WILSON-RAYBOULD RECORDED CALL TO PRIVY COUNCIL CLERK

Jody Wilson-Raybould says she took the “extraordinary and otherwise inappropriate step” of secretly recording a phone call with the country’s top public servant just before Christmas because she feared the conversation would cross ethical lines and she wanted an exact account. The 17-minute long recording documents a call Wilson-Raybould, then-attorney general, placed to Wernick on Dec. 19, after he asked to speak with her. Wilson-Raybould said she normally would have had a staff member take notes during an important call. She was alone at home in Vancouver, she explains, and “anxious to ensure that I had an exact record of what was discussed, as I had reason to believe that it was likely to be an inappropriate conversation. This is something that I have never done before this phone call and have not done since,” she says in her written statement to the Commons justice committee, which is investigating her allegation the Prime Minister’s Office and the clerk of the Privy Council pressured her to intervene in the criminal prosecution of SNC Lavalin.