A Civil Servant's Interpretation of Canadian Law

"So while I typed out notes during the phone call, I took the extraordinary and otherwise inappropriate step of making an audio recording of the conversation without so advising the Clerk."
"This is something that I have never done before this phone call and have not done since."
"It does not matter how I would look in doing that -- I would be a mockery, and that is not the problem -- [in acceding to the persistent and frequent urging of principals in the PMO and the Clerk of the Privy Council to shelve her moral principles and go astride the law to satisfy the wish for the Prime Minister to shield SNC Lavalin from criminal prosecution], the bigger problem is what it would look like down the road for the government."
"One, it has never been done before, but two, this is going to look like nothing but political interference by the prime minister, by you, by everyone else that has been involved in politically pressuring me to do this."
"This conversation, previous conversations I’ve had with the PM and people around him are entirely inappropriate. It is political interference."
Jody Wilson-Raybould, former Minister of Justice

"You are not just the attorney general, you are the minister of justice in a cabinet. I am not seeing anything inappropriate here."
"That is not my recollection of the conversation [above]. I do not have an independent recollection of the event. I did not wear a wire, record the conversation or take extemporaneous notes."
Michael Wernick, former Clerk of the Privy Council

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould take part in the grand entrance as the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation commission is released on Dec. 15, 2015. (The Canadian Press)

"[The clerk of the Privy Council Office (PCO) never briefed Justin Trudeau on his talk with ex-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould."
"[The Prime Minister was] unaware of the full contents of this recording before today."
"[The prime minister] should have spoken directly with the former justice minister and attorney general about this matter — and wishes that she had come to him."
"[There was] clearly an erosion of trust over the past few months between PMO, the clerk of the Privy Council, and the former justice minister and attorney general."
Statement from the Prime Minister's Office

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau professed to being confused over his former Attorney-General's claims of having been relentlessly harassed by his executive assistants and advisers. They, evidently, took it upon themselves with no guidance whatever from him, much less orders, to press Jody Wilson-Rayboult to reconsider her decision not to intervene when the prosecutorial services decided not to extend a DPA agreement to SNC Lavalin over its criminal bribery (under Canadian law) of Libyan officials to secure contracts.

A Delayed Prosecution Agreement which would have resulted in the construction and engineering firm paying a fine, pledging to reform, and getting on with business rather than facing a criminal trial and being restricted from government contracts for a ten-year penalty period. The prosecution service, held to be immune from political interference had determined that SNC did not qualify under the provisions that might exempt it from a criminal trial, and the former Minister of Justice agreed. And she was not amenable to being badgered by anyone to reverse her judgement.

When Michael Wernick returned again to the subject with Wilson-Raybould he made it clear that he was intervening on the direct orders of the prime minister: "Alright...um...well I am going to have to report back before he leaves...he is in a pretty firm frame of mind about this so...I am a bit worried..." It takes no genius mind to infer from that statement that direct and immediate contact took place between himself and the prime minister and what the subject was. And the threat implicit in "Well...it is not a good idea for the Prime Minister and his Attorney General to be at loggerheads" speaks volumes of the reason for Wilson-Raybould's removal as Minister of Justice.

And certainly while Clerk of the Privy Council snapped at the Justice Committee interviewing him about the matter that he wasn't wearing a wire, that he hadn't made a recording, that he simply did not recall the type of details that in her testimony before the committee Jody Wilson-Raybould made it quite clear just how she was being pressured by all and sundry to change her judgement in favour of following the prime minister's line because "jobs were at stake", his recalcitrance to recall was laid bare by the simple reality that someone else recorded a critical conversation revealing absolute proof of malfeasance and false testimony.

