Caucus ousters unlikely to lessen Liberals’ woes By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Apr. 3, 2019

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/04/2019 (2096 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The action was predictable. The outcome will surely be something other than what was desired or intended.

The move Tuesday by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to expel two former cabinet ministers — Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott — from the federal Liberal caucus came as a surprise to virtually no one who follows Canadian politics. Mr. Trudeau has spent nearly two months flailing as public perception of his leadership and his government took a series of body blows in the wake of allegations he, and members of his staff, pressured Ms. Wilson-Raybould in her role as attorney general to intervene in a prosecution involving bribery and corruption charges against the Quebec-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin.

At issue was an effort by the company to seek a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) that would have allowed SNC-Lavalin to admit wrongdoing and pay a fine rather than risk a conviction at trial that could bar it from pursuing government of Canada contracts for 10 years. The company had argued that such a measure could push it into bankruptcy, and subsequent reporting has confirmed SNC-Lavalin warned the federal government it might relocate its business outside Canada if a DPA could not be reached.

The prospect of SNC-Lavalin leaving Quebec, and thereby eliminating thousands of jobs in that province and across Canada, was clearly seen as an unacceptable political risk by Mr. Trudeau and his staff, who Ms. Wilson-Raybould said exerted months of inappropriate pressure on her to push the director of public prosecutions to pursue a DPA.

Ms. Wilson-Raybould refused; she was subsequently shuffled out of the roles of justice minister and attorney general and shortly thereafter resigned from cabinet. Ms. Philpott, who was appointed Treasury Board president in the January cabinet shuffle, also resigned from cabinet, citing a loss of confidence in the PM’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin situation.

All of which set the stage for Tuesday’s ousters, which Mr. Trudeau said were necessary because “The trust that had previously existed between these two individuals and our team has been broken.” The PM rightly added that “civil wars” within parties erode the public’s trust, and that the Liberals’ political opponents win when the party is divided.

What the leader of the current federal government — which faces a re-election challenge this fall — did not do, however, is take any ­responsibility for the fracturing of trust between the erstwhile cabinet ministers and the government, and the eruption of the so-called civil war within its ranks.

Mr. Trudeau sought to emphasize the “unconscionable” breach committed when Ms. Wilson-Raybould surreptitiously recorded a telephone conversation with Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick, without any apparent consideration by the PM of why she felt compelled to do so.

As for the expulsion of Ms. Philpott, whose only offence seems to have been disagreeing with the PMO’s attempt to influence a judicial proceeding, that’s much more difficult to justify. If you’re not fully with the PM, it appears, you’re against the PM; and if you’re against the PM, you’re out.

The intent of Tuesday’s highly unusual expulsions seems to have been to set this matter to rest, to close the door on the troubles caused by Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Ms. Philpott, and to move on to other issues so the Liberals can strip the tarnish from their brand in time for a fall election.

The opposition Conservatives and NDP and an increasingly skeptical Canadian public likely have something very different in mind.