00:00:00.800Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to another True North Report. My name is Andrew Lawton, fellow with True North, with you to unpack the latest and greatest of the SNC-Lavalin scandal.
00:00:12.460And I will preface this by saying that I deserve a medal because I have suffered through, I think, about like seven hours of parliamentary testimony today so that you don't have to.
00:00:23.080I will condense what happened in that seven hours to a good, manageable, you know, seven-minute chunk for you.
00:00:29.600And I deserve the Order of Canada for that because I don't even think the people in the committee room were listening for all seven hours.
00:00:36.580But I did it. I did it. I made it through it. I'm very glad that I worked from home and I could just like camp out on my couch for the seven hours because doing it at a desk would have been very unpleasant.
00:00:47.040Almost as unpleasant as being on the receiving end of a cross-examination by Lisa Raid, which I think is probably right up there with, you know, like the Chinese torture you read about.
00:00:59.340Like she is just so effective in that role. I would not want to be in the hot seat when she is questioning.
00:01:05.080But thanks very much, everyone, for tuning in. We have a lot to really get through here.
00:01:10.260And I have to stress, when I say that being cross-examined by Lisa Raid is probably like going through Chinese torture, I don't mean that she's wrong.
00:01:18.140I just mean that it's not going to be pleasant. It was very pleasant to watch.
00:01:22.060Lisa Raid just absolutely killed it today.
00:01:24.800I think there were a lot of conservatives and a lot of Canadians that were watching this.
00:01:29.340If you, like me, were going through the seven hours and just like literally on the end of the seat going like, yeah, you go.
00:01:34.840It was actually more interesting to watch her than it was to watch the first 80% of this year's Super Bowl.
00:01:42.800Now, admittedly, that's not saying much because I think, you know, watching paint dry was more exciting than the first 80% of this year's Super Bowl.
00:01:51.460But it was great. I mean, because she wasn't just entertaining to watch.
00:01:55.120The reason she was entertaining was because she was actually pointing out the logical inconsistencies that were coming from the testimonies of Michael Wernick and also the testimony of Gerald Butts.
00:02:26.440I thought it was a very good testimony.
00:02:29.100But still, we have to rely a lot on Jody Wilson-Raybould's own memories, recollections and contemporaneous notes.
00:02:36.340And I think the word of the day today was contemporaneous.
00:02:38.540If you were taking a shot every time someone said contemporaneous, you are right now sprawled, passed out on the ground outside committee room in Parliament.
00:02:47.120And the other part of this is that the versions we heard today were not really much better fleshed out.
00:02:57.460They were coming from the notes and memories and recollections of Gerald Butts and of Michael Wernick and of Nathalie Drouin, who is the deputy minister of justice.
00:03:06.340And she testified today alongside Michael Wernick.
00:03:10.500So this is where I want to go with this here because when push comes to shove, I want to separate the testimonies of Gerald Butts and Michael Wernick.
00:03:22.220I felt that in all honesty, Gerald Butts was a more reliable witness than Michael Wernick.
00:03:29.320And when I say that, I don't mean that I believe everything that he said, but he was a more reliable witness in the sense that when he testified, there was a ring of truth to it.
00:03:38.460He gave a very good explanation, I thought, for why the cabinet shuffle took place.
00:03:43.940He believes and is claiming, as though he believes, that Jody Wilson-Raybould's demotion to Veterans Affairs had absolutely nothing to do with the SNC-Lavalin case.
00:03:54.580One of the interesting perspectives I've seen online is that it seems like he may actually believe this, like his government and his party and his office has talked itself into believing it.
00:04:06.080Whereas you take Michael Wernick, Michael Wernick was flippant, he was smug, he was defensive, he was very glib about all of this.
00:04:14.700And the one takeaway that I got from Michael Wernick here is that this is a man who should lose his job, not just for what may have happened in the SNC-Lavalin case,
00:04:24.800but here's a guy who should probably lose his job simply for the approach that he has with his career.
00:04:31.260And I'm going to read a couple of quotes that came that I think illustrate this.
00:04:35.640But I want to go through really point by point a lot of the issues that came up today.
00:04:39.760You know, Gerald Butts started his testimony with, of course, the Aboriginal land acknowledgement,
00:04:45.480because that is just what you have to do when you're a white person in Ottawa.
