Wilson-Raybould protest to go all night
OTTAWA — Members of Parliament were bracing Wednesday for an all-night voting marathon as opposition parties protested the Trudeau government’s efforts to shut down further investigation into the SNC-Lavalin affair.
The Liberal majority shot down a Conservative motion calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to let former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould testify more fully about her allegation that she was improperly pressured to drop a criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNCLavalin. The motion was defeated by a vote of 161-134.
That set the stage for a Conservative-sponsored filibuster, requiring 257 separate votes on items in the government’s spending estimates. The voting could theoretically last 36 hours, but the Conservatives have only to keep it going until just after 7 a.m. PDT today to scrub the remainder of the parliamentary day.
The filibuster started Wednesday evening — one day after Liberals on the House of Commons justice committee used their majority to pull the plug on their investigation into the affair.
Wilson-Raybould testified for nearly four hours before the committee, having been granted a waiver from solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidentiality to freely discuss events from last fall — when the inappropriate pressure was allegedly applied — until Jan. 14, when she was shuffled out of the attorney general post to Veterans Affairs.
The Conservative motion called on Trudeau to extend the waiver of cabinet confidentiality to cover the period from Jan. 14 to midFebruary, when Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet.
Wilson-Raybould has said she has more to say about what occurred after she was shuffled, but she was not in the Commons for the vote on the Conservative motion. Nor was Jane Philpott, who resigned from cabinet in solidarity with Wilson-Raybould this month, saying she had lost confidence in the government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin file.
However, the Conservatives are not giving up just yet. They are asking the Commons ethics committee to launch its own investigation into the affair, starting with calling WilsonRaybould to testify by no later than March 27. The Liberaldominated committee is to consider the request today.
A month ago, when the Commons voted on another opposition motion to let the former minister testify freely, Wilson-Raybould abstained but then added fuel to the SNC-Lavalin fire by saying: “I understand fully that Canadians want to know the truth and want transparency; privilege and confidentiality are not mine to waive and I hope that I have the opportunity to speak my truth.”
Liberals waited to see whether she or Philpott would bring another can of gas to Wednesday’s vote. They did not, adding to Liberals’ professed comfort at letting the pair remain in the caucus and seek re-election as Liberals this fall, despite their lack of confidence in the prime minister.
Wilson-Raybould attended part of a closed-door Liberal caucus meeting Wednesday morning, but Philpott did not show up.
“They’ve both indicated that they continue to believe in the Liberal party and want to stand for us in the election in the fall. I look forward to continuing to work together,” Trudeau said.