Gov’t sustains damaging blow

Demoting justice minister may turn out to be big mistake

When the history of our political times is written, the decision last month to take the prestigious justice ministry from Jody Wilson-Raybould may go down as the Trudeau government’s most calamitous mistake.

Even if Wilson-Raybould wasn’t quite up to snuff, even “difficult,” as unnamed government officials let on to various reporters, the prime minister could simply have left her in place until the next election. Other ministers have stumbled more badly than she ever did and stayed in their posts.

But no. Justin Trudeau chose to demote Wilson-Raybould to the important but clearly lesser position of veterans’ affairs, setting off a chain of events that led to her storming out of cabinet on Tuesday in a manner that rocks the Liberal government to its core.

This self-inflicted bungle undermines the government’s professed principles and values all along the line. There is undoubtedly more to come in this affair, but consider the damage that has already been inflicted:

Trudeau’s image as a feminist leader is shaken. Allowing unidentified Liberals to undermine Wilson-Raybould’s credibility by talking trash about her was bound to be seen as sexist — even among other Liberals. Not a good look for this famously female-friendly prime minister.

The government’s claim to make Indigenous issues a top priority has also taken a huge hit. Sidelining an Indigenous woman was hugely symbolic. Her father, a hereditary First Nations chief in British Columbia, says she was “kicked in the teeth” when she was ousted from justice. Other First Nations leaders there denounce the language used about her as “racist and sexist.” That hurts.

Trudeau’s promise back in 2015 to junk the old politics of backroom dealing is looking decidedly faded. Could there be anything more old-style than a big, well-connected Quebec company angling behind the scenes for favourable treatment in a messy legal affair? Yet that’s exactly what SNCLavalin was by all accounts busy doing last year while Wilson-Raybould was justice minister and attorney general.

Likewise, the Liberals’ promise to run a more open government and break the grip of the Prime Minister’s Office hasn’t aged at all well. The central allegation in this affair is that Wilson-Raybould came under undue pressure from the PMO to give SNC-Lavalin a break and suffered the political consequences when she proved insufficiently flexible.

Worst of all, the suspicion of political interference, or even a botched attempt at political interference, in an important legal matter raises questions about the government’s claim to uphold the rule of law.

It’s certainly true that WilsonRaybould, as attorney general, had the authority to order prosecutors to work out a plea deal with SNC-Lavalin. She could take into account many factors, including the risk to the company and its employees of forcing it to endure a damaging trial on fraud and corruption charges.

But there are ways to do this and ways not to do it. And demoting a minister for refusing to bend to political pressure brought to bear on behalf of a big corporation (if it turns out that is what happened) would certainly be the wrong way.

Whatever Wilson-Raybould’s failures were in this train-wreck, and failures there were, the government can’t dodge that central point. Putting the responsibility on her to cry foul even before she faced any consequences for resisting PMO pressure, as Trudeau did on Tuesday, evades the principal issue.

As for Wilson-Raybould’s mistakes, the most obvious was her decision to accept veterans’ affairs in mid-January. How could she do that if she felt it amounted to a punishment for failing to take the PMO’s hint on SNC-Lavalin? At the time she issued a lengthy statement about how proud she was of what she accomplished in justice. But she did not resign on principle. Rather, she stayed in cabinet, accepting the discipline and confidentiality that goes along with that.

Then she met with Trudeau in Vancouver over the weekend, and watched him go out and proclaim that her continuing presence in cabinet was evidence of his confidence in her. Mere hours later, she told him was quitting. If she was deliberately trying to inflict maximum embarrassment on the prime minister, she couldn’t have done any better.

At this point, the only way forward is to air these issues as thoroughly and publicly as possible. If an affair like this had erupted in the United States, a Congressional committee would already be calling witnesses. Our system is very different, but we mustn’t accept the silences and excuses that too often obscure the truth in our politics.

Let a parliamentary committee get to the bottom of this matter. It’s clear that Wilson-Raybould hopes to tell her version of events; why else would she retain a former Supreme Court of Canada justice, Thomas Cromwell, to advise her on what she can say? The government should find a way to release her quickly from the constraints of solicitor-client privilege. She should be allowed to answer detailed questions about what kind of pressure or influence she may have been subjected to, and from whom.

Likewise, the prime minister should be prepared to answer questions and should authorize his senior officials to do the same before a parliamentary committee. On Tuesday he proclaimed that the government “did its job” and followed the rules in the SNC-Lavalin affair. If the government truly believes it did nothing wrong, it should welcome a chance to clear the air. And with the clock ticking down to an election, better to get to it as soon as possible.

An editorial from the Toronto Star