Trudeau expels whistleblowers who accused him in scandal

JUSTIN TRUDEAU, the Canadian prime minister, has expelled two MPS from his party after they accused him of inappropriately interfering in a criminal case involving an influential company.

Jody Wilson-raybould and Jane Philpott had already resigned from Mr Trudeau’s cabinet over concerns about the affair, involving the engineering company Snc-lavalin, which was accused of paying bribes to Libya. Thepair have now been kicked out of his Liberal Party caucus just months before a general election.

The MPS were both high-profile female ministers in Mr Trudeau’s cabinet, half of which are women.

Andrew Scheer, the leader of the opposition Conservatives, said that the prime minister had betrayed justice by removing two whistleblowers.

“Canadians will view the removal of Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-raybould from the Liberal caucus for exactly what it is: a betrayal of justice,” he said in a statement.

“Elected officials are supposed to protect individuals who blow the whistle on government misconduct and corruption, not punish them.”

The scandal surrounding the Snclavalin affair has plunged Mr Trudeau’s re-election hopes into doubt, seeing his party fall behind in polls ahead of the vote in October.

Mr Trudeau said he had taken the decision after Ms Wilson-raybould released audio from a telephone call between herself and Michael Wernick, then Canada’s most senior civil servant, which she had secretly recorded.

Mr Wernick is heard in the audio telling Ms Wilson-raybould, then the attorney general, that Mr Trudeau is interested in having Snc-lavalin avoid criminal prosecution.

Ms Wilson-raybould later resigned from the cabinet and said the tapes backed up her claim that senior government officials pressured her to shield the firm from prosecution.