There’s been a lot going on since the last round-up.  It’s all going swimmingly, as you can see.

(If you’ve got one to share that I’ve missed, do so in comments with source, please.)

• Richard Martineau, Journal de Montreal: “And was it because of empathy for workers that Trudeau wanted to save SNC-Lavalin? No. Because Justin needs votes in Quebec to win his next election…If Quebecers continue supporting Trudeau now, in spite of this attack on the independence of the justice system, we are imbeciles.”
• “David Olive, Toronto Star: “The Trudeau “war room” is dug in, expecting the current outrage to subside. But the Grit brand will be further weakened by still more allegations to come of unseemly conduct by Trudeau and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The unpopularity of the PMO is widespread in this government. The PMO’s pressure on Wilson-Raybould is but one of countless acts of meddling in the work of cabinet officers, committee chairs and backbenchers.”
• Toronto Star poll: “57 per cent said the situation has “worsened” their opinion of Trudeau, versus 36 per cent who said it has had “no effect” and 7 per cent who said their view of the prime minister has been improved by the situation.”
• Chantal Hebert, Star:  “Another week of political drama on Parliament Hill finds the SNC-Lavalin affair no closer to closure. In the aftermath of Jody Wilson-Raybould’s appearance at the Commons justice committee, even the future of the prime minister as Liberal leader has become fair game for speculation.  If anything, the former attorney general’s testimony has left many Canadians with more questions than definitive answers.”
• Royson James, Star: “[The]prime minister is throwing the woman under the bus. And the clerk of the Privy Council, a top bureaucrat on nobody’s radar except political animals, tries to undercut her by suggesting that if she felt pressure in her job as attorney general, that’s par for the course. In short, “Suck it up lady. That’s how the big boys play the game. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Indigenous advocates and women’s groups and Canadians attuned to the issues and now confused by the black cloud threatening the sunny ways they’d welcomed just yesterday responded with outrage and concern.”
• Globe and Mail poll: “More than half of Canadians say fraud and corruption charges against SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. should go to a criminal trial rather than a negotiated settlement where the Montreal engineering and construction giant would pay fines and avoid prosecution, according to a new survey.”
• John Ibbitson, Globe: “In the absence of doing the right thing – calling an election to let the people decide this issue – the smart thing for the Liberals is to do nothing that will prolong the agony of this scandal. Fresh testimony, even if it bolsters their case, will only drag things on, increasing the risk that Mr. Trudeau himself might be forced to testify, requiring him to do something he has refused to do for three straight weeks: respond to a direct question with a direct answer.”
• Shelby Blackley, Globe: “Courage is clearly innate for Ms. Wilson-Raybould, but maybe it was bolstered by the support of women near and far. After Ms. Wilson-Raybould resigned from the federal cabinet on Feb. 12, the hashtag #StandwithJody began trending. Fellow MPs such as Jane Philpott, and Celina Caesar-Chavannes, among others, voiced their support.”
• Campbell Clark, Globe: “Firing attacks at Ms. Wilson-Raybould…clearly backfired. Mr. Trudeau had made a milestone of her appointment as the first female Indigenous justice minister in 2015. Accusations that the PMO was “smearing” Ms. Wilson-Raybould dented Mr. Trudeau’s political brand. She has seized the high ground.”
• Globe editorial board:  “If the Trudeau government has any hope of seeing the back of the SNC-Lavalin scandal, it has to put its full version of the story, all of it, in front of the Canadian people. Perfunctory denials won’t do. The allegations made by former justice minister and attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould are too serious. That the allegations go to the very top, and come from one of the government’s most senior members, makes them unprecedented.”
• Kelly McParland, National Post: “Jody Wilson-Raybould was clear, credible, straightforward and eminently convincing. Anyone outside a hardened partisan would have to conclude this was a strong woman who held firm beliefs and had stood by them under extreme duress from powerful men.”