And, as Wilson Raybould admitted when she realized that the fix was in and she was about to suffer the consequences: "I am waiting for big...the other shoe to drop, so I am not under any illusion how the Prime Minister has and gets things that he wants...I am just stuck doing the best job that I can..." presaging her dismissal and how wise she was in retrospect to record that damning conversation for posterity and an unfortunate legacy for this dismal failure of a Liberal government headed by a pretentious and unprepared-to-govern, egotistical dilettante.

"The prime minister stated publicly when issues about the propriety of the government's conduct in relation to the SNC matter arose that my ongoing presence in cabinet spoke for itself."
"I resigned the next day and I trust my resignation also speaks for itself."
Jody Wilson-Raybould

Open and Transparent Government

"For a period of approximately four months between September and December of 2018, I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people in the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion."
"Leaving aside job losses ... where they became very clearly inappropriate was when political issues came up like the election in Quebec, like [the current Liberal government] losing the [October federal] election if SNC were to move their headquarters, conversations like that."
"Conversations like the one I had with the Clerk of the Privy Council who invoked the prime minister's name throughout the entirety of the conversation, spoke to me about the prime minister being dug in, spoke to me about his concerns as to what would happen. In my mind those were veiled threats and I took them as such. That is entirely inappropriate."
"At that point [Trudeau] jumped in, stressing that there is an election in Quebec and that 'I am an MP in Quebec -- the member for Papineau'. I was quite taken aback. My response, and I vividly remember this as well, was to ask [Trudeau] a direct question while looking him in the eye. I asked: 'Are you politically interfering with my role, my decision as the attorney general? I would strongly advise against it'. The Prime Minister said, 'No, no, no -- we just need to find a solution."
"He [Finance Minister Morneau] again stressed the need to save jobs and I told him that engagements from his office to mine on SNC [Lavalin] had to stop, that they were inappropriate."
Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal Member of Parliament for Vancouver-Granville, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Vancouver Granville MP Jody Wilson-Raybould participates in the Chinese New Year Parade in Vancouver. Interviews with constituents in her riding following her explosive testimony on Wednesday reveal support, as well as concerns.  (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press)

There it is, in black-and-white, no obfuscations, no denials, no pledges of loyalty to a government reeling in disbelief that one of their own would frankly call them out as she did, recalling the details from notes and keen memory of four months of unrelenting harassment and attempts at intimidation to have her change her mind about taking steps to overturn her Public Prosecutor Office's head's decision not to offer SNC-Lavalin the sought-after deferred prosecution, and instead proceed with a criminal trial against the engineering-construction giant on fraud and corruption charges.

"The Prime Minister asks me to help out, to find a solution here for SNC, citing that if there was no [deferred prosecution] there would be many jobs lost and that SNC will move from Montreal." This during a scheduled meeting set up to urgently discuss a completely unrelated matter, which Justin Trudeau kicked off by immediately bringing up the 'more urgent' need to discuss how she, as Minister of Justice could override her decision not to interfere with the director of the Public Prosecution's decision to go to trial. This from a man who consistently claimed he had made no effort to 'direct' his-then Minister of Justice in the matter.

The Canadian Press

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Veterans Affairs Minister Jodie Wilson-Raybould attend a swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Jan. 14, 2019.

The irony here for SNC-Lavalin is that they had strenuously lobbied the Liberal government at every level of influence to convince the Prime Minister and his Cabinet that Canada badly needed to rethink a law that the previous government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper under the Conservatives brought in to ensure that corporate malfeasance would not go unnoticed in the justice system. The adjustment to the law occurred as a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, brought in on an omnibus finance bill, the better to be unnoticed by Parliament.

That DPA was the work of SNC-Lavalin influencing government with respect to its need. And if all went as planned, Quebec-based SNC-Lavalin would become the first beneficiary of the new exculpatory device which requires that a company plead guilty to the charges against it, pay a fine, pledge to remediate its practices and be permitted to go about its business. Its business includes competing for government contracts worth billions. Without that DPA in their favour, and a trial at which given the evidence of millions in bribes to Libyan government officials they would be found guilty.

