#LavScam latest: tale of the tape – was PMO taping JWR?
From Butts’ notes. This does nothing but confirm every damn word JWR has said.
(And – PS – how does Butts have verbatim quotes? Did they tape her?)
Tag Archive: Justin Trudeau
Justice and Justin
There was a moment, during Justin Trudeau’s saturnalian March 7 LavScam press conference, where the Prime Minister waxed poetic.
He grew misty-eyed. He looked up from his notes. He sounded wistful.
He loved Justice, he said. He really did. He and his Dad both did. “The files that were closest to his heart are also for me. And one is the justice file.”
Justice – which Justin Trudeau hadn’t mentioned all that often during his three-and-a-half-years in the big chair – was now super-duper important. It was everything. It was a “file” that “has always been one of particular importance and interest to me. It’s always been very close to my heart.”
His heart! The mind reels, at such times. Our souls swoon.
So, stay with me, here. Just for a minute.
At that moment, justice was a baseball, kind of, but in a good way. In an instant, we were collectively whisked back to the Nineties, to that iconic scene in Field of Dreams – the one where Kevin Costner asks his deceased Dad if he wants to play catch, and every grown man in the theatre starts to sniffle. Except, in Justin’s case, the baseball was justice – stamped Rule of Law, so we don’t miss the point – and he and Pierre were lobbing it back and forth, so great was their love of justice.
That’s what the young Trudeau was after, anyway. That’s what he wanted to evoke. Justice, Dad, better times.
Except, you know: nobody believes it. Nobody believes him, either. Two-thirds of Canadians, say the pollsters, are like those folks in Field of Dreams who keep showing up at Kevin Costner’s farm and they don’t see a damn thing. They don’t see anything magical or wonderful or poetic. They just see what is really there.
Which, in the LavScam case, is a seething, stinking dumpster overflowing with lies, and cover-ups, and smears. And, standing beside it all, is a Prime Minister who doesn’t seem so cool and hip anymore. He just looks like another grasping, grimy politician, one who will say and do anything to save his hide.
Because he’s losing. An Angus Reid poll, released Thursday, suggested he now may be as many as ten percentage points behind Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives nationally. And, as my smart NDP pal Karl Belanger reminded me, Trudeau’s personal approval numbers now lag behind another politician: Donald Trump.
And it is all because of justice.
Distilled down to its base elements, you see, LavScam is about justice. Not 9,000 jobs that SNC-Lavalin’s CEO says were never in jeopardy. Not Article Five of the OECD anti-bribery convention, which Trudeau’s government has violated. Not anything else: justice.
In our system of justice, no one – not even a Prime Minister – is allowed to ring up a judge or prosecutor and tell them what to do. That is against the law. It is obstruction of justice. It is the absence of justice.
Also unjust: the decision of someone on Team Trudeau to violate the sacrosanct judicial nomination process, simply to get back at former Attorney-General Jody Wilson Raybould. To do this, one of Trudeau’s faceless factotums leaked secret information about a Supreme Court of Canada nominee to compliant reporters at the Canadian Press and CTV News.
The nominee, who Wilson-Raybould reportedly preferred, was a social conservative, the leaker hissed. And Jody Wilson-Raybould favoured him – and Justin Trudeau opposed him, because he was insufficiently progressive, said the leaker.
Except: it wasn’t true. It was a lie. The judge was a moderate. And he wasn’t dropped from Justin Trudeau’s list – he removed himself from it, to care for a wife suffering from breast cancer.
So, is that justice? Is that just? Is it acceptable to further wound a family battling cancer – just to defame an indigenous woman who got a little too uppity?
But Jody Wilson-Raybould isn’t the only indigenous woman Justin Trudeau holds in contempt. No, there are others, as it turns out.
This week, the mask slipped yet again, and we saw Justin Trudeau mocking a young indigenous woman at a Liberal Party event in Toronto.
As his audience of well-to-do white men laughed, Justin Trudeau jeered an indigenous female protestor, saying “thanks for your donation” as she was hustled away by his hulking bodyguards.
She was there to protest the mercury poisoning of her people at Grassy Narrows, which Justin Trudeau had solemnly promised to remedy. And about which he has done precious little.
“Thanks for your donation.” Is that the “real change” Justin Trudeau said he’d give Canadians in 2015? Is that his promised reconciliation with indigenous people? Is that in any way just, or justice?
You know the answer already.
