Jody Wilson-Raybould herself said she believes there is merit in studying splitting the roles
OTTAWA — Federal Justice Minister David Lametti is publicly musing about whether Canada should consider separating the offices of its attorney general and its minister of justice in the wake of the SNC-Lavalin controversy, an idea that has backing from others who know the job intimately.
That Wilson-Raybould held both jobs, as is customary in Canada, is at the heart of the controversy over whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others pushed her too hard to help SNC-Lavalin avoid a criminal prosecution over allegedly corrupt business dealings. “The two hats that the minister of justice and the attorney general wears here in our country are completely different, and I think there would be merit to talking about having those as two separate individuals,” Wilson-Raybould said.
Speaking to the Empire Club in Toronto after Wilson-Raybould testified, Lametti said the director of public prosecutions already operates independently of the justice minister and attorney general, which he said creates an appropriate separation between legal cases and the government. But, he added, “there’s also 150 years of history of the joint position working in Canada. The kinds of issues we’ve seen this week don’t happen all the time and maybe that is indicative that the system can work.”
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