Found guilty of the charges brought against them one of the penalties exacted would be a ten-year moratorium on bidding for government contracts; effectively shut out of lucrative contracts at a time when government has pledged to pursue expensive and extensive country-wide infrastructure upgrades. Jody Wilson-Raybould was resolute and determined that justice would be served, irrespective of the situation which made the prime minister, her boss, very uncomfortable for the longevity of his government with a federal election looming.

The Clerk of the Privy Council, the highest-level civil servant whose job was to oversee the civil service and answer directly to the Prime Minister's Office in that regard, a position which is meant to be politically neutral, took it upon himself to lecture and to harass an elected Minister of the Crown in one of the most prestigious and powerful positions of State. When he testified before the same House of Commons Justice committee, he exonerated the prime minister, his staff and himself from any vestige of attempting to force Jody Wilson-Raybould to reverse her decision.

The Clerk, Michael Wernick, took it upon himself to warn the-then Minister of Justice that the Prime Minister was determined to override her decision and it was up to her to enable that to happen. Prime Minister Trudeau's senior adviser, Gerry Butts, since resigned, informed her that the Director of Public Prosecutions Act, separating the prosecution service from the Justice Department (to ensure freedom from undue political pressure) "was a statute passed by Harper", and thus expendable.

The public has now been fully apprised of the background to the firing of Jody Wilson-Raybould from her position as Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. Her demotion directly linked to her integrity and refusal to bend to political pressure, to bypass lawful and legal and needful prosecution of criminal acts. Once she had been advised she was removed from the position, and before it even took effect, her deputy minister was advised that her replacement as Minister of Justice would need to be fully briefed on the SNC-Lavalin affair, so that they could move forward on the file....

Adrian Wyld/CP

Jody Wilson-Raybould leaves a justice committee meeting in Ottawa on Feb. 27, 2019.

A Governmental Scandal Swallowing Justin Trudeau

"It is my conclusion and my assertion based on all the information that I have that there was no inappropriate pressure on the Minister of Justice in this matter."
"I conveyed to her [former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould] that a lot of her colleagues and the prime minister were quite anxious about what they were hearing and reading in the business press about the future of the company [SNC Lavalin, Quebec-based engineering giant], the options that were being openly discussed in the business press about the company moving or closing."
"So I can tell you with complete assurance that my view of those conversations is that they were within the boundaries of what's lawful and appropriate; I was informing the minister of context."
"She may have another view of the conversation, but that's something that the ethics commissioner could sort out."
"I am here to say to you that The Globe and Mail article [that first raised the alert over political interference in Canada's justice system] contains errors, unfounded speculation, and in some cases is simply defamatory."
"I worry about the rising tides of incitements to violence when people use terms like 'treason' and traitor' in open discourse. These are the words that lead to assassination."
Michael Wernick, Clerk of the Privy Council

Trudeau and Wilson-Raybould attend a swearing in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Monday, Jan. 14, 2019. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

The Quebec-based engineering and construction company SNC-Lavalin Inc. with its global reach employing an estimated 50,000 workers internationally and just under ten thousand throughout Canada, has been growing its business exponentially, with the aid of millions it has paid out in bribes to foreign authorities to enable it to win contracts abroad. Quebec itself has a wholly-deserved-and-earned reputation for graft and criminal proceedings in its own construction projects; this fast-and-loose business atmosphere seems congenital.

SNC-Lavalin is facing a trial it would much rather not be involved in, since the evidence available will assuredly ensure that it will be found guilty of criminal offences under Canada's laws penalizing Canadian corporations that bribe foreign officials. Should it indeed be found guilty, under that law which will exact a financial penalty, the other, far more injurious penalty to the company will be shutting it out of the privilege of bidding for government contracts within Canada for a decade.