00:04:50.240You have to make it about Aboriginal affairs.
00:04:53.920And Gerald Butts does it, and then he says that he's not here to say a bad word about former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould.
00:05:01.180He's got a lot of respect. He doesn't want to disparage her. He's not going to be mean to her.
00:05:04.940And then, like, immediately after that, he says, but, you know, I'm here because, you know, I just disagree with, you know, everything she said last week.
00:05:11.960And I think that her characterization of this stuff needs to be corrected.
00:05:15.480So he basically says, and this is like the condensed version of what Jerry Butts said, you know, I'm not here to say a bad word about her,
00:05:23.400but everything she said was a lie, and here's why.
00:05:25.540So, but he refused, refused every single time he was asked to go down that road of saying, yes, I am saying she's wrong.
00:05:39.240So he doesn't even have the fortitude to really come out guns blazing and say, yeah, you know what?
00:05:46.600I think that she is wrong, and we're right, and this is what the truth of the matter is.
00:05:51.860So that I find interesting, and I don't know if it's that they don't want to get pulled into this, you know, quagmire of having to be calling a woman a liar.
00:06:00.560But, I mean, this is the identity politics.
00:06:02.500If you live by the identity politics sword, you're going to die by it.
00:06:51.680Number one, it implies that apparently they don't believe Jody Wilson-Raybould thought of all of the circumstances and situations and permutations and conjugations of this before making her decision.
00:07:03.560It says that, no, we actually don't believe that she did all of this beforehand.
00:07:12.160And also it says that we didn't respect when she had reached the conclusion.
00:07:16.360And this is so critical here because Gerald Butts said unequivocally that he didn't know Jody Wilson-Raybould had made a decision until last week.
00:07:27.380So she made a decision September, I think it was 16th or 19th.
00:07:30.720He says, no, I only learned, you know, last week when she testified that she apparently made a decision then.
00:07:35.540Michael Wernick this afternoon, just about an hour ago, testified to the contrary, that he knew Jody Wilson-Raybould had made a decision back in September.
00:07:45.340But he said, despite her making that decision, it was never a legally binding or legally final decision because the attorney general has the purview to make a decision up until the point a judge renders a verdict.
00:08:00.380And this is a lengthy legal way of saying that one of the things that really came up here is that Jody Wilson-Raybould may have in her own mind come to a conclusion, but she still could have changed it.
00:08:12.180And she was within that time frame of when she could have changed her mind.
00:08:17.460So this is fascinating because Michael Wernick's admitting that conversations he had with Jody Wilson-Raybould after she had made up her mind were part of that whole considering her to give a second opinion thing that Gerald Butts had indicated.
00:08:33.280And this is fascinating because, you know, Michael Wernick is not supposed to be the guy that is driving policy.
00:08:40.580He's not supposed to be the guy that's driving an agenda.
00:08:44.160He's not supposed to be the guy that is driving what a government is deciding.
00:08:49.260He's the guy who is the head of the civil service, the head of the federal public service, the top ranking bureaucrat in Canada's government.
00:08:57.180He's supposed to be there to make the trains run on time and to implement whatever the government has decided.
00:09:02.720But he was going beyond that role and actually, as I said last week, running interference.
00:09:09.560And this was the allegation that Jody Wilson-Raybould had made.
00:09:14.100And when it comes to, you know, that whole policy that they were pushing to give a deferred prosecution agreement to not just to give a deferred prosecution agreement to SNC-Lavalin,
00:09:25.020but to interfere in the prosecutor's decision and then doing it.
00:10:14.380But the job considerations are political considerations.
00:10:19.080And it doesn't mean they're not justifiable political considerations, but they are political considerations.
00:10:24.780But there was a point that Jerry Butts actually admitted that he was bringing up this dialogue and his office was bringing up this dialogue.
00:10:32.780But he says that protecting Quebec jobs is not a political consideration.
00:11:49.600But Jody Wilson-Raybould apparently said to the Prime Minister in January, you know, I've got concerns about this shuffle.
00:11:56.340Jody Wilson-Raybould's going to feel it's a demotion.
00:11:59.200And, you know, she's probably going to think it has to do with this SNC-Lavalin thing.
00:12:03.440And Gerald Butts called this far-fetched.
