Tag Archive: SNC-Lavalin

Your #LavScam weekly roundup (and this is just a sample of a few papers, folks)

  • Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star: “THE LIBERALS HAVE ABANDONED THEIR MORAL PRINCIPLES…and it’s Justin Trudeau’s fault…It is dismaying to me, a political agnostic, that thuggery is now attached to the federal Liberal party. It is appalling to me, a feminist, that so many who claim to respect women, who call themselves feminists — most especially the piously feminist prime minister but all his acolytes in the partisan media — have turned themselves inside-out to rationalize the bullying of female Liberal ministers. Because, readily admitted even, the existential threat of Andrew Scheer at 24 Sussex Drive looms as such a calamity, come the October election, that anything, anything, would be preferable, up to and including the abandonment of all moral principles.”
  • Andrew Coyne, National Post: “It’s hard to see what is accomplished by this latest bout of thuggery — not only expelling Wilson-Raybould and Philpott, but revoking their nominations. It seems to be motivated by little more than sheer delight in retribution: vindictiveness for vindictiveness’s sake. And yet they are not one whit diminished by it; only the prime minister is. “
  •  Christie Blatchford, National Post: “They’re thugs — the senior people in the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the clerk of the privy council and the nation’s top bureaucrat, the people in the office of Finance Minister Bill Morneau — or so close as to be indistinguishable from them. I refer to their collective behaviour around the SNC-Lavalin imbroglio, in particular their relentless effort to strong-arm the deposed attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould…The day after Justin Trudeau pointed to her ongoing presence in cabinet as evidence that should allay any concerns about the propriety of government conduct in relation to SNC and said her presence “spoke for itself,” she quit. “I trust my resignation also speaks for itself,” she said. What a pistol she is.”
  • Andrew Coyne, National Post: “[Liberal MPs] knew what kind of party they wanted to be a part of from the moment they accepted their nominations; indeed, were they not the type of person that party attracts they would not have been recruited for it. It is the kind of party, and person, that unquestioningly puts loyalty to party before principle — and mercilessly punishes those who do not…What has agitated Liberal MPs is not the former attorney general’s recording of a conversation she correctly anticipated would be improper and could have guessed would be denied, or her failure to alert the prime minister at whose behest it had taken place (and who could not fail to have been informed of its contents), but rather that she has contradicted and embarrassed the leader. Or rather no: I suspect what truly outrages them is the sight of a person of conscience, unwilling to sacrifice her principles so readily on the altar of partisanship. For those who can still remember what that was like, it must be deeply shaming. For the rest, there is only one principle — blind loyalty to the leader — in which cause they are prepared to sacrifice any number of colleagues.”
  • Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail: “Mr. Trudeau, owing to his own inattention to details and sheer arrogance, has created a royal mess. By ousting Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Ms. Philpott, he looks more interested in preserving power than upholding the principles he was elected on. It’s not “because it’s 2015” any more: Instead, it’s because it’s 2019, and there’s an election, the Liberals were born to win. Trying, however, to paint Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Ms. Philpott as the villains of this story just doesn’t wash. Canadians are smarter, and more principled, than that.”
  • Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star: “It is grotesque, to me, how small and vindictive Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had become — lifted on the shoulders of his party disciples — trying to make a virtue out of the jettisoning of two women who dared to vouchsafe integrity, falling afoul of the caucus cabal…There was nothing remotely illegal about Wilson-Raybould “covertly” recording her telephone conversation with Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick — what Trudeau classified as “unconscionable.” It’s perfectly licit to record an exchange as long as one person knows it’s happening. Journalists do it all the time, to back up their notes, particularly when the other person on the line might later challenge the veracity of the content.”
  • Campbell Clark, Globe and Mail: “It’s not hard to see why most Liberal MPs felt Jody Wilson-Raybould should be booted out of the caucus. There’s no “I” in “team,” but in the Liberal team, there’s a capital “T” for Justin Trudeau. There really wasn’t much more of an explanation than that from Mr. Trudeau, when you get right down to it, for why Ms. Wilson-Raybould and another former minister, Jane Philpott, were kicked out.”
  • Tanya Talaga, Toronto Star: “It seems to me that if someone you work with is pressuring you into doing something you don’t want to do —if you think it is potentially illegal or wildly unethical — secretly taping them isn’t “unconscionable.”Especially if you’ve repeatedly said, to a variety of different people, that you did not feel comfortable with what was being asked of you. And when you tried to tell people, nobody seemed to be listening. No, instead they were telling you, explicitly and implicitly, that you were the one with the problem, that you just don’t seem to “get” how the whole system works. That this is how it’s always been done and you are an outsider if you don’t play by our rules.”
  • Andrew MacDougall, Globe and Mail: “For a prime minister positioned as the leader that the West’s liberal world order needs, doesn’t it feel just a little bit Trump-like? If you find that comparison a little tart, think again. Mr. Trudeau and the Liberal caucus have been channelling Donald Trump and the Republican Party, with Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Ms. Philpott jointly playing the role of former FBI director James Comey, ejected from the President’s orbit for refusing to play ball on the Russia investigation.”
  • Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star: “How very patronizing the prime minister was — has been throughout, actually, from his diminishment of Wilson-Raybould as “Jody” to his pained forbearance of this wilful woman — in the House on Tuesday, asserting he’d tried to show “patience and understanding,” as one would with an incorrigible child, but heavens, his sufferance had been wasted on so recalcitrant and defiant a Liberal liege, to the point that banishment was the only option to avoid a “civil war.”
  • Tanya Talaga, Toronto Star: “Given what was at stake and what Wilson-Raybould has experienced, none of what she asked for was unreasonable. As she has said from day one, she stood up for the truth. So did Philpott, a medical doctor who held the top portfolios in Trudeau’s government. She told CBC Radio’s The Current she had to resign from cabinet because if a member of the media asked her what she thought, she could not lie, she could not forsake the truth and toe the party line. If she did, how could she face her children, her family? “I chose the truth,” Philpott said. “I chose to act on principles that are so important to the future of our country. That is more important than my political career.”
  • Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail: “When the Prime Minister is nonchalant about intervening in the judicial process because, you know, he’s used to getting what he wants, then someone needs to take him aside and explain the facts of life, not to mention constitutional democracy. He may very well have good reasons to think the DPP made the wrong call on SNC-Lavalin. But tough: There is a greater principle at play – the independence of prosecutors to act free of political interference – that cannot be sacrificed simply because, as PMO aide Mathieu Bouchard reportedly told Ms. Wilson-Raybould, “we can have the best policy in the world, but we need to get re-elected.”
  • Rosie DiManno, Toronto Star: “Politics is a dirty rough-and-tumbled business not intended for the faint of heart. Or, apparently, those in possession of a moral compass. There is no redeeming dimension to Trudeau’s brutality. He has dissembled and shammed his way through nearly two months of tortuous squabble. If the Liberal party is in crisis, the seeds were sown in the PMO and a PM of towering hauteur. A phoney feminist to boot.”
  • Anthony Furey, Sun: “In recent weeks there have been several stories floated to attempt to smear Wilson-Raybould’s character and suggest she’d made previous errors in judgments. Anyone who has been peddling these smears should now feel deeply ashamed of themselves after this tape has come out.”
  • Tanya Talaga, Toronto Star: “On Wednesday, the Daughters of the Vote filled each seat in the House of Commons as part of the Equal Voice program that was created to attract more women into politics. Trudeau dumped Philpott and Wilson-Raybould the night before the Daughters’ arrival. But as Trudeau stood to address the Daughters, about 40 women stood up and turned their backs on the prime minister. The silent demonstration spoke volumes. If Trudeau was going to exclude Philpott and Wilson-Raybould, they would not listen to his words. They understood exactly what Trudeau’s actions against Philpott and Wilson-Raybould meant. He shut them out. I’m willing to bet a majority of Canadians understood as well.”
  • Thomas Walkom, Toronto Star: “For the opposition parties, all of this is a gift. The New Democrats can cite Wilson-Raybould and Philpott as proof that Trudeau is not as progressive as he claims. This should help them in the fall election. By splitting the left-liberal vote, it may in some ridings also inadvertently help Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives. The Conservatives have long made Trudeau himself, as opposed to his often popular policies, the focus of their attack. They must be grabbing themselves with glee. This story will not easily die. It is in the interest of too many to keep it going.”
  • Mitch Potter, Toronto Star: “Hold it up to the light at a certain angle and the mess our prime minister finds himself in today seems like the most Canadian of scandals — a terrible, perhaps even politically lethal outcome borne of ridiculously benign intentions all around. Justin Trudeau, his handlers will assure you, was thinking only to protect Canadian jobs. And his now ostracized former attorney general and justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was thinking only of prosecutorial independence…And if trust broke down in the admittedly grey area between jobs and justice, well, that’s really just a formatting error, many would argue. Once the dust settles on the slow-motion SNC-Lavalin affair, the lesson here involves fixing the format — break apart the two-hatted position of AG and JM into separate jobs and voila, no more grey area. But that rose-coloured version of the Liberal government’s slow-motion winter of discontent is finding few buyers. Instead, a bigger problem now is taking hold — the weakening of the prime minister’s personal political brand, a fact sealed this week.”
  • Alicia Elliott, Globe and Mail: “Not long after the SNC-Lavalin scandal broke in February, Mr. Trudeau and much of the Liberal Party, which once held Ms. Wilson-Raybould up as a star MP, turned on her. On Tuesday, she was turfed from the Liberal caucus, along with another former cabinet minister, her friend Jane Philpott, one of the few Liberals willing to back Ms. Wilson-Raybould. If a woman who was considered by many to be a “Good Indian” can be used and disregarded this way, what does it mean for those of us who are considered “Bad Indians”? Those of us who have suffered tremendous trauma and loss, such as Tina Fontaine?”
  • Amos Barshad, Globe and Mail: “Rasputins [like Gerald Butts] don’t act – they make a powerful few others act. The actions of those powerful few then reverberate. Why don’t they act? Because they lack the abilities to do so. The manipulative pop producer can’t sing or dance. Those grandiose fiction editors can’t write a line of decent stuff themselves. That’s the heartbreak: The dark control always stems from a place of deep and profound longing…The definitive trait of a Rasputin is control over one, or a few, prominent others. And that control must be controversial. Rasputins must have enemies. If their manipulations haven’t won them enemies, well, then their control is not quite untoward enough for the status of true Rasputin.”