Executives with the company undertook to lobby the prime minister's office and any other Members of Parliament that could be useful to their case of avoiding trial; no fewer than 50 high-level lobbying meetings took place. The company lobbied for an act of Parliament to bring in a dispute resolution, effectively a remediation agreement that would allow the company to evade trial, plead guilty, pay a fine and promise to reform its corrupt business practices.

That convention, otherwise called a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), was tucked into an omnibus economic bill presented to Parliament, but never identified much less debated, and was approved along with the complex add-on bill. Leading SNC-Lavalin to believe they were 'home-free'. But the Public Prosecution Service informed them that a trial was set to proceed nonetheless. The-then Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould refused to intervene, preferring for justice to take its course.

Despite which, she was pressured on a number of occasions by the prime minister's chief adviser, Gerry Butts, the prime minister himself, and eventually the Clerk of the Privy Council, a civil servant who had reached the pinnacle of civil service as head of the entire civil service, a non-elected official taking it upon himself to lecture an elected Member of Parliament and one of the most senior of the government's Cabinet Ministers. A man who spoke, astoundingly, of the danger of 'assassination'.

The DPA is clearly not meant to be utilized as a get-out-of-jail-free passport to any company which, like SNC-Lavalin has engaged in truly criminally egregious business practices that embroiled their top executives in handing out millions in bribes to foreign movers-and-shakers for lucrative contracts. In any event, one of the issues that the DPA warns it cannot be used for, is the protection of jobs. In that the issue of supporting employment is a non-starter in evaluating who may qualify for a DPA.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, under questioning by the official opposition and other political parties, much less journalists, continues to engage in circumlocution rather than respond directly to the questions put to him, questions such as why it was that he chose to yank a Minister of Justice whom he assured a decision on the matter was hers to make, out of the ministry and given instead a relatively minor ministry of Veterans Affairs. 

The timeline of meetings that took place between himself, the former Attorney General, his principal secretary Mr. Butts, (now resigned, falling on his sword as Trudeau's confidant and chief adviser; his Eminence Grise), and the Clerk of the Privy Council and the pressure placed on the Attorney General speak volumes of the government's desire to avoid a trial for an influential Quebec company at a time when a federal election looms close on the horizon, and Quebec votes are in danger of wavering should SNC-Lavalin face a guilty verdict.

The Prime Minister, his confidant Mr. Butts and Canada's senior civil servant all stressed the potential loss of thousands of jobs should SNC-Lavalin go under. They're talking about a possible 10,000 jobs nation-wide. On the other hand, Justin Trudeau's complete disinterest in building badly needed pipelines to ship Alberta oil to foreign destinations, much less to Eastern Canada to replace Saudi oil imports has resulted in a shutdown of investment and the loss of an estimated 100,000 jobs in the oil industry in Western Canada.

A government is meant to unify a country in a common purpose. Where's the justice?

SNC posted gloomy quarterly earnings that showed the company lost $1.6 billion in the past three months. (Christinne Muschi/Reuters)

"This is a crisis that has become all about Justin Trudeau. He has badly mishandled the affair from the beginning, driving one of his most important cabinet appointments into a rebellion over who is to be believed."
"He has undermined his oft-repeated claims of devotion to a feminist agenda and Indigenous reconciliation. He is seeking to control the damage via a wall of silence that belies his pledge of an open and transparent administration. He is forcing members of his caucus to choose sides, putting their fear of public fallout against the words of a colleague whose job was to protect and follow the law."
"And he has yet to answer why he demoted Wilson-Raybould from her job after she stood up to him. If not as punishment, then why? And if it was indeed punishment, what does that say about Justin Trudeau, his respect for women, and all the talk of higher principles we've had from this government?"
Kelly McParland, journalist, National Post

'Our employees are being used as the puck in a political hockey game,' Neil Bruce says   
Neil Bruce has been CEO of SNC Lavalin since 2015. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press)

