Trudeau and Butts pretend protecting Quebec jobs isn't political
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
176.00327
Summary
Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts, and Michael Warnick have all basically accepted the premise that they did what Jody Wilson-Raybould said they did, while still maintaining their innocence. This is a very confusing turn of events.
Transcript
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Justin Trudeau, Gerald Butts, and Michael Warnick have all basically accepted the premise
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that they did what Jody Wilson-Raybould said they did while still maintaining their innocence.
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You may remember last week, former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould said that she
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was unduly pressured by people in the Prime Minister's office, including Justin Trudeau
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himself, Gerald Butts, a number of staffers that work for Gerald Butts, and even the Clerk
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And a couple of the points that she made in her testimony, which was quite explosive and
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quite credible, were that Justin Trudeau made a reference to being a member of Parliament
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in Quebec when talking about the Quebec jobs component of this, that the Clerk of the Privy
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Council referenced the fact that there was a Quebec election going on as being a mitigating
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factor in the employment situation about SNC-Lavalin and whether they should be given a deferred
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And in Michael Warnick's testimony, he says, well, yes, I did talk about the Quebec election,
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And then Justin Trudeau, in a press conference the day after Gerald Butts' and Michael Warnick's
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testimony, said that, you know, all his office tried to do was give an outside opinion and
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give a further cause to question and reconsider to Jody Wills and Raybould as though, even
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though she'd made up her mind, they still needed to continue to convince her of this.
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And Justin Trudeau said this while simultaneously claiming that there was no pressure.
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Well, how is trying to get someone to change their mind after they've made it when they're
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the one who has the final decision, not a form of pressure?
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And this is where Justin Trudeau is so far into this himself that I'm convinced he may
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even believe the excuses that his governments have been putting on anyone else.
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We saw very different testimonies from Jody Wilson-Raybould than we did from the people
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that are holding up the Prime Minister's office's end of things here.
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Not only do we learn that, yes, the Clerk of the Privy Council has been running what very
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much looks like political interference for the Liberals, but the Liberals are claiming that
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their political concerns were completely appropriate because public policy is not politics.
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And yeah, this is what Gerald Butts was saying, that no, no, no, when we stand up for jobs in
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Quebec, when there's a provincial election going on, when Trudeau has to run for re-election
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And what we have here is a very prime example of a government splitting hairs to try to save
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face. When they're making a decision about jobs, they're concerned about optics.
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So public policy is the same as politics in the context of these concerns.
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Now, what's going to happen with this controversy moving forward, we don't quite know.
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But we have heard very marked confirmations from the players in the Prime Minister's office
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that they've said what they were accused of saying.
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They're just claiming there's nothing wrong with it.
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And I think that ignorance and arrogance is something that Canadians need to be acutely
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