By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on September 16, 2019.

OTTAWA—The Justin Trudeau campaign plane being hit by the media bus could be a metaphor for his campaign. Or not.

It depends on the success of what appears to be a campaign by The Globe and Mail to keep the SNC-Lavalin story on the front page.

The first two official days of the race have been dominated by stories of fresh, anonymous claims in the ongoing story involving allegations of undue pressure on former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Globe’s Ottawa bureau chief Bob Fife tweeted that RCMP interviews earlier last week with Jody Wilson-Raybould were “to discuss political interference in SNC criminal prosecution.”

The only person who publicly claimed she participated in a recent RCMP interview is Wilson-Raybould. The Liberal leader’s office issued a statement saying no one on their team has been contacted or interviewed.

Wilson-Raybould had initially testified before the House Justice Committee that there was nothing illegal in the interventions of the prime minister and his officials on the issue of SNC-Lavalin.

But, according to The Globe, she appears to have revised that opinion, now claiming that the ethics commissioner’s report opened new questions. “I believe the public deserves to know and to have full knowledge of this matter.”

She will no doubt have more to say on the matter when she launches her book this week.

The unschooled observer might be forgiven for thinking that an RCMP interview of Wilson-Raybould constitutes an investigation.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer jumped on The Globe story, falsely claiming on television and in tweets that the RCMP has opened an investigation into possible obstruction of justice.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Globe was careful not use the word “investigation.” Instead, it focused on the fact that police went to Vancouver to interview the former attorney general.

But travelling to a former minister’s riding to take a statement is a well-established police protocol.

The RCMP has interviewed me several times during my life in politics. Sometimes, it was at my request. Sometimes the police initiated the interview.

When they come to your office to take a statement, that action does not constitute an investigation.

The RCMP does not take statements by phone. So if the former minister called them to provide further information, after telephone contact, she would always be interviewed in person.

The Globe story did not clarify who initiated the “several telephone conversations” that precipitated the in-person interview.

Some believe, present company included, that The Globe is ginning up the story in tandem with Wilson-Raybould and her advisers, in an effort to do maximum damage to the electioneering Liberals.

It remains to be seen what impact these confusing RCMP claims will have on the election trajectory.

Some polls say Canadians have already made up their minds on the actions of all parties in the SNC-Lavalin deferred prosecution agreement question. Whether they support Trudeau or Wilson-Raybould, the issue has already been factored into their voting intentions.

But the explosive headlines on the first two days of the campaign could change that.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the spectre of an RCMP investigation was used to sow uncertainty during an election campaign.

Back in 2006, RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli faxed a letter to an NDP MP, confirming that the force had commenced a criminal investigation into budget leaks from the Finance Department headed by Ralph Goodale, named in the communication.

Stephen Harper won that election. In the end, Goodale was completely exonerated but a departmental official was charged.

Some say the letter from Zaccardelli literally changed the outcome of the election. Up until that point the Liberals had been leading in voter intentions.

One only has to look at the last election in the United States, where a judicial intervention in the last 11 days of the debate changed the outcome of the election.

FBI director James Comey’s letter in the dying days of the American election had a lasting impact on democracy.

His announced reopening of a stale-dated investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails was the likely tipping point in securing Donald Trump’s election victory.

At the time, Comey claimed he acted because polls showed Clinton would win and he did not want to be accused of concealing relevant information.

To avoid undue election influence, the RCMP has announced it will not be investigating anything during the writ period. That fact was buried in The Globe story.

Front-paging a self-generated police interview makes great headlines.

Time will tell whether the story influences the election result.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

Most Canadians have tuned out, and things are still looking up for the Liberals in Quebec.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on August 19, 2019.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Opposition parties are salivating at the summer fallout from the damning ethic commissioner‘s report into the prime minister’s actions in support of SNC-Lavalin’s pursuit of a deferred prosecution agreement.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer both pounced on the findings, with Singh suggesting the prime minister was unfit to govern. Scheer was more circumspect, calling on voters to issue their verdict on election day. Both leaders are hoping a recent uptick in Liberal support will be blunted by Commissioner Mario Dion’s findings.

They are also calling for further parliamentary and police investigation with the hopes of making this the central issue in the upcoming campaign. Voters, tired of the issue, may well have something else in mind.

Liberals are banking on the fact that the dog days of summer will swallow the story whole, so it will not play a major role in voter decision-making in the upcoming election. They have a couple of elements operating in their favour.

