This weekend marks the seventh anniversary of Justin Trudeau's boxing match with Patrick Brazeau. The general consensus then was that Brazeau would have Trudeau on the ropes. That didn't happen. But Trudeau is on the ropes now. Susan Delacourt writes:
Wilson-Raybould’s new evidence serves to underline her contention, made in explosive testimony last month, that the Prime Minister was far from casually interested in the future of SNC-Lavalin. As it’s described in some detail, Trudeau and his team just kept punching home the point, from September, all the way to February.
Without saying explicitly the contents of the conversations they held before she quit cabinet in mid-February, Wilson-Raybould hints that Trudeau remained set on the path to grant that DPA, with or without her, and having already shuffled her out of the way to veterans affairs.
No one can predict how this fight will end. And -- make no mistake -- this is a fight:
This story isn’t over yet and no one is entirely sure how it ends, for Trudeau, Wilson-Raybould or the Liberal party to which they both still belong. It is not even clear at the moment who is administering the knockout blows. Wilson-Raybould is out of cabinet, but Trudeau is back on his heels too, apparently unable to end this match.
Seven years ago, Brazeau and Trudeau agreed that the winner would get to cut the loser's hair:
When it came time for Trudeau to publicly shear the ponytailed Brazeau in the Commons foyer, he opted to make a minor clip with the scissors, barely visible. Trudeau would confide later that there was no way this son of Pierre Trudeau was going to be photographed cutting the hair of one of Canada’s Indigenous people.
Trudeau doesn't want to cut Wilson-Raybould's hair. But he may have met his Delilah.
Image: AbeBooks
20 comments:
Nothing really new here. However, the fact that JWR recorded her conversation with Wernick without advising him accordingly shows that she cannot be trusted. I suspect she and her pal Philpott will be gone from the Liberal Party shortly.
UU
How ever this scandal ends, the only losers and victims will be all Canadians. The egos in this match are huge and the victor will win nothing. We who vote Green will win nothing except the right to make a point. That's all there is really.
The fact that she recorded the conversation is deeply troubling, UU. It speaks to a deep sense of distrust. If I had any dealings with Wilson-Raybould, I'd be very, very careful.
There will be no victor here, zoombats. But there will be a lot of debris.
I wrote a comment/post on another blog and put enough effort into it that I should get more than one use out of it. So here goes:
The problem for Justin is this isn’t about Justice minister Jody. To the voting public this is about whether Justin tried to bend the law to spare a company – a company based in Quebec with a French-sounding name – with a rich history of corruption – that seemingly extorted the prime minister – a potentially devastating (for Canada and Liberal fortunes in Quebec) criminal prosecution. In that scenario Jody is but a piffle. A proud First Nations piffle to be sure but a piffle nonetheless.
To the voting public this is about Justin, not Jody. She has exposed a truth they had fallen all over themselves to deny. Lawyers are trained to operate in shades of grey. The public sees black and white, something that is beaten out of law students in first year.
It was popular at the time but I avoided giving my kids “J” names – Justin, Jody, Jane. I figured no good would come of it. Seems I was right.
The question now is what must Justin do? In the public’s mind he stands exposed. Lavalin may have taken another victim, albeit a somewhat willing victim. Can he really lead the Liberals into the October elections?
Many of us have had our fill of this guy. His lies reach from the tar pits of Athabasca to the docks at tidewater in Burnaby. We remain mired in FPTP which may now leave us saddled with another Alberta-centric far rightwing regime. Then there was the “Gropegate” fiasco where Justin copped a feel off some young female reporter in Creston, BC, back in the day, even wrote an apology for it, and then, later, tried to lie his way out of it. Kinsella, you might recall, was instrumental in stoking that one also.
There are lots of reasons not to vote for the Trudeau Liberals, this is just another. Only, this time, the Liberals might have reached the camel-straw-back point. The best thing Justin has going for him is Andrew Scheer. What does that tell you?
The Liberals problem isn’t Jody. It’s Justin – again and again and again. He was never up for the job. Those of us who know his father’s pre-political history know this guy is all Margaret and no Pierre. As the Brits would put it, “not fit for purpose.” He rode a legendary name to power but was never able to grow into it.
Even Pierre came to the prime minister’s office surrounded by political talent from Allan Mceachern to Keith Davey, Jim Coutts and the other wisemen (Lalonde, Pelletier, Marchand) recruited and assembled by Pearson. Justin showed up with his frat buddy, Butts. Why did so many Liberals imagine that would work?
