Rising doubt in Trudeau

Canadians head to the polls in eight months from today to elect a new federal government and many of them seem to be doubting Justin Trudeau’s leadership for the first time in the wake of the SNC-Lavalin affair.

As a new Leger poll released Wednesday showed, 41 per cent of respondents believe Trudeau did something wrong and another 41 per cent of Canadians aren’t sure, leaving just 12 per cent believing he’s not at fault.

Even the majority of federal Liberal supporters are questioning the prime minister’s behaviour. While only 10 per cent believe Trudeau is in the wrong and 27 per cent say he’s not to blame, a whopping 55 per cent aren’t sure. Hardly a glowing endorsement. That is not the kind of cloud a sitting prime minister wants to be campaigning under after Labour Day, when the campaign will kick off in earnest.

So Trudeau has six months to clean up this mess but he’s off to a horrible start. The resignation of Gerald Butts, his longtime friend and right-hand man in the Prime Minister’s Office, is a disaster. Why did he resign if he did nothing wrong?

Unless Butts resigned for the same reason Jody Wilson-Raybould did.

The former justice minister, unceremoniously shuffled off to veterans affairs in the wake of Scott Brison’s departure, quit cabinet just hours after Trudeau said everything was good between him and “Jody” (he kept referring to her as Jody over and over, even though he consistently refers to his male ministers as Minister Morneau, Minister Saijan, etc.). Her resignation humiliated Trudeau and directly contradicted his “sunny ways” narrative.

In other words, she wasn’t happy with the way she was being treated.

Butts said he resigned to avoid becoming a “distraction” but maybe he wasn’t too happy with how he was being treated, either.

That’s the problem with this whole affair. It’s a huge steaming pile of maybe this and maybe that with only a handful of facts. One of those facts was the other news Wednesday.

Trudeau spoke to justice minister Wilson-Raybould after SNCLavalin was denied an out-ofcourt settlement to avoid criminal prosecution for the company’s numerous fraud and bribery charges.

When the first broke the story three weeks ago that PMO staff had urged WilsonRaybould to cut the Quebecbased engineering firm some slack on its legal troubles, Trudeau said he spoke to his justice minister about the case on Sept. 17. The date only became significant on Wednesday, when court documents revealed SNC-Lavalin was told Sept. 4 by federal justice officials that there would be no negotiations towards an out-of-court settlement.

So there was a conversation but what was said is unknown.

More maybe this. More maybe that. Wilson-Raybould certainly has reasons to be mad at Trudeau. The first Indigenous person to be justice minister, she was a star candidate recruited by the Liberals four years ago and her central role in the Trudeau government was touted as a sign the Liberals would be taking reconciliation with First Nations far more seriously than the Stephen Harper Conservatives had.

And she delivered in her role as justice minister. While Chrystia Freeland was stealing the headlines for her work stickhandling Canada’s position in negotiations with Mexico and the United States towards a new free trade agreement, Wilson-Raybould quickly and quietly went about delivering two major Trudeau campaign promises on legalizing assisted dying and legalizing marijuana possession and consumption.

It seems the thanks she received for that work was a cabinet demotion, which appears to be because she supported a decision made within the department she oversaw to prosecute SNC-Lavalin through the courts.

A mess from any angle and that Leger poll suggests most Canadians feel Trudeau is either fully or partly responsible for it.

Conservatives shouldn’t start celebrating too quickly, however.

Doubt in Trudeau doesn’t necessarily translate into support for their party or Andrew Scheer, their leader. While the federal NDP and their leader Jagmeet Singh are well back in the polls, it was Singh who has outmanoeuvered Scheer on this file, by quickly calling for an ethics investigation, a request that was promptly taken up by the ethics commissioner.

Eight months before the election four years ago, Trudeau and the federal Liberals were third in federal polls, trailing Tom Mulcair’s NDP and the Harper Conservatives.

A lot can — and will — happen between now and Oct. 21.

Canadians are watching and paying attention, before filing their final decision in the ballot box.