Most Canadians are not following the minutiae of life on Parliament Hill. Although they understand the broad strokes of the story, the differing, complicated versions of it work in the Liberals’ favour.

For many, it has become a “she said, he said” narrative with people already rendering their own judgements months ago. The complexity of competing legal arguments is white noise to all but the most devoted of political junkies. Most Canadians have tuned out.

There is also a serious flaw in the Dion report that some legal scholars contested last week. Dion concluded the prime minister was not acting in the public interest when he encouraged the attorney general to review the case against SNC-Lavalin. Instead, he found that Trudeau’s interventions were intended to serve the private interest of SNC-Lavalin.

The commissioner claimed that contact would have been permissible to act in the public interest, and this is where he and the prime minister part company. Trudeau continued to defend his view that the government’s only intention was to protect the jobs and pensions of people who had no involvement in decade-old criminal activity in Libya. “I am not going to apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs,” Trudeau repeated multiple times.

However, the prime minister also said that he accepted the report coming from an officer of Parliament, and he took full responsibility for his actions.

Trudeau’s viewpoint was endorsed by at least two high-profile newspapers, The Toronto Star and Le Devoir. Both took the view that Liberals were acting in the public interest, not in violation of private interests. They also criticized the commissioner’s report for wrongly interpreting the law.

Obviously, when politicians make decisions in the public interest, they make those decisions in the context of politics.

At the end of the day, most Canadians will never even read the report. They may reflect briefly on its conclusions, but for the most part, their minds were already made up months ago. And they are tired of the repetitious story line, which has not changed.

Voters make political decisions based on how government policies affect them directly.

Last week, I was visiting Newfoundland. At a kitchen party, I bumped into an SNC-Lavalin engineer who was among the 5,000 Canadian employees outside the province of Quebec.

Along with 4,000 Quebec-based employees, they will likely be voting for the Liberals as the party best placed to protect their jobs.

Even as Conservatives attacked Trudeau, they were silent on the use of a deferred prosecution agreement. An attack on the company will not help their electoral interests, especially in Quebec.

The inflamed rhetoric of Singh is damaging his own party’s re-election prospects in Quebec. He keeps trying to drive a wedge between his party’s socialist purity and the ugly capitalism of his opponents. It is not working. Recent polls show the New Democrats with modest support in Quebec. Unless those numbers change drastically, they will lose all their 16 seats. The hill Singh must climb is steep.

The party best positioned to win NDP seats in Quebec is the Liberal Party.

And even though the commissioner’s report last week was a body blow, the Grits likely have enough positive things going for them to weather this continuing storm.

While the opposition wants to keep the story alive, most Canadians may have already tuned out.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

The book launch guarantees that Jody Wilson-Raybould’s story will dominate the news, ensuring the Liberals receive more criticism for their faulty handling of the file.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on July 29, 2019.

The book launch guarantees that Jody Wilson-Raybould’s story will dominate the news, ensuring the Liberals receive more criticism for their faulty handling of the file.

OTTAWA—In the heat of the SNC-Lavalin controversy, the government was slammed for claiming jobs may be at stake.

Pundits attacked the statement that some of the of 9,000 company jobs could be lost, if the company did not benefit from a deferred prosecution agreement.

The narrative had a distinctly anti-Quebec flavour. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was attacked for saying he had a responsibility to protect jobs in his riding. He was blasted for even suggesting that, as a Member of Parliament, he had a duty to protect jobs in his riding.

Six months later, the chickens have come home to roost and the jobs are being lost. SNC is coming apart at the seams while Jody Wilson-Raybould is promising to lift a veil by publishing her own version of events the week after the election is officially called.

Hopefully she has a good ghostwriter because if she really intends to get elected as an Independent in Vancouver, the former minister won’t have time to be burning the midnight oil on writing a book too.

The book launch guarantees that her story will dominate the news, ensuring the Liberals receive more criticism for their faulty handling of the file.

Wilson-Raybould’s publisher announced the upcoming book launch the same week the Assembly of First Nations was meeting in Fredericton. The book, From Where I Stand: Rebuilding Indigenous Nations for a Stronger Canada, published by Purich Books and UBC Press, will be launched on Sept. 20.

Wilson-Raybould’s nemesis, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, attended that meeting and outlined her government’s efforts on reconciliation. She drew particular attention to the decision to abolish the department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs. “INAC was really about paternalism and in no way reflected the original spirit or intent of treaties or the original understanding of what that relationship was to be about,” she told the AFN’s annual gathering.