And you also know that Justin Trudeau wouldn’t know “justice” if it bit him on his privileged white ass.
A reminder of what #LavScam is all about
This.
As we enter the week in which Justin Trudeau will almost certainly expel two women who stood up for the principle of prosecutorial independence, here is what the prosecutors themselves had to say about that – and on the very day Trudeau refused to apologize for #LavScam.
They did not issue that tweet by accident. They were not unaware of the impact it would have, coming – as it did – a couple hours after Justin Trudeau angrily refused to apologize for possibly obstructing justice.
It was Canada’s Public Prosecution Service sending up a flare. It was a warning, from those who would know, that something critically important is at risk.
And that is this: the constitutional principle that our criminal justice system needs to be free and fair. The notion that serious cases of corporate corruption, as SNC-Lavalin is, needs to be fought in open court, with lawyers – not in backrooms, with lobbyists.
“Free from political influence.” That is what motivated Jody Wilson-Raybould to do what she did – and, later, for Jane Philpott and Celina Caesar-Chavannes, to do what they did. They lost their careers to that. They have been defamed and demeaned for that.
We must have a criminal justice system that is free from political influence. We must ensure that justice is free and fair, and not for sale to the wealthy.
That is what this scandal is all about. And that is how history will tell it, too.
Bar Associations: Justin Trudeau’s office “demeaned” the judicial process – and acted in a manner that was “false, improper and appalling”
Justin Trudeau’s PMO has made history: so intent were they on smearing Jody Wilson-Raybould, the Liberal leader and his apparatchiks violated the confidentiality of the judicial appointment process – and they smeared a respected jurist who was tending to his wife. Who had breast cancer.
It got a reaction. One that none of his predecessors ever did.
Here’s the Canadian Bar Association’s reaction:
“There is a process to get informed input about the merits of the applicants. It rightly goes on behind closed doors. Keeping the deliberations confidential respects the privacy of applicants and guards against interference. Breaching confidentiality by releasing the names and commenting on the suitability of the other applicants after the appointment demeans the selection process and ultimately all those who hold the office of judge.”
And here is the Manitoba Bar Association:
“It is vital any deliberations leading up to any appointment remain confidential. The recent breaches of confidentiality…[are] highly disconcerting. It demeans the entire selection process…The Manitoba Bar Association is also deeply concerned about comments made about Chief Justice Joyal…[which were] entirely improper and indeed false…It is appalling.”
Justin Trudeau is uniting people, alright.
Against him.
#LavScam latest: did PMO have direct contact with prosecutors in the SNC-Lavalin trial?
That’s what the Globe and Mail is suggesting in another shocker this morning. I have wondered the same thing.
Huge reporting by Fife and Team. And, if true, this moves things closer to obstruction of justice. Big time.
The Prime Minister’s Office will neither confirm nor deny the assertion by former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould that senior advisers to Justin Trudeau had inside knowledge of discussions within the independent Public Prosecution Service about the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
Ms. Wilson-Raybould has alleged that the Prime Minister’s Office [PMO] told her chief of staff about an apparent internal dispute between director of public prosecutions Kathleen Roussel and one of the federal prosecutors handling the SNC-Lavalin bribery and fraud prosecution.
In testimony before the Commons justice committee last month, Ms. Wilson-Raybould described a Sept. 16, 2018, conversation between her then-chief of staff, Jessica Prince, and the Prime Minister’s Quebec adviser, Mathieu Bouchard, and senior adviser Elder Marques about negotiating an out-of-court settlement with SNC-Lavalin.
Ms. Wilson-Raybould says she plans to provide follow-up written testimony this week to the committee to show there was high-level political interference in the SNC-Lavalin matter.
The Jane Philpott interview: this is extraordinary
From the very first time I met Jane, and spoke at her riding association many years ago, I believed her to be principled and brilliant. And the kind of person we need in public life.
It will find a way out.
**
Q: When you left cabinet, did you have a strategic goal in mind? What was the point of resigning?
A: I resigned because I could not maintain solidarity with cabinet on the specific issue of the management of the SNC-Lavalin issue. I felt that there was evidence of an attempt to politically interfere with the justice system in its work on the criminal trial that has been described by some as the most important and serious prosecution of corporate corruption in modern Canadian history.
A: No. There’s much more to the story that should be told.
Q: What sort of stuff?
