POLITICKING Canadians are governed by the Rule of Law. If we don’t like the law, we can change it. That is what Parliament is for. And if the law doesn’t fit the case, there is often ministerial discretion to waive it in certain cases. Or not.
This is the core of the SNC-Lavelin drama unfolding in Ottawa. A clause buried in the Liberals’ omnibus budget bill allowed Canadian companies facing bribery and corruption charges to avoid crippling penalties by paying fines and promising to be good in the future. That might save Canadian jobs.
But the new law didn’t fit the SNC- Lavelin case. So former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould was under pressure from her cabinet colleagues to suspend it. She refused. She was fired by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Was the pressure exerted on the former minister “Inappropriate”? The Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick says not. The Clerk has the power of the pen. He or she sits in the corner of the Cabinet room and records the collective decisions ministers make. Smart ministers check the Clerk’s “record of decision “. It is not unknown for the recorder to “spin” the decision to the bureaucracy’s liking rather than ministerial direction.
(Disclaimer: As a former federal Minister, I am a life-long Privy Councilor, member of the Queen’s Privy Council. I am privy to cabinet secrets,–and on occasion have been consulted by ministers — but not allowed to share them.)
The Clerk, who manages the bureaucracy, also sets the government’s agenda since political priorities determine the bureaucrats’ workload. So when the Clerk Michael Wernick phoned Minister Wilson-Raybould in December to say the PMO and her ministerial colleagues were upset with her failure to act on the SNC-Lavelin case, did he add that her proposed indigenous governance framework legislation could be at risk?
The Clerk told the Justice committee this week that Prime Minister Trudeau had asked him to “resolve a problem” created when Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison resigned as Treasury Board President —find a new President, a cabinet minister from Nova Scotia and a woman to maintain gender balance.
Did the Clerk suggest moving Wilson-Raybould from the tidal churn of Justice to the back waters of Veterans Affairs?
That is the question MP’s on the Justice committee never asked. (FEB 22 2019)