The SNC-Lavalin waters are thoroughly muddied, but if the former AG testified again there are at least three points that now need addressing
Jody Wilson-Raybould’s Feb. 27 testimony to the House justice committee on why she quit Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet over the SNC-Lavalin affair set out a version of events that has now been contradicted on key points by Trudeau, his former principal secretary Gerald Butts, and Michael Wernick, the top federal bureaucrat.
She went on: “I further explained to the clerk and the Prime Minister that I had had a conversation with my deputy about options and what my position was on the matter. As a result, I agreed to and undertook to the Prime Minister that I would have a conversation with my deputy and the clerk, but that these conversations would not change my mind.”
What was the tone of her Dec. 5 dinner meeting with Butts? Among the most Ottawa elements in this story is the episode in which Wilson-Raybould and Butts meet for about two hours over dinner at the Chateau Laurier, the old railway hotel, steeped in Canadian political lore, just east of Parliament Hill. Wilson-Raybould’s account has her sternly telling Butts to call off his dogs on the SNC-Lavalin file. Butts’s version makes the dinner chat sound a good deal more congenial.
Did all those references to Quebec’s politics clearly cross a line? Among Wilson-Raybould’s eyebrow-raising complaints were about the way Liberal election concerns—especially about Quebec—were injected improperly into consideration of a criminal prosecution. On this, in her account, legitimate worries about lost jobs crossed a line into unacceptable discussion of Quebec politics, including last fall’s provincial election.
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