-lavalin prosecution. But no one alleged he had; the allegation was of improper pressure, influence or suasion. It takes many subsequent hours before Liberal MP Marco Mendicino, for some reason, flatly denies the actual allegation.
Anonymous “senior government officials” then concede there might well have been “vigorous debate” involving Wilson-raybould and the PMO, but that it didn’t amount to “pressure.” And in any event, the Globe reported, “another (anonymous) official said the PMO had every right to raise the prosecution case with the justice minister … because a conviction could destroy the company and hurt thousands of workers.”
So nothing bad happened. But perhaps the bad thing isn’t really that bad. Righty-o.
Trudeau then belatedly reveals that he personally had discussed Snc-lavalin with Wilson-raybould — but that it was mutually understood the decision whether on not to prosecute was hers. He adds that Wilson-raybould is not unhappy with the government. “Her presence in cabinet should actually speak for itself,” he said.
This effectively forces Wilson-raybould, whom everyone knew was unhappy — witness her remarkable post-demotion manifesto — to resign, which she did hours later, making everything worse.
Trudeau then tries to turn it back on Wilson-raybould: If she had been pressured then “it was her responsibility to come forward to me this past fall and highlight that directly to me.” He was “puzzled” that she had not done so, yet felt the need to resign.
Charging in from left field, Commons justice committee chairman Anthony Housefather suggests in a CTV interview that Wilson-raybould might have gotten the boot for insufficient fluency in French. He later apologizes, explaining that he had just been Bs-ing. Perhaps he thought that was allowed now.
Trudeau then suggests Wilson-raybould would actually still be in cabinet had Scott Brison not retired. The Treasury Board president resigns so you demote the justice minister? Baffling. Also, he had just finished suggesting Wilson-raybould might have failed in an important ministerial responsibility!
At least he puts his name to the charge. As soon as this all starts going pear shaped, various anonymous Liberal sources begin describing Wilson-raybould as demanding, pushy, self-centred, and various other adjectives that to great numbers of Trudeau supporters connote people who just can’t stand successful women. Basically, over the course of a few days, for no good reason, everyone involved took a huge chunk of Trudeau’s feminist and reconciliation bona fides and ran them through the woodchipper. At the very least one of them deserves to lose his job. There’s no obvious reason why it shouldn’t be Butts.
It’s not as if this is the Trudeau PMO’S first epic screwup. It’s still astonishing to think a group of highly paid and ostensibly intelligent political advisers somehow allowed the prime minister of Canada to swan off on vacation to the Aga Khan’s island without so much as consulting the integrity commissioner. They should have locked him in a basement until he promised not to go; instead they seemed baffled that people seemed to care about little things like conflicts of interest.
As it so often is with this gang, it gave the impression of people who just aren’t quite of the same world the rest of us inhabit — who even after three years have no idea what’s going to land well and what’s going to blow up in their faces. Part of the problem might be that for so long, a lot of things that could have blown up or landed flat instead yielded unfailing standing ovations and fawning coverage for the boss man.
“Because it’s 2015” was a stupid, glib line that raised more questions than it answered; he’d get savaged for it today. It’s 2019, his office can’t manage a piss-up in a brewery, and people who were near-cultish partisans just weeks ago are now heard comparing him favourably to Andrew Scheer. Much more of the country suddenly, belatedly seems to see Trudeau as the conventional, gaffe-prone politician he is. He might want to hire some of those as staffers.