Carr solidly behind Trudeau

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This article was published 05/03/2019 (2025 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Manitoba’s sole cabinet minister, Jim Carr, said he has “100 per cent confidence” in embattled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and will continue to feel that way even if he is moved to a new cabinet position.

“Canadians will look at all of the evidence and come to their own conclusions. That’s the way it should be, and that’s the way it’s playing out,” Carr said in an interview Wednesday.

Carr, who is minister of international trade diversification, has stayed loyal to Trudeau after Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould quit cabinet over the prime minister’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin case.

He disagreed with Philpott’s concerns there are “solemn principles at stake” due to political pressure on the former attorney general.

“I have lost confidence in how the government has dealt with this matter,” Philpott wrote Monday. “There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.”

Philpott’s resignation came after Wilson-Raybould claimed the prime minister cited the electoral risk in not intervening in a prosecutor’s decision to not consider the equivalent of a plea bargain in the corruption charges faced by Quebec engineering firm SNC-Lavalin.

Carr said Trudeau has consistently said that “the nature of conversations with ministers was entirely appropriate” and that Wilson-Raybould was given the ultimate decision over whether to intervene in the case.

Speaking between testimony by Trudeau’s close adviser Gerald Butts and Michael Wernick, the head of the public service, Carr said the testimony will allow Canadians to chose whether the Liberals crossed a line when the issue of Quebec jobs was raised with Wilson-Raybould.

“I believe in the reasonableness of Canadians, always,” he said.

On Wednesday, Liberals on the justice committee used their majority to quash a motion to invite Wilson-Raybould to testify once again, which the Tories and NDP argued would sort out numerous discrepancies between her testimony and Butts’ testimony.

Carr declined to say whether his Liberal colleagues should have allowed her to testify again.

“The system (is) working the way it was designed to work, it’s transparent; I don’t think anyone can make the argument (that) it’s not. So let’s just wait for Canadians to make their own judgments,” Carr said.

Philpott’s resignation means Trudeau must appoint a new president to the Treasury Board, which oversees government spending.

Carr would not say whether he thinks he’ll be shuffled to a new role.

“My job is to work as a member of the government in the area the prime minister believes that I can make the greatest contribution,” he said, adding that he’s “happy” with his current role and the previous posting as natural resources minister.

Also on Wednesday, Manitoba Tory MP Candice Bergen characterized Trudeau and Butts as “dumb/dumber” on Twitter, noting how Butts’ comment that two people can experience the same conversation differently echoed Trudeau’s response to claims he’d groped a woman in 2000.

“They are much much more similar than any of us ever imagined.”

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca