National Post (National Edition)
PM’S brightest recruits now threaten his job
Cabinet resignations on principle shake up the status quo
Recent Canadian political history has seen more than one person leave a very successful life for politics, only to stagger back out of it considerably poorer, thoroughly discredited and covered in egg. Perhaps most spectacularly, David Livingston left a 30-year career as an executive at TD Bank to become CEO of Infrastructure Ontario. Seven years later he became then-premier Dalton Mcguinty’s chief of staff.
Two years later, his lawyer, Bryan Gover, tried to convince the Ontario Provincial Police not to charge him with respect to the deletion of emails pertaining to the Liberals’ gas plant scandal. “He earned an impeccable reputation in the private sector,” Gover insisted. It didn’t work. Livingston was convicted on two criminal charges and sentenced to four months in prison.
To recap: big bank exec; public sector CEO (2011 salary: $321,249.88); senior political aide; jail. Imagine your grandchildren learning about Dalton Mcguinty in school. Imagine telling them you actually went to jail for the twit.
Nigel Wright is the smartest guy in most rooms. In a 2011 profile in The Walrus by Michael Posner, Robert Prichard referred to Wright “among the very best and brightest of his generation.” At the time he was setting aside a spark- ling and no doubt very lucrative Bay Street career at Onex, before which he had practised corporate law at heavy-hitters Davies, Ward, and Beck, to become then-prime minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff.
“Prichard … predicts Stephen Harper will soon be pinching himself and asking, ‘Where has this guy been all my life?’” Posner wrote. And then, one day, Wright found himself writing a secret $90,000 personal cheque to Sen. Mike Duffy to make a bunch of problems go away.
Unlike Livingston, Wright actually had defenders outside his party: He was only trying to reimburse the taxpayer for Duffy’s dodgy spending, some protested. (Peculiar that he didn’t let the taxpayers know.) And lucky for him, for reasons some of us have never quite grasped, Duffy stood trial for receiving a bribe whose proffer escaped the Crown’s attention entirely.
Still, imagine your grandchildren learning about Mike Duffy. Then imagine explaining just how low you were willing to stoop to keep him quiet.
David Lametti has degrees from U of T, Mcgill, Yale and Oxford; in 2015 he left his position as a law professor at Mcgill to run for the Liberals in Lasalle-émard-verdun, and won. Within days of his prestigious appointment as Canada’s Justice Minister last week, Global News’ Mercedes Stephenson asked him whether an election being at stake could ever be a good reason for a government to muck about in an independent prosecution. Astonishingly, his answer wasn’t no. And he said he wouldn’t rule out offering SNCLavalin the deferred prosecution agreement that his boss allegedly tried to jam down his predecessor’s throat, causing her to quit on principle.
We’ve become inured to it: To enter politics behind the scenes is to check your principles, if any, at reception. To enter it as a member of a legislature is all but to consent to lobotomy. Never mind your degrees and your doorstop of a CV: A warren of far-too-intense 23-year- old weirdos has written talking points for you and, damn it, you’re going to read them.
This is what makes the resignations from cabinet of successful lawyer Jody Wilson-raybould and, on Monday, successful family doctor Jane Philpott so stunning. One can understand the PMO’S frustration as it explained the thousands of jobs implicated in a potential conviction for Snc-lavalin, only to be rebutted with something as arcane as “the rule of law.” But at least they could badmouth the not-universally-popular WilsonRaybould to friendly reporters. One can scarcely imagine the PMO’S befuddlement when the allbut-universally-respected Philpott decided she couldn’t be associated with it any longer. Does this woman not know what’s at stake?
Indeed, the “it’s them or Andrew Scheer” desperation among Liberal partisans reached a new crescendo on Monday. Maybe Wilson-raybould and Philpott realize that’s not actually the dividing line between civilization and ThunderDome that the Liberals would have us believe. Or maybe they realize that sacrificing one’s principles is not excused when negative consequences are indicated. Some would argue that’s the only time when sticking to them really matters.
Either way, these clearly aren’t the politicians we’re used to. Perhaps having mistaken a slogan for a credo, they’re actually doing politics differently.
“When you add women, please do not expect the status quo,” Liberal MP Celina Caesar-chavannes, who’s not running in 2019, tweeted on Monday after Philpott’s resignation. “Expect us to make correct decisions, stand for what is right and exit when values are compromised.”
That is just savagely on point. If nothing else, Trudeau can hang his hat on some very talented recruits. It’s entirely fitting they are now making life miserable for this simpering charlatan of a prime minister.