A: I believe the former attorney general has further points to make. I believe that I have further issues of concern that I’m not free to share. There was a reference by Gerry Butts in his testimony of the fact that I spoke to the Prime Minister on January the 6th about SNC-Lavalin’s desire to have a DPA [deferred prosecution agreement]. This was more than a month before the story became public. And I ordinarily would have not been allowed to share that information. But of course it’s already on the public record from the Justice Committee. I think Canadians might want to know why I would have raised that with the Prime Minister a month before the public knew about it. Why would I have felt that there was a reason why former Minister Wilson-Raybould should not be shuffled?
Q: In what forum would you like to discuss all of this?
A: My sense is that Canadians would like to know the whole story. I believe we actually owe it to Canadians as politicians to ensure that they have the truth. They need to have confidence in the very basic constitutional principle of the independence of the justice system.
Q: Mr. Butts said, essentially, ‘Come on, this doesn’t rise to the level of harassment, or bugging, or even sustained engagement. It’s 20 interactions over four months. It’s two phone calls and two meetings per month.’
A: The constitutional principle of the independence of the justice system is such that the attorney general of our country should not be subjected to political interference in any way. Whether there is one attempt to interfere or whether there are 20 attempts to interfere, that crosses ethical and constitutional lines.
Q: Now there’s an Ethics Commissioner investigation. Michael Wernick seemed to have a lot of confidence in the Ethics Commissioner. Do you think that can capture everything that needs capturing?
A: My sense is that they will not have the appropriate tools to be able to get at all of this.
Q: What’s missing?
A: If nothing wrong took place, then why don’t we waive privilege on the whole issue and let those who have something to say on it speak their minds and share their stories?
Q: The Finance Minister [Bill Morneau] said your resignation from cabinet was an expression of personal friendship with Jody Wilson-Raybould. What do you make of that?
A: I think that’s an insult.
Q: How so?
A: I don’t make decisions on any policy — and definitely not on a matter of principle — based on friendship. I made the very difficult decision to step down because my conscience demanded it.
One way Canada can fight hate, right away
Talk is cheap.
If the Trudeau government is serious about stopping the spread of hate, here’s something they can do this week.
Will they? (Oh, and one Minister was looking at ways to bring back a version of section 13. Guess who she was?)
The federal government’s words about combatting hate are fine. But they need to match words and action. So: bring back section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act now. It was a #LPC MP who championed its repeal under a #CPC government. So, fix it. https://t.co/cqKM1A5DM5 #cdnpoli
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) March 17, 2019
#LavScam legal: what it means now that PMO has lawyered up
The Globe and Mail has reported that Justin Trudeau and senior PMO staff have now retained independent legal counsel in #LavScam. I’ve helped organizations through legal/comms crises many times.
I can tell you this is what this latest revelation means:
• their ability to communicate openly about the file comes to an abrupt end
• they now can’t take notes, send or receive email, etc. without disclosing them to the police, Ethics Commissioner, et al.
• they can’t delete past records without attracting more legal peril
• their lawyers are telling them, over and over, that they should not discuss the case with anyone, including their bosses
• their lawyers are reviewing, in advance, everything they hope to say about #LavScam – which necessarily slows down their responses in what is a fast-moving scandal
• the Opposition and the media are going to be watching the legal bills like hawks – and publicizing every penny (which the relevant law firms don’t ever like, and which sometimes leads to withdrawal)
• they are getting their legal bills paid by the taxpayer – but there’s usually a dollar limit, and the representation won’t cover wrongdoing done outside their government roles (ie., LPC)
• their legal bills will get very big very fast – which will inevitably create a whole new layer of scandal
• they may need to hire non-legal representation – comms counsel, for instance – and that inevitably means yet more costs which leads to yet more scandal
• they may need to start paying for additional legal representation out of their own pockets – which inevitably leads to them going home and their spouse saying: “We didn’t sign on for this. This is bankrupting us. You need to quit.”
And so on, and so on.
None of this would have happened if any of them had paid heed to the law – for instance, using “jobs” as an excuse to enter into a Deferred Prosecution Agreement is expressly prohibited in bribery cases (as this is) and Article Five of the OECD Anti-Bribery Working Group Convention (which Canada has signed).
They didn’t talk to any lawyers at the start. Because of that, they’re now going to be talking to lawyers all the time.
To, you know, keep themselves out of jail.
Globe: Trudeau, PMO staff hire outside lawyers in case RCMP probes #LavScam
Wow.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior officials in his office have retained outside legal counsel in case of an RCMP investigation into allegations of political interference in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin Group.
