Principled witness, damning testimony
Not jobs, but elections clearly key motivation
It was clear from the first line of Jody Wilson-raybould’s testimony: the Trudeau government is now officially in crisis, the jobs of several of its top officials hanging by a thread.
The former attorney general did not merely offer her “perspective” with regard to the Snc-lavalin affair, as the prime minister had airily suggested beforehand. She presented damning evidence, based on verbatim texts, contemporaneous notes, and detailed personal recollections, of “a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role as the attorney general of Canada in an inappropriate effort to secure a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with Snclavalin.”
This was not just inappropriate pressure by this official or that minister. It appears to have been a whole-of-government effort to wear down her resistance, if not intimidate her into submission, involving 11 different people, 10 phone calls, multiple meetings, emails, text messages, the works.
It was not just a one-time event, but continued for months, long after the decision had been made — after the director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, had decided against offering Snc-lavalin a DPA, after Wilson-raybould had decided against overruling her, indeed even after the matter had become the subject of judicial proceedings, Snclavalin having challenged the DPP’S decision in court.
Neither was the motive for all this pressure confined to high-minded concern for jobs, should Snclavalin move its headquarters from Montreal. It was, from the start, explicitly partisan, with an eye to the impact on both the last Quebec election and the next federal election.
And the longer it went on, the worse it got — what began as importuning ended as not-so-veiled threats, the pretence of staying within the law giving way to open demands that it be set to one side. And, as we know, not long afterward, she was dropped from her post.
What is revealed throughout is an attitude that appears to pervade this government: that the law is not an institution to be revered, but just another obstacle to get around, by whatever means necessary. Her decision, as the duly authorized and independent decision-maker, was likewise, not something to be respected, but merely an opening bid.
It is nothing short of remarkable that, amid what she called this “barrage” of improper pressure, Wilson-raybould stood her ground. Why didn’t she resign? Thank goodness she didn’t. She appears to have been one of the few people in this government with any principled belief in the rule of law. And in the end she did pay for it with her job, not once but twice.
If there was any doubt about who would be the more credible witness, Wilson-raybould or the prime minister and his people, that has been dispelled. Where they have depended on vagueness, she was detailed; where they have offered misdirection, she was direct; where they look like people with something to hide, she was forthright.
It is not possible to believe any more, if it ever was, that she might have just misinterpreted an innocent remark. Either she is flat out lying about the whole business, or the prime minister and his people are. It is difficult to see why she would. It is easy to see why they might. If there was any notion, likewise, that the bleeding in this government would be cauterized by the resignation of the prime minister’s principal secretary, Gerry Butts, that, too, has expired.
All manner of people will now have to be heard from under oath, including:
The finance minister’s chief of staff, Ben Chin. Wilson-raybould said he was one of the first to lean on her to change her mind with regard to the prosecution. “If they don’t get a DPA,” she says he told her chief of staff, Jessica Prince, “they will leave Montreal, and it’s the Quebec election right now, so we can’t have that happen.”
The finance minister, Bill Morneau. After repeated interventions from Chin and other members of his staff Wilson-raybould asked him to call off his dogs. He did not.
Mathieu Bouchard and Elder Marques, officials in the Prime Minister’s Office. “We can have the best policy in the world,” she says Bouchard told Prince, “but we need to be re-elected.”
The prime minister’s chief of staff, Katie Telford. Prince reported that at a Dec. 18 meeting, Telford pressed her to find a “solution,” commenting that “we don’t want to debate legalities anymore.”
Butts. At the same meeting, Butts allegedly told her: “Jess, there is no solution here that doesn’t involve some interference.”
Michael Wernick, the clerk of the privy council. Though he is the head of the non-partisan civil service, Wernick’s conduct, by Wilson-raybould’s account, would appear to have been disturbingly political, not to say improper, from his unsolicited advice, at the Sept. 17 meeting with the prime minister, that “there is an election in Quebec soon” — a concern echoed by the PM — to his warning, in the Dec. 19 phone call that spurred thoughts in her of the Watergate-era “Saturday Night Massacre,” that the PM “is gonna find a way to get it done one way or another,” that he was “a bit worried” and that it was “not good for the prime minister and his attorney general to be at ‘loggerheads’.”
There is much more still to be addressed, issues she is not yet at liberty to talk about, notably what discussions she has had with the prime minister since she was shuffled out of the Justice, or why she later resigned from cabinet.
For now it is useful to be reminded of the power an individual of conscience can wield. Wilson-raybould is one person, facing the whole might of the government of Canada, and it isn’t even close.