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Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau denied wanting Jody WilsonRaybould to lie as the SNC-Lavalin affair — which figured prominently in the last election — burst back onto the campaign trail Saturday with the publication of an excerpt of the former justice minister’s memoir.
The excerpt from the tell-all book “Indian in the Cabinet” — published in the Globe and Mail — revolves around Wilson-Raybould’s recollections of two critical meetings with Trudeau in February 2019, days after the newspaper reported Canada’s first Indigenous justice minister had faced inappropriate pressure from top Liberals in a court case.
That case was the criminal prosecution of Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, which was facing bribery charges related to contracts in Libya. Wilson-Raybould would later testify that senior party leaders wanted her as attorney-general to intervene for political reasons to stop the prosecution.
The full memoir is due to be released on Tuesday.
In the excerpt, Wilson-Raybould says the meetings were held in Vancouver a few days after the Globe story broke. The prime minister by that point was facing pressure after saying the report was false. WilsonRaybould says she was pushing for transparency with Canadians — and some level of accountability.
“He used the line that would later become public, that I had ‘experienced things differently,’ ” she writes.
“I knew what he was really asking. What he was saying. In that moment, I knew he wanted me to lie — to attest that what had occurred had not occurred. ... Lie to protect a Crown government acting badly; a political party; a leader who was not taking responsibility.”
Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet the next day and was followed out the door by then-health minister Jane Philpott before the two were booted from the Liberal caucus. The affair later led to the resignation of Trudeau’s principal secretary, Gerald Butts, and Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick.
On Saturday, Trudeau denied wanting the former justice minister to lie while his opponents praised Wilson-Raybould and held up her account as further proof the Liberal leader can’t be trusted.
“I did not want her to lie,” Trudeau said during a campaign event in Mississauga, Ont. “I would never do that. I would never ask her that. That is simply not true.”