Mr. Trudeau’s communications director, Cameron Ahmad, told The Globe and Mail on Friday that Treasury Board rules allow for hiring of outside counsel when government officials are either sued, threatened with a suit, charged with an offence or under threat of being named in a legal action.
“As per the Treasury Board Policy on Legal Assistance and Indemnification, counsel has been retained to advise on the matter in question,” Mr. Ahmad said in an e-mail.
Mr. Ahmad would not provide further details or reveal the names of the law firms retained by Mr. Trudeau and staff in the Prime Minister’s Office, in response to a formal request last month for an RCMP investigation from Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.
A senior government official, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said an outside law firm has been hired to represent Mr. Trudeau, and another law firm will handle staff in the Prime Minister’s Office.
The second law firm will act on behalf of Mr. Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, Quebec adviser Mathieu Bouchard and senior adviser Elder Marques, the official said.
Your morning #LavScam: March 14 edition
The Liberal majority on the “Justice” Committee again voted to prevent Jody Wilson-Raybould from speaking.
It didn’t go over well. None of it has gone over well.
•Toronto Sun Campaign Research poll: “As for Trudeau himself, Yufest says he now stands at just 29% approval compared to 58% who think the PM is doing a bad job. Those numbers says Yufest are close to the unpopularity of former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne who dropped into the 20s and was never able to recover. While just 29% approve of Trudeau’s job performance, 45% approve of the job done by former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould. “The people are with her on this issue specifically and not so much with Justin Trudeau,” Yufest said.
•Campbell Clark, Globe and Mail: “Too bad for their party that [Trudeau Liberals] can’t figure out how to rip the Band-Aid off as quickly on the larger SNC-Lavalin affair. Instead, they are fuelling the most potent narrative still giving legs to the story – the idea that they are blocking Ms. Wilson-Raybould, the former justice minister and attorney-general, from revealing something important about the SNC-Lavalin affair…The Liberals say they prefer to discuss such things behind closed doors.But in this case, that’s a crock. This was a simple motion in the most closely watched parliamentary hearings in the country. It was a simple yes or no question. The Liberal MPs voted to adjourn the committee meeting without having it go anywhere. At best, that’s stalling. At worst, it’s obstructionism.”
•Lawrence Martin, Globe: “Let’s reject Gerald Butts’s claim in his committee testimony that the Prime Minister’s Office did not pressure Jody Wilson-Raybould on the SNC-Lavalin case. Let’s reject his view that her cabinet demotion had nothing to do with her unwillingness to co-operate on the file. Instead, let’s accept Ms. Wilson-Raybould’s version of events and conclude that she showed courage, not spite; that she stood for high principle, and performed a noble public service….But on the matter of loyalty, a woman from the Indigenous community presents a new dynamic. How different is the loyalty concept to a community betrayed so often through the country’s history? It’s been a community that has stood apart, has been made to feel apart and is apart. That Ms. Wilson-Raybould reacted the way she did should not have come as a surprise to Mr. Trudeau. Her people, with good reason, were never really part of the team. As the Prime Minister is ruefully finding out, they still aren’t.”
•Campbell Clark, Globe: “This seems like a pretty self-destructive thing for Liberal MPs to do. It adds fuel to the story, and the same question – whether they will let Ms. Wilson-Raybould come back to the committee to testify again – will come up again next Tuesday. Those Canadians who figured they already knew pretty much what happened in this affair are being invited to ask questions again.”
•Konrad Yakabuski, Globe: “The brutality of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime has been cited by some legal experts as a possible explanation for why Director of Public Prosecutions Kathleen Roussel refused to negotiate a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) with SNC-Lavalin. The law forbids Ms. Roussel from entering into such an agreement if she believes a company’s alleged crimes might have caused serious bodily harm or death….SNC-Lavalin had been operating in Libya since the mid-1990s. But its business there took off after [Paul] Martin’s trip. In a 2006 Globe and Mail interview, then-SNC-Lavalin CEO Jacques Lamarre insisted the company was helping to elevate business practices in Libya: “We like win-win situations. We’ve been involved in international markets for over 40 years and have helped many countries to become normal.” By 2011, as Mr. Gadhafi moved to suppress Arab Spring protests in his country, it had become clear the dictator had never given up on repression. SNC-Lavalin found itself having to publicly defend its $275-million contract to build a state-run prison.”