Wilson-Raybould could have partnered in this important work if she had accepted a cabinet appointment as the minister responsible for Indigenous services.

Instead, she could go down in history as the aboriginal leader who singlehandedly derailed her people’s agenda.

During the course of the unfolding debacle, Wilson-Raybould continued to state that she wanted to run as a Liberal in the next election because she shared the values of the party.

She and colleague Jane Philpott both repeated that, other than the prime minister’s treatment of the SNC-Lavalin case, they were pretty much onside with most other issues.

If Wilson-Raybould is really concerned about progress on Indigenous issues, why is she doing her best to make sure that Andrew Scheer wins the next election?

Personal hubris must trump her commitment to her people. That is the only explanation for her decision to publish a book timed to come out just days after the writ is dropped to formally launch the October election.

The book is being billed as a collection of speeches and previously published articles on her vision for achieving reconciliation. She is calling for the acknowledgement of Indigenous rights, replacement of the Indian Act, and Indigenous self-government.

All of those goals were possible, had she decided to remain in cabinet. Along with Bennett, she could singlehandedly have transformed the relationship from one of paternalism to a partnership of equals.

Instead, she is on the outside looking in, writing a book which will be long on theory and short on practical application.

Her decision to publish in mid-campaign is timed to do the maximum amount of damage possible to the first government that has actually embodied a vision for reconciliation.

Wilson-Raybould would be hard-pressed to name another prime minister that has made reconciliation the centrepiece of his governance effort.

Not only has the government aggressively pursued infrastructure investments in Indigenous communities, it addressed the most egregious inequality in the system, the fact that education funds available to Indigenous kids were only 60 per cent of what was spent on regular education.

Aboriginal language funding, one of the first cuts made by Stephen Harper, has been reinstituted under the Liberal watch. That decision offers some hope that more than 50 Indigenous languages may actually survive the very real threat of extinction in one more generation.

Liberals may have overpromised on reconciliation.

But at least Trudeau’s government is trying.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has given five major speeches which are supposed to outline his vision as a future prime minister.

The word “reconciliation” is not mentioned once. Conservative Senators have succeeding in blocking passage of bill C-262, which would have guaranteed that Canada’s laws respect the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

If Wilson-Raybould really wants to be a nation builder, she should stop helping Scheer.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

The former justice minister’s actions show that protecting the prime minister wasn’t her priority.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on April 8, 2019.

OTTAWA—Imagine being given the privilege to serve in not one but two positions in cabinet, an opportunity that is afforded to only a few Canadians in every generation.

All members of the cabinet serve at the pleasure of the prime minister, something that seems to have escaped Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former justice minister and attorney general.

It is almost comical to see her claiming her motivation was protecting her boss and promoting the independence of the judiciary. She sees no problem in demanding that the prime minister tell her successor what to do.

She also sees no problem in breaking her own legal oath by secretly taping a client, and then claiming it happened because she didn’t have a handy note taker at home.

The former minister’s infamous five conditions prove one thing: the self-identified truth teller does not always tell the whole truth.

Her fifth condition was a blatant breach of prosecutorial responsibility. All prosecutors have a duty to continually consult and to update decisions based on new facts that can emerge right up until court judgment day.

Maybe the minister did not understand that.

The biggest mistake made by the prime minister was putting someone in the job so lacking in judicial experience.

That lack of wisdom became clear two years ago, when the former minister was charged with finding a replacement to retiring chief justice Beverley McLachlin. She wrote a 60-page report recommending that a Manitoba judge take the top job, even though he had never served in the top court.

The prime minister balked because the candidate had publicly questioned the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom.

She appeared to be motivated principally by the creation of an opening in Manitoba’s top job, not the experience required by a chief justice. Media reports said she hoped to replace the top judge with Manitoba’s first Indigenous chief justice.

Trudeau vetoed her choice, as well he should have. That marked the beginning of the breakdown in trust between the former minister and the prime minister.

In the case of SNC-Lavalin, the prime minister never directed her.

The secret tape she made of her conversation with the former clerk of the Privy Council made that very clear.

Rather, the prime minister wanted to make sure that all legal options were exhausted in advance of making a decision, which sounded reasonable and within prosecutorial parameters. A second opinion from a former chief justice was entirely reasonable.

The minister should have understood her obligation to review the facts right up to a criminal conviction. But that runs counter to her claim that politicians should never give any input to any attorney general. Except her.

Wilson-Raybould’s five conditions have prompted a lot of people to revisit their perspective that she was acting out of principle and not political expediency. Even the deputy leader of the New Democratic Party weighed in with this viewpoint before his leader hastily shut him down.

The former minister’s five demands run counter to the long-held principle that a minister serves in cabinet at the pleasure of the prime minister.

Instead, Wilson-Raybould seems to believe the reverse. The prime minister is supposed to publicly apologize and staffers in his office are to be fired. She wanted the head of the former clerk of the Privy Council, even though the secret tape she released shows that Wernick treated her with professionalism and courtesy.

So many people have viewed this issue through a feminist or Indigenous lens, but they missed the big picture.

Wilson-Raybould kept saying she wanted to protect the prime minister. If that was the case, why did she not quickly respond to the original Globe and Mail leak saying there was no problem, and she would review the matter?

Instead, she and her colleague Jane Philpott worked industriously to shop the story around Ottawa for weeks.

When the government introduced the budget, Philpott made sure she disrupted the message by giving an interview to Maclean’s magazine, which landed like a thunderbolt in the middle of the budget debate.

Philpott said she did not seek any interview opportunities, but other journalists came forward to say they had been offered the same story.

Trudeau had no choice but to lance this caucus boil.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 4, 2019.

OTTAWA—Buried in the nearly four hours of House Justice Committee testimony by Jody Wilson-Raybould was an astonishing admission.

In answer to a question from Conservative deputy leader Lisa Raitt, Wilson-Raybould revealed that she herself had used her legal power of direction, issuing an internal directive to all Crown prosecutors, instructing them to revisit their handling of upcoming Indigenous cases.

Wilson-Raybould’s directive was self-described as internal, as the actions she took were never gazetted in the way that a company remediation agreement would have to be.

Her reasoning for issuing the Indigenous directive was quite different from the SNC-Lavalin case.

Indigenous people are jailed in much higher numbers than their presence in the population.

But last Wednesday Wilson-Raybould kept insisting that it was not proper for her to overturn a recommendation of the public prosecutor and that was the reason she refused to heed public interest pleas to cut a deal with the embattled Quebec-based company.

To the unschooled ear, Wilson-Raybould’s testimony was devastating. Citing from copious notes, she fingered 11 government officials for improper conduct, including the prime minister.

But the notion that the finance minister and other colleagues should stop harassing her about a decision affecting almost 9,0000 Canadian jobs is unbelievable.

She serves in cabinet at the pleasure of the prime minister and has a duty to consult caucus and cabinet colleagues.

Wilson-Raybould believes as attorney general, she should not sit in cabinet, to avoid the potential for political interference.

She seemed to have little understanding of her role as part of a team in government.

Ministers are supposed to hear colleagues out and are duty bound to consider their opinions.

At one point, Wilson-Raybould accused the prime minister of crossing the line when he said his interest, as a Member of Parliament for Papineau should be taken into consideration.

Isn’t that what a Member of Parliament is supposed to do?

Would Wilson-Raybould have had the same response if the 9,000 jobs were in aboriginal communities?

The reason she became attorney general is because Liberals won an election, in part on an ambitious promise of Indigenous reconciliation.

How does she help her people by taking down the government?

And if she was so aggrieved by the 11 requests to review her decision, why did she neither inform the prime minister nor resign from a team in which she obviously has so little faith?

Her repeated references to the “due diligence” she exercised in the performance of her prosecutorial duties were never backed up.

Instead, she insisted that her mind had been made up even before she took meetings with colleagues in cabinet and in the Prime Minister’s Office.

She also refused multiple committee invitations to reiterate her faith in the prime minister.

Two weeks earlier, her father mused about how she could take down the government, and even proffered that she could be prime minister.

Wilson-Raybould refused to explain why she would not seek outside counsel on the SNC-Lavalin matter even though prosecutorial staff was split on the direction that should be taken.

What is so difficult about asking for an outside opinion? She moved pretty quickly to do so when she sought legal counsel on whether or not she could breach attorney client privilege.

Wilson-Raybould continued to insist that she could say nothing about her decision to resign from cabinet, even though that has nothing to do with the convention of cabinet confidentiality. There is nothing preventing her from laying out her reasons for departure.

Given her scorched-earth approach last week, one wonders why she would want to remain in the caucus of a leader for whom she has so little regard.

