Trudeau should make amends for SNC-Lavalin affair

With just weeks before another federal election campaign begins, Canada’s ethics watchdog has fired off a damning indictment of Justin Trudeau’s role in the SNC-Lavalin affair.

And no matter how the Liberals spin it, this report will be a monkey that Canada’s prime minister will carry on his back as he bids for re-election.

According to the findings Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion released Wednesday, Trudeau abused the powers of his office in an attempt to interfere with a criminal prosecution. In doing so, he broke the ethics law of the land.

Whatever Trudeau’s defence of his actions, the political interests of his own Liberal party factored into his decisions, according to Dion. Trudeau also deliberately obstructed the ethics commissioner’s investigation. And at the end of it all, the prime minister who has so often apologized for the mistakes of other governments — many committed generations ago — stubbornly refused to apologize for his own failings and be accountable.

To a large extent, the ethics commissioner covered familiar ground. Canadians already knew Trudeau and high-ranking staff in the Prime Minister’s Office exerted sustained pressure on then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould. They wanted her to allow the Quebecbased engineering giant SNC-Lavalin to avoid a criminal prosecution that, if it ended in conviction, would bar the company from lucrative federal contracts for years.

Canadians already knew Wilson-Raybould had refused and was replaced as attorney general before finally being turfed from the Liberal caucus and as a future Liberal candidate.

But this report inconveniently arrives for the Liberals just as they were recovering in public opinion polls from the low-point that followed the revelations of the SNCLavalin affair this past winter. And while the opposition parties are guided, at least partly, by self-interest as they hammer the Liberals over this scandal, Ethics Commissioner Dion is as close as we’ll get to hearing the verdict of a non-partisan judge.

So where do voters go from here? They’re the ultimate judges. As they digest Dion’s report, they should note that however questionable some of the prime minister’s motives, he also believed he was acting in the best interests of Canadians by trying to shelter SNC-Lavalin from irreparable harm.

In hindsight, the threats of job losses were exaggerated, but he didn’t know it at the time. Moreover, if Canadians accept Trudeau acted largely for the collective good as opposed to the good of the company, then the ethics czar’s conclusion that the prime minister placed corporate interests ahead of public interests loses some of its sting.

Next, voters should put Trudeau’s failings into the context of this government’s track record. That record includes fighting climate change, lifting many families out of poverty and signing new trade deals, even while preserving Canada’s important trade pact with the United States and Mexico — despite Donald Trump’s constant meddling. These, moreover, are the positive achievements of the Liberal government overall, not just the PM. Even so, voters should remember how Trudeau and PMO staff behaved in this affair when the election campaign begins. Clearly, Trudeau and his seemingly sunny ways were a major reason the Liberals returned to power in 2015. It’s doubtful he remains their strongest asset today.

But Trudeau could still repair some of the damage he caused. He could help himself if he apologized for making the mistakes highlighted by the ethics commissioner. Even better, he could help the country if he announced measures to ensure the lines he crossed are not trampled over again, intentionally or not.

Pride, our prime minister should remember, sometimes goes before a fall.