Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s acknowledgment that he should have been aware trust had eroded between former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and his office over the SNC-Lavalin affair was “deeply disturbing,” says Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.
“Justin Trudeau’s press conference [Thursday] morning is the first time it’s become really clear to me he hasn’t learned a thing — not a thing,” May, who represents Saanich-Gulf Islands, said in a phone interview.
May said the prime minister talked about the erosion of trust between his office — specifically his former principal secretary — and the former justice minister and attorney general as if it were some sort of relationship problem.
“I was not aware of that erosion of trust,” Trudeau said at a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday. “As prime minister and leader of the federal ministry, I should have been.”
“He doesn’t need family counselling for cabinet,” May said. “He needs a lesson from a lawyer in the independence of the prosecutorial function.
“It was deeply disturbing because it shows he doesn’t understand the most basic elements on why applying pressure on the attorney general [is wrong].”
Getting SNC-Lavalin a deferred prosecution agreement continues to drive all aspects of the prime minister’s office’s handling of the issue, May said.
Trudeau said he continues to believe there was no inappropriate pressure on Wilson-Raybould to offer SNC-Lavalin a remediation agreement rather than proceeding to a criminal trial for bribery and fraud.
“I’m obviously reflecting on lessons learned through this,” Trudeau said. “I think Canadians expect that of us, that any time we go through periods of internal disagreement and indeed challenges to internal trust as we have, there are things we have to reflect on and understand and do better next time.”
Wilson-Raybould said last week she was improperly pressured to stop a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin and was punished for her refusal to give in by being moved to the Veterans Affairs portfolio in an early January cabinet shuffle.
She resigned from cabinet shortly after the controversy erupted. Treasury Board president Jane Philpott resigned in solidarity with Wilson-Raybould on Monday, saying she had lost confidence in the government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Trudeau’s former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, told the House of Commons justice committee Wednesday that he wanted Wilson-Raybould to seek a second opinion from a retired judge so the government could show it had seriously considered all legal options.
Last week, Wilson-Raybould outlined for the justice committee 11 meetings and phone calls with 11 political staff members in the Prime Minister’s Office, the finance minister’s office and the Privy Council Office, which she said were not illegal but overstepped what was appropriate.
Butts provided the committee Wednesday with a different view of those meetings, saying 11 meetings and calls in four months is hardly a large number on an important file, and that Wilson-Raybould never told Butts or Trudeau she was unhappy about them until she was told she was shuffled out of what she called her “dream job” as justice minister.
Her discomfort appears to have begun as early as Sept. 17 in a meeting with Trudeau in which she said he raised the SNC file, and mentioned that he was a Quebec MP and it was a Quebec-based company. She said that was a partisan and political consideration that had no bearing on the decision and should never have been raised with her.
On Thursday morning, Trudeau said mentioning that he was a Quebec MP was not problematic, saying that it’s up to all MPs to advocate for the people they were elected to serve, and that a concern for job losses in Quebec and elsewhere were top of his mind.
While Wilson-Raybould did tell him she had decided not to intervene in the case, he says he asked her to reconsider and she agreed to do so.
“I was preoccupied by the number of jobs on this in Quebec and across the country,” he said. “This was something I was clear on.”
His direction to his staff to provide her with information about the file was in the context of understanding that she was open to receiving more information, he said.
Trudeau said that was not the case, clearly, and he wishes she had told him. Trudeau said he wants to be the kind of leader whose team feels comfortable coming to him when things aren’t going the way they want.
“In Ms. Wilson-Raybould’s case, she did not come to me and I wish she had,” Trudeau said. “If it’s a real relationship and we truly are a team, we can always acknowledge when we need to make adjustments.”
NDP justice critic Murray Rankin, who represents Victoria, questions how Trudeau couldn’t have known that Wilson-Raybould felt there was inappropriate interference.
“The way they treated her, if one believes her, and I believe her, demonstrates there was inappropriate interference,” Rankin said. “Gerry Butts wasn’t there. He had blissful ignorance, it seems, from many of the meetings senior staff took with her.”
In November and December, Wilson-Raybould told senior staff she had made her decision, yet she kept being told about potential job losses, Rankin said.
Rankin said once the attorney general has made her decision, “that’s it” unless new evidence or facts arise.
“If it’s something new, then it’s perfectly appropriate to bring that to her attention and say: ‘Does this change her decision?’ But if it’s just the same old, same old, which was the case here, there was nothing new being brought to her attention. Therefore, I say it’s inappropriate interference with her decision.”
Both Rankin and May continue to call for a public inquiry into the affair.
Trudeau said he has asked for an outside expert to advise the government on the issues raised in the last few weeks, including whether the roles of attorney general and minister of justice should be separated. Advice also will be offered on operating policies and practices across cabinet, the public service and other political staff “as they relate specifically to judicial matters.”
Rankin and May, both lawyers, said the question of whether to separate the roles of attorney general and justice minister is valid, but it’s a discussion for another time.
“If it’s being used to change the channel on this story, then it’s not appropriate,” Rankin said. “Let’s talk about the legal world we live in now.
“His senior officials were putting inordinate pressure, making veiled threats and speaking in code to the attorney general to change her mind. They are not to have done it and it’s a disturbing course of action.”