00:12:06.280And he said Trudeau was surprised by the question and didn't really care about the implication that someone might think that and someone might raise that question.
00:12:20.060This timeline is laid out by Jerry Butts.
00:12:22.000And what was interesting here is that this tells us very little that we didn't already know.
00:12:30.120I mean, we got a little bit more color about the cabinet process.
00:12:32.520But again, he admitted that, yes, they were trying to get Jody Wilson-Raybould to take into consideration a second perspective and a second opinion and telling her, yeah, you know, we'll even hire a former Supreme Court justice to help you get some outside legal advice.
00:12:50.340While repeatedly telling her, the decision is yours, the decision is yours, the decision is yours.
00:12:57.100And, you know, one thing strikes me as odd here.
00:12:59.920And I want to compare this to the Michael Cohen testimony we had last week.
00:13:04.960Not that I see similarities in the people or the situations, but the narrative.
00:13:10.160Where one thing that Michael Cohen said that I found interesting was that, you know, Trump would never tell him something outright.
00:13:16.460He would just say, you know, this is the way it's going to be.
00:13:20.600And Trudeau, Butts, Wernick have all said repeatedly, no, no, no.
00:14:18.160So they're either making it up after the fact or they said it specifically for this point so that they know if they were to look back on it, they could say, ah, yes, we told her the decision was hers and hers alone.
00:14:30.260Maybe it was said, however, with a bit of a wink.
00:14:32.520So this was, I think, the crux of Gerald Butz's testimony here and why there were some concerns with it.
00:14:40.860And what was interesting is that he was reading all of these old text messages, emails.
00:14:46.840One of the questions that I raised, thankfully, Lisa Raitt raised it in committee, was how did he have access to his prime minister's office email, text messages, phone records, all of that.
00:14:57.080He claims that he got it through his lawyer.
00:15:01.360So he went to his lawyer and said, you know, I need all of this information.
00:15:32.660So the liberals legitimately voted against the committee that they sit on having the required and necessary evidence to do its investigatory duties.
00:15:44.120And we're supposed to believe that they're not viewing this as or turning this into a sham.
00:15:50.240They also voted against having Gerald Butz sworn in under oath.
00:15:54.600They voted against having Michael Wernick sworn in under oath.
00:15:58.640They voted against having Natalie Drouant voted sworn in under oath.
00:16:03.080So the liberals have actually voted against, on the record, recorded under their names, a recorded vote, doing the things that you would require to have something have a little bit more oomph and a little bit more clout in these things.
00:16:18.240So this is, I think, a fascinating, fascinating journey of events.
00:16:21.800Because the liberals are not even pretending that they support this process and they support having some teeth to their committee on here.
00:16:30.240And Michael Wernick has treated this as a farce as well.
00:16:34.220His very first thing, not even in his statement, but before his statement, he held up this big dossier of things.
00:16:41.780And he's like, I'm submitting into the record basically mean tweets that he was getting.
00:16:50.100He was saying that, you know, Michael Wernick has been getting mean tweets from people across Canada on his official Twitter account, clerk underscore GC or whatever.
00:16:58.780So he was submitting like printouts of the mean tweets because he thought that all of a sudden he was appearing on Jimmy Kimmel and that he would get the opportunity to read them later on.
00:17:08.200And we're supposed to believe that Canadians responding to his allegations of impropriety are somehow exculpatory.
00:17:30.600He's been through governments, liberal governments, conservative.
00:17:33.280And he gets a bunch of mean tweets in a week and he's like, you know, crying boo-boo about it and claiming that he was intimidated.
00:17:41.580So he may have been testifying today under duress.
00:17:44.840I suppose we'll find out soon enough if this is the case.
00:17:48.340Julian Siegel writes on Facebook, asking no matter how nicely or courteously for reconsideration is interfering.
00:17:56.180Yeah, no, you're very right about that, Julian.
00:17:57.880And this is, of course, a response to Gerald Butts' claim that, you know, all he was doing was trying to make sure that Jody Wilson-Raybould was considering a second opinion.
00:18:09.100Well, when she has decided and when she has made it clear to a number of people, not to Gerald Butts, he says, but made it clear to a number of people that she has decided, saying, well, have you thought about this?
00:18:22.940That is interference when she has already made up her mind.
