Chris Selley on the Prime Minister’s odd decision not to get ahead of the SNC-Lavalin scandal while he still had some credibility with the public:
It seems like another century, but was in fact only a few weeks ago, that Justin Trudeau had a plausible plan to cauterize the SNC-Lavalin wound within his party: He would apologize for … something.
Presumably he would not apologize for trying to protect 9,000 jobs, and presumably he would not admit improper interference in the attorney general’s and director of public prosecution’s roles. But perhaps he might cop to overzealousness in concern for those jobs, or for poorly communicating his entirely appropriate concerns, or for the various anonymous party sources who were slagging off Jody Wilson-Raybould to friendly journalists.
The latter, certainly, seemed downright imperative. Trudeau and his minions, either under orders or self-assigning, had snatched calamity from the jaws of bother. They were badmouthing an accomplished Indigenous female lawyer for being headstrong, “difficult to work with,” and various other descriptors commonly attached to Type A women when they behave like Type A men. When they ran out of those, they started insinuating she wasn’t a very good justice minister — which is certainly an arguable point, but which rather clashed with Trudeau’s insistence she would still hold that title if not for Scott Brison’s impending departure.
It was absolutely torching their brand. People were laughing in their faces. Something had to be done. And this stand-by-for-contrition narrative was lent some credence, fittingly enough, by anonymous sources. “A senior government official said one of the options being discussed is for Trudeau to ‘show some ownership over the actions of his staff and officials’ in their dealings with his former attorney general,” CBC reported on March 5.
Floating a trial balloon to measure potential reactions is not often prelude to the sincerest of apologies. But in the end, no real apology was forthcoming. The brand-torching continued unabated. And by Wednesday this week, the Anonymous Sources had come full circle: Wilson-Raybould had set various extraordinary conditions for remaining in Cabinet, they told various outlets.
One of them was that Trudeau apologize.
In Maclean’s, Paul Wells wonders why SNC-Lavalin has shaken the Liberals so much:
How did this scandal manage to rattle this government so profoundly? And the best answer I can find is this: Because it reveals truths about this Prime Minister that shake many Canadians’ confidence in him.
As my moral betters in the newspaper columns never tire of repeating, by many standards the SNC-Lavalin mess is quite modest. It seems probable that no money changed hands improperly in 2018 and no law was broken. The protagonists were motivated mostly by a kind of distracted hunch that jobs might be at stake. I mean, the extent to which they had zero evidence for that is breathtaking, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. And also by a similarly vague suspicion that it might be bad for branded Liberal candidates if SNC ran into trouble ahead of a Quebec or federal election.
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Finally, all three of these scandalettes have laid bare a stubbornly ramshackle approach to running what has sometimes been a serious country. When flying to India, sure, pack your embroidered sherwani and your convicted attempted murderer, but also maybe bring along a travel plan, a sales pitch and a list of objectives worth achieving. Especially if your ineptitude is about to guarantee you will never get a second chance to visit India.
On SNC, what emerges from all the testimony is the impression that a dozen kids from the McGill debating team snuck into the abandoned ruins of Ottawa and started pretending to be the government of Canada. Jody complained to Bill that Elder and Ben were being mean to Jessica. Justin sent Michael but somehow Michael didn’t have the Section 13 ruling Jody had sent to Mathieu. Then it was Christmas and they all went home for a month.
Where the hell were the 208,000 public servants whose job was to ensure options were explored and workflows respected? Why, in September, when Wernick says everyone was distracted by NAFTA, did nobody at the weekly deputy ministers’ meeting say, “Well, there’s only room for 10 people at the NAFTA table, so why don’t the rest of us strike a working group of officials from Justice, Finance, Innovation and the Privy Council to ride this SNC puppy until we know what’s what?”
I’m pretty sure the reason this didn’t happen is that Butts found it thrilling to have all the important conversations run through his phone. That’s a bush-league reason to stumble into a government-shaking mess.