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.


#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

Paul Wells and Maclean’s have got the first interview with Jane Philpott – former Minister of Health, former Treasury Board President, former Minister of Indigenous Services – and it is incredible.

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.

Reading some of the snippets below, I am reminded of how principled and brilliant she truly is.  And I convinced, more than ever, that the true is like water.

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.

 


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.


Ten things Trudeau did wrong at his #LavScam press conference

How bad was Justin Trudeau’s early-morning LavScam press conference?

So bad CTV Your Morning’s Ben Mulroney asked aloud if the Liberal Prime Minister had made things worse for himself.

So bad Bell Media radio host Evan Solomon called Trudeau’s statement “a word salad.”

So bad I played a tape of Trudeau’s press conference for students in my University of Calgary Faculty of Law crisis communications course – as a sterling example of how not to do crisis communications.

Trudeau made many mistakes in Parliament’s press theatre. Here are ten.

1. He didn’t apologize. After Trudeau’s office leaked that the beleaguered Liberal leader was deliberating about an apology for the SNC-Lavalin scandal, we all kind of expected one. We didn’t get one. And when Trudeau was asked why, he blinked and stammered and looked offended. Dumb. Apologies cost nothing, Petit Justin. But if done right, they pay many dividends.

2. He didn’t take responsibility. Even if you don’t apologize – even if you don’t express the smallest amount of regret, which Trudeau didn’t do either – it’s important that you accept that the proverbial buck stops with you. Trudeau (again) said that it’s all Jody Wilson-Raybould’s fault. “She didn’t come to me,” he wheezed. Well, actually, she did. You just wouldn’t listen.

3. He didn’t sound sincere. Justin Trudeau’s greatest strength is his acting ability. He is an expert at radiating wet-eyed sincerity and emotion – kind of like our Labrador retrievers, when we come home and discover they’ve eaten an entire living room sofa. At his press conference, Trudeau had all the conviction of an ISIS hostage reading a statement prepared by his captors. This was a truly historic moment, and Trudeau needed to convince us. He didn’t.

4. He didn’t acknowledge the seriousness of this scandal. LavScam is a raging five-alarm fire; Trudeau brought a squirt gun to the blaze. He did and said nothing that will extinguish Canadians’ growing belief that Trudeau and his staff may have obstructed justice.

5. He didn’t rebut the allegations that have been made against him. In fact, he did the precise reverse. Trudeau confirmed all of Jody Wilson-Raybould’s evidence: that she was pressured to give a sleazy Quebec company a sweetheart deal. That he and his officials – 11 of them, more than 20 times, over a four-month period in Fall 2018 – did what the former Attorney-General said they did. Guilty as charged.

6. He didn’t make us feel he understands it. In fact, Trudeau gave us every indication that the pressure is getting to him. At one point, the Deflector-in-Chief looked up from his focus-grouped talking points and launched into a bizarre exposition about his dead father. Pro tip: hauling dead relatives out of the crypt to buttress your argument isn’t convincing. It’s creepy.

7. He didn’t provide a compelling narrative. People get bombarded by millions of words and images every day. It’s data smog; it’s hard to keep up. So, it’s critical that you provide a narrative – a story. (Because while facts tell, stories sell.) At the conclusion of Trudeau’s windy word salad, we still didn’t know why he fired Jody Wilson-Raybould. Because she didn’t speak French? Because she was “difficult”? Because Scott Brison? We don’t know.

8. He didn’t sound like a Prime Minister. Sure, he used an official-looking podium. Sure, there was a battery of Canadian flags arrayed behind him. Sure, he can wear a pricey suit. But, with the sound off, Trudeau looked like he was irritated that he was being forced to answer tricky questions from the wretches in the Press Gallery. He looked like he was pissed off. Not penitent.

9. He didn’t get it. The seriousness of it all, that is. Over and over, Trudeau gave us every indication that the whole mess was simply a case of broken telephone. When, in fact, it was about how he and his senior staff – not one of them a lawyer – repeatedly tried to tell the lawyers what to do. The decision was all Wilson-Raybould’s, he said – as long as, you know, she made the decision he wanted her to make.

10. He didn’t remember the cardinal comms rule. Which is: don’t repeat the main allegation against you. Instead, Justin Trudeau acknowledged, over and over, that there had been “an erosion of trust” between him and his former Attorney-General. He said it so much, even the New York Times put it in a big headline.

No, Justin, the “erosion of trust” wasn’t between you and Jody Wilson-Raybould.

The erosion of trust is between you and us.