Every prime minister operates in a bubble to a considerable extent. But Trudeau’s seems more like an impermeable vacuum
. A key element of the SNC-Lavalin scandal was Trudeau’s apparent ignorance of the fact that his justice minister and attorney general was getting mightily frustrated at the treatment she was receiving, and that something needed to be done or there was going to be trouble ahead. But no one told him.
Everyone was so wary of intruding on the prime minister’s space that Gerald Butts, his principal secretary, ended up taking the fall when Trudeau finally glommed onto the truth. The resulting scandal left him badly wounded and may have cost him a majority in last year’s election, yet now we have him once again claiming to have been left sadly uninformed, despite a personal office and a vast bureaucratic apparatus that exists largely to ensure the prime minister gets full and timely information.
Even Green Leader Elizabeth May can’t sort this out. “Can you explain how it’s possible,” she asked Telford, “that no one would have told the prime minister, burst his bubble, tell him his favourite operation, Canada Service Corp., was not going to be able to do it? Why did no one tell him before May 8 that Canada Service Corp. was out of it and WE charity was delivering the program?”. It was a big crisis. There was loads of paperwork.
Ignorance, they say, is bliss. That being the case, Justin Trudeau’s days must be one blissful moment after another. The giant costly Ottawa complex that is constantly being justified as essential to the operation of sound government appears to have somehow concluded that its first responsibility is to protect and defend the prime minister, ensuring he has ready excuses when things go wrong. Every time a stink arises, you can imagine them whispering, “Don’t tell the prime minister.
Maybe if Parliament had been in session when this began, allowing for opposition oversight and some timely questioning, all this drama could have been avoided. But the Liberals made a deal with the New Democrats to shut that down for the summer. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe someone should have told the prime minister.
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