Liberals "Investigating" The Liberal Government

"This is not an investigation, that is simply going through the motions. Liberals seem to think that this should be just a sort of study group, a book club to look at all sorts of interesting ideas about the law rather than the scandal that's right in front of Canadians."
"At the end of the day, this is really not that complicated. This is about the fact that certain officials in the PMO [prime minister's office] were alleged to have put pressure on the former attorney general to interfere in a criminal investigation, nothing more, nothing less."
"The Liberals aren't interested in that. They're interested in covering this up."
New Democratic Member of Parliament Nathan Cullen

"Everyone within the Indigenous community, rank and file, grassroots, in every single community, Facebook, social media, everyone is talking about how upset and angry they are at the prime minister's callous dismissal of such a committed, dedicated and principled person such as Jody Wilson-Raybould."
Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould during a swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall, Wednesday Nov. 4, 2015 in Ottawa. (CP/Adrian Wyld)

The House of Commons Justice committee committed to looking into allegations of political interference with law and justice on the part of the prime minister's office and perhaps the prime minister as well. Because this is a majority Liberal government, the Liberal members of the committee are in the majority, with five Liberals to override the objections of the Conservative and the NDP members of the committee. The hearing investigating the issue of alleged wrong-doing on the part of the prime minister and/or his closest advisers has now refused to hear from any of the involved principals.

Choosing instead a more obviously anodyne investigation to protect and exculpate the governing Liberals, inviting only the Clerk of the Privy Council, the Deputy Justice Minister and the current Minister of Justice who was appointed when Jody Wilson-Raybould was taken off the file and given a backhanded penalty as Minister of Veterans Affairs. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refuses to allow his previous Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould to speak to the issue of claims his government attempted to suborn justice.

SNC Lavalin spent years lobbying to change sentencing rules to escape heavy penalties in a fraud and bribery case. (The Canadian Press)

Governments in the Province of Quebec are notorious for corruption and bribes with officials in the construction industry with whom contracts are signed to undertake vital infrastructure projects. Scandals pop up here and there, now and again, pointing out just how taxed the province is to distinguish between normal business practise and engaging in unlawful criminal acts. What is typical and 'normal' -- albeit illegal and unethical -- for Quebec is not generally reflected to the same degree outside the province in greater Canada.

Certainly, Quebec-based SNC-Lavalin, built into one of the world's largest engineering-construction firms, with global employees of around 50,000 would qualify as a case in point. A company now charged under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, for its $160-million in kickbacks and bribes offered for contracts to the former Moammar Gadhafi regime in Libya. This certainly wasn't a one-off by any means; for SNC-Lavalin this was business-as-usual.

An associate with SNC-Lavalin, Riadh Ben Aissa was convicted after pleading guilty to forging documents and came away with a 51=month prison sentence after he secured hundreds of millions in kickbacks for contracts with the Gadhafi regime. The former chief executive officer, Pierre Duhaime pleaded guilty to breach-of-trust charges in the bribery scandal connected with construction of the $1.3-billion McGill University hospital related to $50-million paid out in bribes for the hospital contract.

Michel Fournier, former president of the Federal Bridge Corp. pleaded guilty last year to taking $2.3 million in bribes from SNC-Lavalin which then won a $127-million contract to upgrade the bridge. The RCMP has just now laid charges. Last November Normand Morin, former SNC-Lavalin vice-president pleaded guilty to reduced charges in a fraud to circumvent federal election financing laws in a scheme where employees were invited to make donations, submit fake invoices and the company reimbursed them; $100,000-worth of donations to the Liberals.

Oh, and just by the way, the World Bank instituted a ten-year contract ban on the Montreal construction firm in connection with bribes that took place in Bangladesh in 2013. Ah, and incidentally, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2012 found Canada to rank as the worst of the G7 countries in bribery while last September, Transparency International found Canada to have closed in on the "back of the pack" in foreign bribery enforcement.