• Andrew Coyne, Post: “Unless you think Wilson-Raybould is flat out lying, something has gone very wrong with the culture of this government. I don’t mean the desire to spare the company’s employees from hardship, or even the concern for the political repercussions in Quebec, but the apparently widespread assumption that the way to attend to these was to corrupt a prosecution and trample over the independence of the attorney general.”
• National Post editorial board:  “What is the prime minister waiting for? His friend and confidant Butts will have a chance to speak, as will Wernick, for a second time now. Wilson-Raybould, for her part, should be given the chance to flesh out what Liberal MPs have been dismissing as her inaccurate version of things, unfettered by potential self-serving limits imposed by the prime minister.  That would be the prime minister, you’ll remember, who once pledged to lead the most transparent government in Canadian history. The people of Canada are eager for answers, and there are numerous people willing to speak. Let’s hear what they have to say — all of them, and all of it.”
• CTV News Nanos poll: “One in four Canadians say the SNC-Lavalin scandal will influence their vote in the next federal election – and the political fallout appears to be growing, according to a new Nanos survey…Before the former attorney general testified, 14 per cent of respondents said they considered Trudeau the most ethical federal leader. At the time, Trudeau ranked third behind Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, at 23 per cent, and Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer, at 21 per cent. But by Friday, Trudeau had sunk to 10 per cent support, putting him in the fourth spot behind NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who held 11 per cent.”
• Paul Wells, Maclean’s:  “THE MORAL CATASTROPHE OF JUSTIN TRUDEAU…Unless the Trudeau Liberals can produce persuasive evidence that Jody Wilson-Raybould is an utter fabulist (and frankly, I now expect several to try), her testimony before the Commons Justice Committee establishes pretty clearly that the hucksters and worse were running the show. Led by the grinning legatee who taints the Prime Ministers’ office…What the former attorney general described is a sickeningly smug protection racket whose participants must have been astonished when she refused to play along.”
• Anne Kingston, Maclean’s: “We’re talking Grand-Master-Jedi-level gaslighting here. Clearly the “No” registered on the SNC-Lavalin DPA on Sept. 4, Sept. 17, Oct. 7, Dec. 19 did not register as an actual or final decision. As for pressure? She must be imagining things! After all, the decision was Wilson-Raybould’s alone to make. And the insurance kicker:  If Wilson-Raybould did feel she was being pressured to override the decision to prosecute, it was up to her to protest to the very office applying pressure, or resign. If she didn’t, well, it’s nobody’s fault but hers. Her behaviour is the problem. As I said, it’s an age-old template.  As for “How many times did Jody Wilson Raybould need to say ‘No?’ before being heard?” It’s a trick question. The correct answer: Zero.”
• Leah McLaren, The Guardian: “Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau – proud feminist, defender of minority rights, advocate for transparency, inclusivity and decency, and prince of the one-armed push-up – was morally eviscerated over four-hours of astonishing testimony by his own former attorney general and justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould – a woman of great integrity and a rare Indigenous Canadian cabinet minister…Trudeau’s behaviour was way beyond the bounds of what was fair or decent. It was sleazy, plain and simple. And for a leader whose entire brand identity, right down to the toes of his cotton rainbow socks, is based on fairness and decency, that’s pure political poison.”
• Paul Wells, Maclean’s: “Long story short, the government of Canada was telling one story to itself and another to Canadians. To themselves, they said they were protecting jobs. To the rest of us, they said they were getting tough. A government that indulges in that much sustained double-talk clearly thinks it has something to hide. It’s being disingenuous. It’s being phony. And since the lot of them never stop calling themselves #TeamTrudeau on Twitter, I guess we can, without fear of contradiction, say the Prime Minister of Canada has been the phony-in-chief…She wanted to back the country’s public prosecutor, to let a court do what courts do every day: weigh and judge. He wanted to change the rules mid-game and hope we wouldn’t notice.  And the problem for Trudeau—who came to power promising a new era of transparency—is that this phoniness is a trait he shows all too often.”

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