Trudeau owes us candid answers
TRUDEAU CANCELS TRIP, HUNKERS DOWN AS EVENTS THREATEN HIS LEADERSHIP
The Liberal party’s impulse to form a circular firing squad has created a moment in Canada’s political history that could change everything.
What John Stuart Mill called “the deep slumber of decided opinion” has been disrupted and the public roused. The sense that Justin Trudeau was pre-destined to be prime minister for as long as he wished has been shaken and it is entirely conceivable that he loses the election seven months from now.
Trudeau cancelled a Tuesday trip to Regina, where he was set to promote climate incentive rebates and deliver remarks at a Liberal party fundraiser. Instead, he returned to Ottawa to hunker down with advisers and discuss next steps in the SNC-Lavalin affair.
The mood inside the Prime Minister’s Office was said to be serene, with Trudeau aware of the gravity of a situation turned dramatically worse with the resignation of Treasury Board President Jane Philpott on Monday.
There is a belief that the cabinet is united behind a prime minister who spent much of the afternoon discussing options for future action. But, if cabinet has expressed support for Trudeau, caucus is restive.
One senior MP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the overriding mood is of disappointment in the prime minister’s leadership. “The caucus is united in a desire to get re-elected. It is not necessarily united in a desire to be elected behind him,” they said.
Another MP said Trudeau should survive this storm, “but not without damage.” There are no signs of a leadership challenge — yet. The question the prime minister must mull is: for how long?
He needs to extricate himself from a sticky situation that his own sense of denial and adherence to bland talking points have landed him in. His options to be proactive are limited, but they exist. The smart move would be to take action after his former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, and Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick testify at the justice committee on Wednesday.
He could express contrition, saying that he and members of his team may have gone too far in pushing the former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to agree to a deferred prosecution agreement for SNC-Lavalin. He could split the role of justice minister from that of attorney general, removing the latter role from cabinet. He could make staffing changes, announcing Wernick’s early retirement while adding more experienced advisers to his own office — David MacNaughton, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., has been linked with such a role and was part of Tuesday’s PMO strategy session in Ottawa.
All those moves are said to be up for discussion. Nothing will bury this story but if this prime minister is going to survive, he has to send public opinion back into a deep slumber. That would rule out booting Philpott and Wilson-Raybould from caucus, which would lead to a media feeding frenzy. The public mood may get worse before it gets better. Editorial cartoonists have portrayed Wilson-Raybould as Tank Man, the Chinese student who stood in front of a column of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989.
Butts is set to give his testimony Wednesday but it is clear opposition MPs will lean heavily on Wilson-Raybould’s claim that he told her chief of staff “there is no solution that doesn’t involve some interference.” He cannot appear to undermine her, so it would make sense if he talked about how aligned they have been in the past. There are said to be text messages to Butts from the former justice minister, sent after their meeting on Dec. 5 at the Château Laurier, that are cordial and include smiley-face emojis. Wernick will face an even trickier task, as he attempts to reconcile his previous testimony at the justice committee with that of Wilson-Raybould.
He said he told Wilson-Raybould the prime minister was “anxious” about the SNC-Lavalin situation, but that their interactions were within the boundaries of what is legal and appropriate, and that he was merely informing the minister of context. That account is inconsistent with her version of events. She said Wernick told her Trudeau remained “quite determined” to ensure SNC got its deal and that the prime minister was “going to find a way to get it done one way or another.”
When the former justice minister talked about “veiled threats,” she appeared to be referring to the clerk’s comment of the potential for a “collision” with the prime minister over SNC. Politics, like most areas of life, is messy. Truth tends to be subjective, informed by the perspective of the person telling it. It is possible both are telling the truth. Still, Butts and Wernick are going to have to be persuasive if they are going to sway public opinion from the former justice minister’s narrative, which many Canadians have taken as gospel. More importantly for the Liberals, Trudeau needs to demonstrate to his caucus and the country that he can handle a crisis he has helped to agitate.
The recurring complaint in caucus is that Trudeau doesn’t ask MPs what they think, beyond the “cool crowd” of personal friends in cabinet or the “Praetorian guard” in the PMO. If he did, it is argued, he would have persuaded a popular and hard-working minister like Philpott that she didn’t have to resign.
We are at a defining moment in Canadian politics and, even if he survives, nothing will be the same again for Trudeau. The spell has been broken and the idea that he could be a oneterm wonder is no longer implausible.
“The disappointment is palpable,” said one Liberal MP. “This is a crisis and he’s been found wanting.”