Despite all this -- because of this corrupt history -- SNC under its new management, strenuously lobbied the Liberal government to bring in an amendment to the Criminal Code. And the Liberal government did just that, following on no fewer than 80 intervention lobbying meetings between officials of SNC-Lavalin and the federal government, including the prime minister's office. In September of 2018 the new remediation agreement amendment came into effect, and SNC-Lavalin breathed a sigh of relief.

They anticipated that they would be seen to qualify for a remediation agreement whereby they would pay a fine, promise to behave in future, and go on with their business, instead of facing a scheduled criminal trial where, if convicted as they would be on the clear evidence, they would fail to qualify to bid on government contracts for a decade. This amendment was brought in on a complex omnibus bill, piggy-backing on a huge budget bill and no one in Parliament was aware they were responsible for bringing in a Criminal Code amendment that never saw debate in Parliament.

But, oh dear, The Minister of Justice's director of the Public Prosecution Service felt secure in evaluating the situation through the lens of the law, denying the company's expectation; they would go to trial. To begin with, under conditions stipulated in the new amendment a company would have had to bring to the attention of authorities on their own the existence of illegal activities to qualify, and SNC-Lavalin certainly did no such thing; in fact, denied they had done anything wrong when the RCMP began their investigation.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his trusted servants in the prime minister's office put pressure on then-Attorney-General Jody Wilson-Raybould to override the decision of her director of the PPS. It may be that the prime minister exerted pressure on the Attorney-General in the matter of implementing the provisions of the UN-sponsored Rights of Indigenous Peoples to announce that it would be unworkable as "law" in Canada despite Canada having signed on to it. This was a bitter pill for an Indigenous woman of the law given the status of Minister of Justice to have to state.

Still from video of former Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould resigning from the Liberal Cabinet

Her resulting alienation from her aboriginal community after speaking at the AFN's general assembly in June of 2016, no doubt affected her familial and activist relations with her father, a renowned chief and committed Indigenous-rights activist. "Respectfully, it is a political distraction to undertaking the hard work required to actually implement it", she solemnly informed the gathered Indian chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations, who would most certainly have been stunned that one of their own delivered that unexpected message.

Quite possibly, being guided toward how she should respond in the criminal charges against SNC-Lavalin, a giant engineering-construction employee of thousands of Canadian workers, the bulk of them in Montreal, abutting Justin Trudeau's electoral riding, rankled her sense of justice on top of the still-painful memories of her previous declaration. Jody Wilson-Raybould would not be used again, to surrender to a demand on her position to fail to uphold the law when the prime minister would prefer she see the matter his way.

Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

His Record Catching Up With Justin Trudeau's Sunny Ways

"We spoke about our shared goals for our country and for this government."
" She confirmed for me a conversation we had this fall where I told her [then-Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould] directly that any decisions on matters involving the director of public prosecutions were hers alone."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Jody Wilson-Raybould attend a swearing-in ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa last month. Wilson-Raybould, the former justice minister, announced on Tuesday she is quitting the federal cabinet. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Famously, when being interviewed about a newly-emerged item in the news that years earlier he had physically assaulted a journalist, then apologized by stating if he had known at the time that she was with a prestigious newspaper he would have acted with greater circumspection, he pardoned his behaviour by claiming there was nothing untoward to how he had behaved, though the woman accused him of manhandling her, because, in his words: 
"Obviously this is a situation that has been very much on my mind over the past few weeks. It's a issue that I have been deeply engaged with, not just as a leader, but all my life, since my early 20s in university ... active on issues around sexual assault and behaviours."
"I've been reflecting very carefully on what I remember from that incident almost 20 years ago and again, I am ... I feel I am confident that I did not act inappropriately."

"Part of this awakening we're having as a society, a long awaited realization, is that it's not just one side of the story that matters. That the same interactions can be experienced very differently from one person to the next."
"I am not going to speak for the woman in question. I would never presume to speak for her. But I know that there is an awful lot of reflection to be had as we move forward as a society on how people perceive different interactions."