00:18:26.680But I want to focus a bit more on the Wernick side of things here because he admitted, so Jody Wilson-Raybould accused him of raising the fact that Quebec had an election coming up as being a concern.
00:18:43.500I raised that not because it was a political concern, but because, you know, we as a government federally are generally speaking supposed to stay out of provincial issues.
00:18:53.500And if we do this, it might cause issues in the Quebec election.
00:18:58.880He's defending it, but he's admitting that he did it.
00:19:01.960He's admitting that he raised those concerns, which Jody Wilson-Raybould took as someone saying, yeah, we've got some political considerations here.
00:19:10.140And remember, this was the conversation where Trudeau, based on Jody Wilson-Raybould's allegations, said, I am a member of Parliament in Quebec.
00:19:20.840So Michael Wernick says what he was accused of saying is true, that, yes, he raised Quebec election issues with Jody Wilson-Raybould.
00:19:32.300But I wanted to go to a quote that he gave about what his role is.
00:19:39.280Because the bigger question here than did the government interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, or did it try to interfere, is whether Michael Wernick has been running as the chief nonpartisan bureaucrat in Canada, nonpartisan, political interference for the Liberals.
00:19:57.400And there seems to be a lot of evidence mounting today that suggests, yes, in fact, he is.
00:20:03.400And he was trying to explain his role.
00:20:06.480And again, this may just be a wording issue.
00:20:09.020Maybe I'm the one splitting hairs here.
00:20:11.140I'm going to read the words, explain my thought process.
00:20:14.080If you disagree with me, please do tell me in the comments.
00:20:16.740They're down there in some corner, I don't know.
00:20:19.760They're down there on your screen, though.
00:20:20.940He says, part of my job is to keep the government's agenda moving.
00:20:28.200Now, again, this is, I'm entirely possibly reading too much into this.
00:20:34.740But he said unequivocally, part of my job is to keep the government's agenda moving.
00:20:39.900The word agenda starts talking about the political implications of what Justin Trudeau's government is trying to do.
00:21:21.140Trudeau, as a political figure, had a different perspective.
00:21:24.240And even though the government position was what the attorney general decided, he was lobbying the attorney general with the prime minister.
00:21:33.720And I know this is confusing and circular, and we're talking about figures here that are real people, but I'm talking about them in the roles because this is where it gets so significant.
00:21:44.760So what Wernick was doing was actually lobbying.
00:22:29.480We also expect the government is going to fight back on it.
00:22:34.440So basically, when Michael Wernick gets up there and says, I'm a public servant, I'm nonpartisan, he's doing this well discussing the viability of election prospects with the cabinet minister and with the prime minister.
00:22:45.160So I think it's safe to say that we are not talking about a significantly different perspective of what happened than what was laid out by Jody Wilson-Raybould.
00:22:57.340And I want to, again, point out this juxtaposition here.
00:23:01.960Gerald Butt said this morning that he didn't know a decision had been made by Jody Wilson-Raybould until last week.
00:23:08.540Wernick said that he knew back in September.
00:23:11.040And there were other discussions that took place that we were told of last week between Jody Wilson-Raybould's staff, Jody Wilson-Raybould, and other people in the PMO.
00:23:21.960So Elder Marquez, Matthew Bouchard, and the chief of staff to Bill Morneau, Ben Shin.
00:23:26.980And the reason this is important is because Elder Marquez and Matthew Bouchard know more than Butts does, but they report to him.
00:23:35.920So Butts was either not paying attention to things that were happening in his office, or he was deliberately obfuscating about what he knew and when he knew it.
00:23:46.220And that's where having the evidence, having the text messages, having the phone logs, having all of these things is a particularly important thing to do.
00:23:55.120So Michael Wernick's smugness and flippancy, I think, is and should be quite offensive to Canadians.
00:24:03.380And, you know, the one takeaway that I got from this is that in his worldview, and this is a guy, again, who's no spring chicken.
00:24:08.920He's been doing this for close to four decades.
00:24:11.580In his view, the public service shouldn't have to be accountable to the people.
00:24:15.960And it was clear he was growing increasingly frustrated and resentful of the fact that he's had to answer any questions about his conduct.
00:24:25.280And I think that's the very worst stereotype of the public service, that these people operate in the shadows, they're unelected, they're not held accountable.
00:24:33.160And there was one point where he was getting questions from Lisa Raitt that he didn't like.