So, unless someone can figure how to pull Justin’s fat from the fire, Liberals had better start working on Plan B.
Hi Owen: It definitely seems that Trudeau's narrative about the SNC Lavalin scandal is starting to unravel. Political interference in judicial independence is very serious. There is a question, however that is not being asked, by politicians of the opposition parties, the MSM or anyone who is given a public platform, because they follow the Canadian political scene closely.
The question is: Why is The Prime Minister so determined to grant that DPA to SNC Lavalin.? Why is he going to any lengths to get the DPA, changed from not qualified by the Justice Dept. to qualified and granted to SNC Lavalin?
What are the REAL reasons Trudeau is pulling out all of the stops, including the firing of his Attorney General, who has said no to him regarding changing The DPA legal status? Who is behind, apart from SNC Lavalin, pushing Trudeau to, if need be, by intimidating JWR, force this legal change? He almost seems panicked to get this done!
To go as far as firing your Attorney General who will not go along with what you want, in an already established judicial decision and appointing a new Attorney General who will go along with what you want is pretty extreme behaviour for the Prime Minister of Canada, especially because of who it's being done on behalf of, one Canadian corporation, that is already known for being corrupt.
Have you ever known Trudeau to go to the wall to get something that would benefit Canadian interests? So why go to the wall to satisfy the corporate interest of SNC Lavalin? What is really at stake here and whose interests are being met? Also does JWR know or even question Trudeau's priority of satisfying a corporations interest over judicial independence? Everyone in Trudeau's cabinet, must know about their governments neoliberal/corporate elite agenda, usually delivered behind closed doors. The difference with Trudeau legislatively attempting to implement his neoliberal/corporate elite agenda for SNC Lavalin, is that it has become very public! If JWR had done what Trudeau wanted, we, very possibly may not have even heard about it.
Even if JWR knew about Trudeau's corporate elite agenda, it took guts for her to say NO.
The question still remains however: why is Trudeau prepared to leave no stone unturned, including presently(the option to give SNC Lavalin their DPA support is still on the table)to change the law for one corrupt corporation? The answer to that question is the real story!
In my experience, Owen, people resort to recording calls "after" the need becomes apparent to maintain a provable record. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt on this one. She knew she might get set up, her remarks might be turned against her. Recording conversations about SNC-Lavalin and DPAs was a shield, not a sword.
Jody is doing something I used to call, "softly, softly, catchee monkey." Kipling, of course. When you know they're going to come at you with a cacophony of lies, drown you out with a powerful chorus, you let them have at it. Smoke them out. Let them get it on the record. Then, and only then, do you hit back with something so powerful that it exposes their chicanery. It's still their petard.
Liberals are flying around like scalded cats. They need to be focusing on who will lead their party into the fall elections.
It seems that Justin's day are numbered, Mound. The recording of the conversation tells me that there's a deep sense of un happiness building in the caucus. Eventually, that unhappiness will catch up to Justin.
Pamela, ask yourself this - why did Justin send Morneau to Texas to buy a pipeline that Kinder Morgan was about to abandon, no takers to be had, for $4.5 billion dollars, a 700 per cent profit for the sketchy Texans? Why? Pipelines, to be profitable, need to operate for 50 to 60 years. And this one carries toxin laden, high carbon ersatz petroleum that commands 'bottom of the barrel' prices. By the time that pipeline is done we'll be into this for somewhere between 9 to 11-billion. Why? Does anyone imagine there'll be a world in 30 years time demanding diluted bitumen? Can anyone foresee a thriving demand for dilbit in 2080? What happens when the Carbon Bubble bursts and we're left with, by the Alberta government's own estimates, a tailing pond cleanup bill of a quarter trillion dollars?
Morneau claimed he could buy that pipeline from Kinder Morgan and flip it in no time. Only there was no bidder for it. I wonder why that happened only, no, I don't wonder, not at all.
We've been fed nothing but lies that stretch from the tar pits of Athabasca to the tanker dock in Burnaby. Lies, nothing but lies. If you think the SNC-Lavalin business was dodgy, look at what Trudeau did when he was tripped up on the pipeline approval. He fast-tracked an environmental assessment, ordering all relevant federal ministries to review and report. Then, when the deadline drew near, the senior officials were gathered together in one room and told by a prime ministerial envoy that their assessments had to support the Trans Mountain pipeline. That's not some conspiracy theory. There's plenty of proof of it, including notes of the directives given to rig the reports.
