Trudeau Wounded
The SNC-Lavalin affair has generated much attention in Canada and abroad and marks the big-gest scandal so far of the Trudeau government. The former justice minister and attorney general of Canada, Judy Wilson-Raybould, alleges that the prime minister and his entourage pressured her on numerous occasions to not prosecute the engineering giant and to make it agree to a plea bargain. The prime minister’s office (PMO) denies any wrongdoing. The usually genteel world of Canadian politics is rocked and journalists feel like they are covering Watergate.
SNC-Lavalin is a global engineering and construction company based in Québec. It is one of the great corporations to have emerged out of the Quiet Revolution. But in recent years, three dis-tinct corruption scandals have damaged its reputation and brought some of its executives to court. Two were related to bribes given to executives of the McGill University Health Centre and to the CEO of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge, both for SNC to receive contracts even if it was not the lowest bidder.
The international part of SNC’s corruption is the most damaging. All in all, the company show-ered $48 million on a son of Muammar Gadhafi, the former dictator of Libya, in exchange for multi-million dollar infrastructure contracts. The bulk of this amount came in the form of a Palmer-Johnson yacht. Money was also spent to entertain the despot’s son with caviar and prosti-tutes during stays in Canada. On top of that, SNC almost decided to give him a $35-million Challenger jet.
The fallout for the company is disastrous because of its reliance on public contracts. It is already banned from receiving World Bank contracts until 2023. If the company itself is ultimately con-victed of wrongdoing, it would be barred from receiving contracts from the federal government. SNC’s stock price has halved since the summer. And because no one owns a large block of SNC’s shares, the threat of takeover is real. In Québec, a major company leaving the province or being bought by foreigners is never well received. SNC employs 9,000 people in Canada.
The high political stakes of a potential SNC takeover, or even bankruptcy, motivated the PMO to seek a plea bargain. The prime minister himself, his best friend and then-advisor Gerald Butts, and the clerk of the privy council Michael Wernick have all, during last fall, appealed to Wilson-Raybould. From her own account, she barely took a few days to look at the matter and ultimately refused to go easy on SNC.
In February, during a cabinet shakeup, she was downgraded to minister of veteran affairs. A few days after, the Globe and Mail first reported the affair. She believes she was sacked because of her refusal to agree to the PMO’s demands. But as Butts asked during a hearing, why did the PMO’s appeals for a plea bargain become a problem only once she was no longer minister of jus-tice? Wilson-Raybould resigned from the cabinet but stayed in the Liberal caucus, as did one of her friends in the cabinet.
What determines wrongdoing in this case is the intensity of the pressures. Legal experts agree that a prime minister offering advice to his minister of justice is not a problem. The deputy min-ister of justice—a non-political civil servant—said that she never felt that the conversations were inappropriate. Chances are that the extent of the pressures, or “veiled threats,” as Wilson-Ray-bould called them, will never be known.
Some commentators have raised questions about Wilson-Raybuld’s abilities as minister of jus-tice, as most of her career was spent as a native rights activist, not a jurist. She does not speak French and has never studied or practised civil law, the second half of Canada’s bi-jurisdictional system. (David Lametti, her successor, was on the McGill Law faculty and holds degrees from Toronto, McGill, Yale, and Oxford.) That she was an aboriginal woman seemed to have been crucial in her appointment, for Trudeau was keen on projecting reconciliation with the First Na-tions. Her sacking is now proof to some of an imposture by the prime minister.
In the fallout of the affair, Butts resigned and Wernick announced his retirement. Those skeptical of the prime minister’s version wonder what the point of resigning is if you have done nothing wrong.
It is agreed that Trudeau has disastrously handled the affair. His slow response and then strong criticism of Wilson-Raybould unnecessarily stretched the hype. Further, what he called an “ero-sion of trust” between him and Wilson-Raybould says a lot about his leadership style. His author-ity over and relationship with members of his cabinet and caucus are probably weak. Trudeau’s first minister of foreign affairs never once met alone with him during his 14-month tenure. That Wilson-Raybould was not prevented from not only staying in the caucus but pledging to run as a Liberal in the next election is bizarre.
The English and French media are treating this affair very differently. In English Canada they cover it as if it were the biggest story since the resurrection. Flattering portraits have painted Wilson-Raybould as some kind of Cassandra. Commentators in the right-wing National Post are foreseeing the transfiguration of Canada as a banana republic. The nationalist commentators in Québec, usually critical of Trudeau, were taken by surprise and offered lukewarm defences of the prime minister. Wilson-Raybould has also been somewhat criticized for her intransigence.
The Conservatives have seized on the SNC-Lavalin affair to portray Justin Trudeau as Caligula. They believe that the prime minister has interfered in the judicial process and have asked for no less than his resignation. (As of writing, the prime minister has yet to oblige.) Recent polls have shown the Conservatives well ahead of Liberals for the upcoming October election. Trudeau’s approval ratings are now lower than Donald Trump’s. His pledge for transparency and “sunny ways” seems to have taken a backseat to realpolitik. The prime minister’s inability to balance the budget; purchase of a pipeline despite the claim of being an environmentalist; and the cooling of relations with China, Saudi Arabia, and the United States are major failures of his government.
There are still seven months before the election—an eternity in politics. It is very possible that polls go back into the Liberals’ favor, for the Conservatives, apart from criticizing Trudeau, have been vague as to how they would have handled that matter. Little excitement exists for them. No one should underestimate the Liberals’ capacity to win the election: all of its leaders of the 20th century have been prime minister. And the current one certainly sees a path to even more glory for Canada’s “naturally governing party.”