•John Ibbitson, Globe: “[The LavScam] affair damaged as well Mr. Trudeau’s reputation abroad. News organizations around the world have reported on the controversy, with “charismatic Trudeau tarnished by scandal” a common refrain. And this week’s statement by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development was devastating. “The OECD Working Group on Bribery is concerned by recent allegations of interference in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,” the statement read, adding that, under the terms of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention that Canada belongs to, “political factors such as a country’s national economic interest and the identity of the alleged perpetrators must not influence foreign bribery investigations and prosecutions.” To anyone who has been arguing that this controversy was manufactured by febrile media feeding off the actions of misguided or disloyal MPs: The OECD disagrees.”
• Andrew Coyne, National Post, on Twitter: Holy freaking hell. I thought the Libs would try to shut things down, but I didn’t think they’d do so quite so crudely and obviously.”
• Susan Delacourt, Toronto Star, on Twitter: “I was more optimistic about openness than Andrew, so I think I’m more stunned. What the freaking hell indeed….Did the Liberals really shut down the #JUST committee and the motion to recall Jody Wilson-Raybould? Whoa. I’m speechless.”
• Toronto Star editorial board: “Liberals on the House of Commons justice committee are doing Canadians, and their own government, no favours by failing to clear the way for Jody Wilson-Raybould to tell her full story. She wants to speak out and there’s no doubt she should be heard. Trying to prevent that, or even just delaying it in the hope that everyone will lose interest, is both wrong and self-defeating.”
• Christie Blatchford, National Post: “On Wednesday, Liberal MP Francis Drouin took non-Liberal members of the committee by surprise — the opposition had called the emergency session to discuss getting deposed attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould back as a witness and MPs had just started making arguments — when he abruptly moved to adjourn the meeting and the sheep duly followed. To opposition shouts of “This is disgusting!” and “Coverup!”, the Liberal members bravely slipped out back doors. PM Justin Trudeau himself was either in Florida, or heading back to Florida, or heading home again from Florida: For a while there, he was in and out like a sailor on shore leave. He appears to treat that state like he treats question period: It’s there for his convenience.”
• Andrew Coyne, Post: “The irony is suffocating. Concentration of power is very much at the root of this scandal: the assumption of the prime minister and his lieutenants that they were entitled, not only to lean on the former attorney general to decide on a criminal prosecution to their liking, but allegedly to reach down deep into her department. And yet the same concentration of power makes it all but impossible to get to the bottom of it. The public is very much in the same position as Wilson-Raybould: told of her complaints of having been improperly pressured by the prime minister, among others, the prime minister replied that she should have brought her concerns to the prime minister. (She did, of course, but nevever mind.)
• Anthony Furey, Sun: “It was always obvious from the get go that the Justice Committee wasn’t going to be the place where we really got to the bottom of Lavscam. Yes, it’s where the plot first thickened as Jody Wilson-Raybould gave her damning testimony. Yes, it’s where Gerald Butts and Michael Wernick offered their troubling rebuttals. But it looks like that’s all folks. The door has slammed shut, courtesy of the Liberal MPs on the Committee…Back to that reason why we should have known all along this process was bad news: Because it was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s preferred option. He kept telling us trust the committee, to have faith in it. No wonder. Now it’s doing his bidding.”
• Robyn Urback, CBC: “You have to listen to the [Chrystia Freeland] interview to appreciate the full effect, but suffice to say, it was the sort of sycophantic performance characteristic of — and perfected in — the early days of #TeamTrudeau. Freeland didn’t just pledge her allegiance to the prime minister (which, granted, you sort of have to do as a cabinet member), she actually extolled his handling of the affair — as if the conflicting messages, sloppy smear jobs and clumsy attempts at obfuscation never happened. Freeland was gushing over a plate of bones, trying to convince us they still looked tasty. Contrast that with the statement released by Philpott on Monday, when she announced her resignation as president of the Treasury Board and exit from cabinet. Philpott said she had “lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter and in how it has responded to the issues raised.” Citing the need for cabinet solidarity, she said it would be “untenable” for her to continue to serve as a minister…A million more Freeland-type ovations can’t undo what Philpott did in a few hundred words: she told the doe-eyed #TeamTrudeau hangers-on that their faith in this government is misplaced. And she said she would not be able to fulfil her duties as a minister if it meant publicly defending the government.