Being kicked out of caucus allows her to continue the victim narrative.

Based on her performance at the Justice Committee, she obviously holds a very high opinion of her decision-making capabilities, and doesn’t have a lot of time for the opinions of others.

She positively bristled when some Liberal Justice Committee members suggested she should have resigned from her position or voiced her misgivings directly to the prime minister.

She did neither. I wrote some weeks ago that Trudeau should have kept her at justice.

Based on her testimony before the House Justice Committee, it is clear the prime minister had no choice but to move her out.

She cannot be trusted to sit in caucus where she could be note-taking for her next committee exposé.

Trust is an important element in any political organization. She does not trust the prime minister and the feeling is mutual.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on February 18, 2019.

OTTAWA—It is sad to watch the self-inflicted misery that the SNC-Lavalin affair is wreaking on the Liberals.

It did not have to be this way.

Someone in the Prime Minister’s Office has obviously decided the best way to fight is by personally targeting the former attorney general as someone who was remiss in her duties.

Politically speaking, it is always tricky when a man is out in public repeatedly attacking a woman. The fact that Jody Wilson-Raybould was a star cabinet minister and first ever-Indigenous attorney general makes the strategy even more questionable.

The first piece of bad advice came when someone suggested a cabinet shuffle should include a demotion for Wilson-Raybould. It was touted by the prime minister, as a lateral transfer but the optics were obvious.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took a big risk in the first place when he asked Wilson-Raybould to take on responsibility for the Justice Department.

In a government that staked its reputation on aboriginal reconciliation, it must have been tough for the justice minister to advocate for her people and remain judicially impartial.

Wilson-Raybould has remained silent since her resignation letter but her father has been out in the media claiming she could topple the government. Hereditary chief Bill Wilson blasted the prime minister for not giving his daughter responsibility for Indigenous advocacy.

Instead, that role went to fellow minister Carolyn Bennett, and according to Wilson, nothing has moved on the file ever since.

The attorney general is also faced with court judgments on the consultative responsibility with aboriginal peoples, including hereditary chiefs that have a tremendous impact on the environmental assessment process for interprovincial pipelines.

So Wilson-Raybould had many balls in the air, and some must have conflicted with others.

In the case of SNC-Lavalin, Trudeau needs to make the case that when thousands of jobs are at stake, a government has a responsibility to find solutions.

Senior officials in the company were undoubtedly responsible for criminal activity in relation to business in Libya. They should be held to account but there is no need to torch a whole company because of the criminal decisions of a few.

Likewise, doing business in Libya is not the same as doing business in Canada, and anyone who says otherwise is simply being naïve or disingenuous.

The reason so many countries offer mechanisms for companies to admit guilt and pay fines is to protect jobs, and that is a noble objective.

Opposition members are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the Liberals including that fact that the Gomery Commission identified illegal campaign contributions to the Liberals (and the Conservatives), more than a decade ago.

Those donations were repaid, and since they went to virtually all active parties in Quebec, it is disingenuous to make any link to the SNC case today.

Trudeau needs to launch a full court offensive on the reasons why it makes eminent sense to save almost 9,000 jobs while ensuring a small group of executives are held criminally accountable.

There is nothing covert, secret, underhanded, wrong or dishonest about that. The justice system is not established to punish the innocent as peripheral damage in an attempt to convict the guilty.

Understandably, the story of SNC-Lavalin is playing quite differently in Quebec. The media in that province have been generally supportive of a judicial resolution that would allow the company to survive intact.

That same position was articulated by the new provincial premier and all those who have an interest in protecting one of the few remaining touchstones of Quebec Inc.

SNC-Lavalin has been a success story in the style of Nortel, BlackBerry, and others. There aren’t that many companies left so it is incumbent upon the government to do everything it can to resolve a situation that runs the risk of taking down the whole operation.

SNC-Lavalin has almost 9,000 employees in Canada, and 50,000 worldwide. It has worked on projects as diverse as the Diavik Diamond Mines in the Northwest Territories, the Western Alberta Transmission Line, and the Darlington and Bruce Power Life Extension in Ontario.

The notion that this is just another example of Quebec corruption is absurdly peddled by those in the opposition who should know better.

Trudeau must go on the offensive to protect Canadian jobs in a sector for which the country has developed a positive reputation worldwide.

By attacking the former attorney general, he is simply playing right into the opposition narrative.

The Prime Minister’s Office better wake up and change the channel.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.