00:24:37.720And he said, you know, you know, the Attorney General herself said last week, no criminal conduct has taken place.
00:24:45.340And when he said this, the liberal or sorry, the NDP and conservative members of the committee actually started laughing at him.
00:24:52.580And one person, I don't know who it was, heckled like as though that's the only bar that matters.
00:24:57.340So his view is that, you know, as long as we didn't break the law criminally, we're in the clear.
00:25:01.920No, I mean, we're talking about some more significant questions of political interference here that go beyond just that basic standard of obstructing justice that we hear about from the criminal code.
00:25:16.260Tommy writes, why do they even bother letting anyone testify if they're not under oath?
00:25:22.640Well, the testifying under oath thing I find interesting.
00:25:25.960I mean, the fact that they voted against it is important.
00:25:29.920Their view is that, you know, it's just not necessary.
00:25:32.840I'd say everyone testifying should always be under oath.
00:25:36.760Whereas the Liberal Justice Committee chair, Anthony Housefather, who I thought, again, has done a fairly good job on this up to this point, has said, well, you know, it's already a crime to lie before a committee.
00:25:48.360So we don't need to to put them under oath.
00:25:50.540But but for symbolism alone, voting against putting someone under oath just sends a very bad message.
00:25:57.040But, you know, when we have the the other comments here, I mean, Sharon writes, what a farce.
00:26:03.300This committee is voting down three motions, liberal corruption at its best.
00:26:08.520Yeah, they're voting against putting them under oath, voting against tabling evidence.
00:26:49.160So they justify in their own warped sense of justice that, OK, well, we can vote against putting them there.
00:26:56.000Imagine if in like a criminal case, like you could just say, I'm reading this letter that a man wrote where he said I'm going to, you know, murder my wife.
00:27:03.800And, you know, we're going to convict him for murdering his wife.
00:27:06.180And, OK, submit the letter into evidence.
00:27:13.240Like this is the farce that they're trying to pass off as being justice here.
00:27:19.260Laura writes, I cannot help but wonder what Trudeau is trying to keep our attention away from because this whole testimony committee appears to be a farce.
00:27:26.400Well, you know, the thing is that they're not succeeding in keeping people's attention away from this.
00:27:32.140You know, the Liberals this morning announced that they're working towards a national pharmacare plan.
00:27:38.240And it had to be like the most or the least viewed announcement as far as any political announcement in the history of political announcements have gone.
00:27:45.760They had the former Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins out and they were doing this and like no one paid any attention.
00:27:52.480Like I had CBC on and I was reading Twitter and news and all of this for like eight hours today.
00:27:58.300And I didn't see anyone talking about it.
00:28:00.200I heard like five minutes about it on the morning radio and that was it.
00:28:03.880So I think the Liberals are trying to get people to look away, but it's not working.
00:28:08.720But this committee, Liberal-dominated committee, has proven it is unable to investigate Liberals.
00:28:16.760And you can see this from the line of questioning.
00:28:18.820The question that the Liberals are asking the Privy Council clerk and the questions that the Liberals are asking Gerald Butts, they're like pretending to be tough questions.
00:28:28.280So you see like Randy Boissoneau from Edmonton is like, you know, he's puffing his chest out and he's looking in and he's going, now, Mr. Butts.
00:28:35.420But again, like they're drinking buddies.
00:28:37.500Like this is not a serious, hard-hitting question.
00:29:01.340And then you've got like the Blois-Québecois guy, Louis Plomondon, who's like wasting five minutes at the beginning saying, you know, it's my God-given right to, you know, have testimony in English and in French.
00:29:10.620Like they're more offended about the lack of official bilingualism than they are about the lack of due process in all of these other areas.
00:29:17.980So this is now, as Corey points out, stalled until the 19th.
00:29:22.420Liberals are hoping people lose interest.
00:29:24.660I believe that the committee needs to recall Jody Wilson-Raybould.
00:29:28.240This was the other thing that happened.
00:29:29.840The liberals voted against bringing Jody Wilson-Raybould back to the committee to testify, whereas she, I think, needs to be able to respond to the refutations of her claims that were given by Wernick and by Gerald Butts.
00:29:44.200And this is, if they do not let her testify again, they will have no credibility and no moral authority whatsoever.