Political scandals nothing new here

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2019 (2097 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In 1872, during Canada’s second federal election campaign after Confederation, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and several of his Conservative party cabinet ministers were in desperate need of financial support to ensure another victory over the Opposition Liberals. Macdonald obtained the money he was seeking from Sir Hugh Allan, a wealthy shipping and banking executive who supplied the Tories with more than $350,000 (nearly $6 million today).

At one point during the campaign, Macdonald sent a telegram to his lawyer (and future prime minister) John Abbott with the plea: “I must have another ten thousand; will be the last time of calling; do not fail me; answer today.” Macdonald got the cash and the Conservatives won the election. As a payback for his aid to the Tory cause, Allan and the consortium he headed were awarded the lucrative contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Macdonald later claimed that he had not profited from this arrangement, which was technically true. On the other hand, he had manipulated the granting of the most significant federal construction project of the 19th century. Once correspondence between Macdonald, Allan and Abbott became public — including the request for the $10,000, which was released by the Liberals, who had paid $5,000 for the stolen documents — the ensuing “Pacific Scandal” ultimately forced Macdonald and the Conservatives to resign.

Alexander Mackenzie and the Liberals won the next election. However, the wily Macdonald was able to regain power five years later and remained in office until his death 13 years later.

The Pacific Scandal was Canada’s first and, arguably, worst political scandal, and Macdonald was at the centre of it. So while he was a master of 19th century politics, he also had many flaws. He was devious, unscrupulous and, of course, he drank too much. More recently, his policies with respect to the treatment of First Nations and the role he played in the establishment of the residential school system have come under intense scrutiny.

Nevertheless, voters of the day supported him because he did not pretend to be something he was not — unlike the current prime minister.

Justin Trudeau is embroiled in the controversy related to the Montreal engineering firm SNC-Lavalin and the pressure brought to bear on former justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould — she has characterized what she endured as “veiled threats” and “consistent and sustained” pressure — to grant the engineering and construction giant a deferred prosecution agreement to avoid criminal punishment on bribery and fraud charges.

In lobbying for this — and there was nothing illegal about it, as Wilson-Raybould has also pointed out — Trudeau’s chief aim was to not impair SNC-Lavalin’s future ability to obtain government contracts and thereby jeopardize any of the 9,000 Canadian (many in Quebec) jobs it provides.

Yet since Trudeau has offered himself to Canadians as a paragon of virtue, the first “feminist” prime minister and a leader who was going to do politics differently than nearly every other PM from Macdonald to Harper (and that includes his father, Pierre), he is an easy target to criticize for not living up to his sanctimonious standards.

When all is said and done, it is doubtful that the SNC-Lavalin controversy will turn out to be a scandal in the same league as the Pacific Scandal. It may not even be a full-fledged “scandal.” As columnist Barbara Yaffe, one of the wiser journalists to weigh in on this issue in the Globe and Mail, argued a few weeks ago, this controversy “is one of the wimpiest I can recall… No one pocketed envelopes of kickback-cash in dimly lit restaurants. No tainted food or blood products were distributed to Canadians. No one died or was physically harmed.”

Moreover, Trudeau did not, in the end, get his way. Wilson-Raybould stood her ground and refused to intervene.

The prime minister did not order or direct her to adhere to his dictates. The problem began in January when Trudeau, in what can only be described as a display of prime ministerial pique, moved Wilson-Raybould, a lawyer, from her position as justice minister and attorney general and appointed her minister of veterans affairs.

Rightly or wrongly, this action was regarded as a demotion. As prime minister, Trudeau has the power to shuffle his cabinet and reassign, replace or fire ministers any time he wishes. He later declared that his reassignment of Wilson-Raybould was not related to her decision about SNC-Lavalin. This is difficult to believe.

More curious still, Wilson-Raybould resigned from cabinet only a month or so after she was made veterans affairs minister. If the pressure on her was so bad, why didn’t she resign earlier when she was still justice minister? She has also remained in the Liberal party caucus and says she plans to run again as a Liberal MP in the next election.

If, as she has stated, Trudeau’s actions were so objectionable, why then would she run again to be a member of a party and (probably) government he would be leading?

Whatever his transgressions in this controversy, Trudeau will likely not suffer the same consequences as the PM did in the much more serious Pacific Scandal. If anything, the SNC-Lavalin controversy has, however, demonstrated yet again just how typical and imperious a prime minister he can be.

Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context. His most recent book is Seeking the Fabled City: The Canadian Jewish Experience.