Prime Minister Trudeau now has another issue with yet another woman. Jody Wilson-Raybould was elevated by him to the ministerial post she was summarily dismissed from several weeks ago and given a minor ministry instead. Another variance in perceptions at play. Where he insists that no one in his office nor did he 'direct' the-then Attorney-General to effectively exonerate SNC Lavalin from potential criminal convictions for corruption and bribery which would shut them out of government contracts for a decade instead of allowing them to admit guilt, pay a fine, claim to change their corporate culture and all would be well.

Instead, Jody Wilson-Raybould chose, in the name of fairness and justice, to do nothing, but to allow the law to proceed as it should and it must when the giant engineering and construction company was informed it would not be permitted to avoid a criminal trial, even though their strenuous lobbying of the government had resulted in the passing of deferred prosecution agreement legislation. The government's Prosecution Service was clear and adamant that justice be done, and the Attorney General agreed, placing her at odds with the government she served as minister of one of its most important portfolios.

Her replacement as Attorney General and Minister of Justice, David Lametti has been swift to deny that either he nor his predecessor had been 'directed' to give SNC Lavalin a free pass in an election year where thousands of its employees live and work in Trudeau's electoral riding in Montreal. "It is important to remember that while the attorney general sits at a certain distance from his cabinet colleagues, in Canada, unlike in other countries, he does not work in isolation from them", Mr. Lametti lectured at a Canadian Bar Association conference. "But there is a line that cannot be crossed. Telling the attorney general what a decision ought to be: that would be interference", he said, in support of the government, denying any effort to suborn him while leaving open the possibility he would choose to override the Public Prosecutor's decision.

How strange it is that a furtive, secretive campaign was launched by unnamed sources to cast doubt on the veracity and teamwork commitment, much less integrity of the former attorney general. Unnamed "insiders" speak of Jody Wilson-Raybould as "difficult to get along with", a woman who had "always sort of been in it for herself". On the other hand, those same sources infer, the patient and generous prime minister "still has confidence" in his former attorney general, despite the "damage" she was intent on blackening the government with "by allowing the speculation about alleged corruption to hang out there".

Discrediting the honesty and pointing out the evil designs of an adversary is an old, old tactic, one worthy of conspiracy theorists, certain to gain adherents among those refusing to contemplate that Justin Trudeau, who has failed in so many indices of competence and adherence to ethics, could be at fault for any reason speaks volumes about the man and his supporters. The dodgy way that the legislation bringing into law the provision for a remedial agreement whereby SNC Lavalin could neatly sidestep charges of fraud and corruption and accountability for both, also speaks volumes about a man who pledged his government would be transparent and open to the benefit of all Canadians.

Jody Wilson-Raybould ✔ @Puglaas

With a heavy heart I have submitted my letter of resignation to the Prime Minister as a member of Cabinet... https://jwilson-raybould.liberal.ca/news-nouvelles/statement-from-the-honourable-jody-wilson-raybould-member-of-parliament-for-vancouver-granville/ … 11:34 AM - Feb 12, 2019

Now, however, the other shoe has dropped. Jody Wilson-Raybould has announced she is stepping away from her ministerial position with Veterans Affairs, leaving the Liberal cabinet, but not her elected position as Member of Parliament for Vancouver-Granville. And, she advised the prime minister, who continues to "have confidence" in a woman whose appointment nicely balanced his commitment to gender parity in his cabinet, she is seeking legal advice from an expert she has consulted, to advise how she may within the law finally speak to the issue that has galvanized the country.

Power & Politics ✔ @PnPCBC

.@JustinTrudeau says he is surprised & disappointed by @Puglaas resignation. On SNC-Lavalin "Gov't of Canada did its job and to the clear public standards expected of them. If anyone felt differently they had an obligation to raise that with me. No one, including Jody, did that." 6:23 PM - Feb 12, 2019