Justin is no Pierre. He's just a hustler. He knows what he wants and he'll say whatever he needs to get it.
I've not followed it but it is rumoured that a similar degree of judicial meddling will be exposed in the criminal proceedings against RCN admiral Mark Norman. What then? Do we really expect the Canadian people to re-elect Justin Trudeau prime minister?
I once wondered how Harper's scandals would seemingly evaporate over the summer holidays. Perhaps Justin's woes will too but I think that's an iffy proposition.
My view is that the Liberals need to start working on Plan B, and fast. That means going into the October elections under a strong leader who won't carry Trudeau's baggage.
This was never supposed to happen. Then again, it didn't have to happen yet it did.
Pamela, I can think of several reasons, either alone or in combination, why JT might want to put his thumb on the scale for SNC Lavalin:
1) His own electoral prospects - he's a Montreal MP and can only gain there by going to bat for a Montreal company.
2) He wants his pipeline built and SNC's one of the few Canadian companies with the experience, skills and size to do it. Having them barred from bidding on federal contracts could put a crimp in his plans.
3) SNC's main talent - plain old bribery and corruption of the sort that sees them in court in the first place. SNC's always been a generous donor to the Libs. There's also the possibility of direct personal gain, either in the way that saw Arthur Porter become a wealthy man or through the corporate sinecures offered to pols who do as they're told. Sure beats going back to teaching drama.
Cap
He isn’t just fighting the SNC battle. There’s a link or similarity with the Mark Norman case. Then the call to a journalist from Irving instead of gov’t. We’ve seen the effects of the NEB.
“”What links them — and, to a lesser degree, the extradition of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou — is the fear that politics can trump prosecutorial independence.””
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/snc-lavalin-mark-norman-1.5078179
And that goes hand in hand with that video clip I sent you called “why poverty”.
CS
Obviously, Pam, you've struck a nerve.
All of this isn't Fate, C.S. We're reaping what we have sown.
If only Justin had gone to the mats for ranked balloting, Pam.
My point in saying that Trudeau should be questioned about his non-stop support of SNC Lavalin, was to imply that doing so, may lead to discovering that SNC Lavalin is just the tip of the iceberg and exposing Trudeau's real neoliberal/corporate elite agenda, that SNC Lavalin is just a part of. Wishful thinking on my part probably, but I think a really good investigative journalist, after investigating Trudeau's unseemingly bias to the SNC Lavalin, would come to realize that there is a much bigger picture here, kept from the Canadian people,that Trudeau has been supporting since day one, which involves the neoliberal/corporate/Imperial/neocon elites, domestically and globally, that Trudeau has in fact turned the governing of Canada over to.
There is a reason why everyone has remained MUM on questioning Trudeau's non-stop push to give SNC Lavalin their DPA get out of jail free card.Whatever Trudeau and his liberal buddies say or do, they must at all costs keep their neoliberal/Imperial agenda, completely hidden from Canadians. It's what questioning Trudeau's committment to a corrupt corporation can lead to, that, Trudeau and his neocon government fear the most.
When it comes to Justin, Pam, the cynicism continues to grow.
The comments presented here have been an eye-opener for me. Whenever he did or said something stupid or even blatantly dishonest I'd always given him the benefit of the doubt because I thought that he was too unsophisticated to be corrupt, or at least to have an understanding of what the Mean-Men-in-Berlin surrounding him, and engaging in his "Private Meetings" and possibly in his "Personal Time", were up to. Now I'm not so sure.
Count on the Liberals to find a way to hand it on a platter back to the corruptors who are definitely more sophisticated. This break from the CRAP Party has been too short-lived and it really hasn't been much of a break. We can already tell that the media isn't going to cut him enough slack to allow for that evaporation-of-troubles process that it so often afforded Harper. And he can't prorogue them.
What worries me John is, if we follow the Ontario model and toss out the Liberals for the Conservatives, things won't get better. They'll get worse.
Some well thought comments offered here on this thread, Owen. One lonely thought from me: I don't blame JWR for recording that conversation. After all, she has an Aboriginal background and has more than a century of knowledge regarding how much the aboriginal community can trust any of our politicians. Its the old "forked tongue" trick.
Given her background, recording the conversation is understandable, Lulymay. Nonetheless, there are those in the legal community who raise ethical issues. All of this business is about the letter of the law as opposed to the spirit of the law. Sometimes they appear to be in diametrical opposition to each other.
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