Federal Politics

There are countries in this world that are trying to cope with genuine, history-altering issues. Venezuela has a despised president who will not leave. The United States has the political train wreck of Donald Trump. Britain has the inept Theresa May and her self-inflicted Brexit disaster. New Zealand, that most peaceable of countries, suddenly confronts the slaughter of Muslim citizens while they are at prayer.

The SNC-Lavalin affair is a bit like Shakespeare’s “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.”

It has had its hour and much more. It has wreaked considerable havoc, damaging the credibility of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and knocking his Liberal Party into second place in the polls, while, ironically, making one of the Liberals’ own, Jody Wilson-Raybould, a heroine – an Indigenous woman bravely fending off a horde of male politicians who pursue power at the expense of principle.

Is the SNC-Lavalin/Jody Wilson-Raybould uproar really the silver bullet that will slay Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government?

Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada
Parliament Buildings
Ottawa

My Dear Prime Minister,

You’ve got yourself and your government into a pretty pickle, haven’t you, Sire?

Just when the universe was unfolding the way your father said it would, just when your Liberals were on a nice roll to re-election in October, this accursed SNC-Lavalin business had to rise up and bite you in the credibility.

The SNC-Lavalin affair, which is consuming all the oxygen in the capital and has ground the Liberal government to a virtual halt, is a scandal of a different sort.

There is no wealthy entrepreneur underwriting the governing party’s election campaign in anticipation of landing a contract to build a transcontinental railroad, as was the case in the Pacific scandal of the 1870s.

There is no sleazy lobbyist slipping envelopes filled with $1,000 bills to a former prime minister, as there was in the contemporary Airbus scandal.