Playing by their own rules

Resigning politicians ‘true to themselves’

Does Justin Trudeau have a problem with women?

That’s one of what I see as three possible explanations for the bombshell announcement Monday from Jane Philpott, the ethical pushback from Jody Wilson-raybould over Snc-lavalin and the recent decision of the formidable Liberal MP Celina Caesar-chavannes not to run in the next election.

Either the PM has a woman problem, or women are simply the bravest and most principled members of his caucus, or the way politics is practised under Trudeau et al. and/or in the modern Canada leaves some of the women who ran for him disillusioned and sad.

It’s hard to know, too, which is the worst of these sorry choices.

Philpott, just recently named as the Treasur y Board president in the same shuffle that saw Wilson-raybould moved from Justice to Veterans Affairs, is quitting cabinet precisely because of the Snc-lavalin imbroglio, the incursion she saw upon the “independence and integrity of our justice system” and because she said she has “lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter and in how it has responded to the issues raised.”

But Philpott also mentioned “the constitutional convention of cabinet solidarity,” which means “that ministers are expected to defend all cabinet decisions … must always be prepared to defend other ministers publicly and must speak in support of the government and its policies.”

(In other words, cabinet ministers are expected to act like lapdogs, nodding in rapturous agreement with whatever the PM says.)

Given that convention, Philpott said, “it is untenable for me to continue to serve as a cabinet minister.”

Wilson-raybould, of course, quit cabinet shortly after the shuffle to Veterans Affairs when the proverbial other shoe dropped.

She has not yet been able to explain what that was — the twin muzzles of cabinet confidence and solicitorclient privilege are still firmly on her for the time period after the shuffle — but bets are she learned that the government has found a way, not to mention a more agreeable attorney general (David Lametti), to give Snc-lavalin the deferred prosecution agreement it desperately wants to avoid a potential criminal trial on fraud and bribery charges.

(Whether those charges, related to $48 million some company executives allegedly spent to win projects in Libya, will proceed to trial is now in the hands of a judge.)

Caesar- Chavannes, an Ontario business executive and rookie MP like Philpott, a family physician, and Wilson-raybould, an elected Indigenous leader, told Trudeau on Feb. 12 that she won’t be running in the election this fall.

Though she explicitly said her decision was personal and not related to the SNCLavalin controversy, CaesarChavannes tweeted in support of Wilson-raybould, calling her “fierce, smart and unapologetic.”

Her goodbye announcement this past weekend was affectionate and uncontroversial.

But just a couple of weeks before, as a speaker at the House of Commons Speaker’s annual Robbie Burns dinner, she showed her own ferocity.

This was after the cabinet shuffle that saw both Wilson-raybould and Philpott moved.

As my colleague, John Ivison, wrote in a wonderful column about her speech that night — he said she was raucous and fun, called Burns “a penile philanthropist” and said “if Robbie Burns were alive today, he would be black and on Maury Povich” — Caesar-chavannes mentioned Wilson-raybould, who was also at the dinner.

“Speaking of Jody WilsonRaybould, if Robbie Burns was a member of our government, she would have been asked to remove him from our Parliament, not just our caucus, based on his exploits.

“If she didn’t succeed, she would have been fired. If she succeeded in removing Robbie Burns, she would have been fired. You can’t have an Indian doing that to the White Man. (David) Lametti can, you can’t.

“The lads are better at that sort of thing,” she said.

Afterwards, in an interview, Caesar-chavannes said while she was weary of being at the centre of controversies over race and gender, she couldn’t give a speech without addressing the question of privilege.

In other words, she had to be true to herself.

“We need to shake the dust off old political institutions and traditions if we are going to allow new people in. It beats you up to be taking up these issues and being forced to defend yourself. But if you want to add new people, you can’t continue to maintain the status quo.

“The status quo that sometimes disenfranchises people.”

They are three remarkable, accomplished women, one black, one Indigenous, one a white doctor from Markham, Ont. They were part of this self-appointed feminist prime minister’s obsession with gender balance. They were among the new people invited in, but expected to play by all the old rules.

For a while, they appeared to thrive in the super-heated, high-pressure world of federal politics, until they didn’t. And from all I can see, it wasn’t them who were lacking.