Gerald Butts takes the stand in front of a parliamentary committee, but refuses to take the stand under oath. Does he have a case to answer? Is he lying? Or is he just not a good enough lawyer? Ezra Levenant goes through some of Gerald Butts' testimony, and talks to Pardes Salah of Mediaite about Ilhan Omar.
00:06:29.860But I think someone said, yeah, Jerry, that's not the right approach to take in Parliament today.
00:06:36.500Anyway, reminder, this is the guy, if you're talking about corruption here, this is the guy who padded his expenses, who personally pocketed $127,000 just to move from Toronto to Ottawa.
00:06:52.140And then he hid those expenses from Canadians, and he only grudgingly paid a fraction of it back when he was caught.
00:06:59.200He's just as corrupt as Trudeau, and he wouldn't swear an oath to tell the truth here today.
00:07:34.260What I am here to do is to give evidence that what happened last fall is, in fact, very different from the version of events you heard last week.
00:07:43.860It is based on direct communications with the former Attorney General and her staff,
00:07:49.140contemporaneous notes I took in meetings I attended personally,
00:07:52.500and debriefs from people who attended meetings I did not.
00:07:55.300I guess my second point is that he did not provide the meticulous meeting-by-meeting rebuttal that Jody Wilson-Raybould had.
00:08:11.620She had dates, times, places, names, who emailed her, who phoned her, who said what.
00:08:19.480Gerald Butts had a lot of feelings, and I'll show you a little bit of that later on.
00:08:23.180But he said some interesting things that I think gave away the game.
00:08:27.840Their general response was, sure, we tried to persuade her.
00:08:42.080The Prime Minister gave and maintained clear direction to the PMO and PCO on this file.
00:08:47.820That direction was to make sure the thousands of people whose jobs were, and it bears repeating, are at risk, were at the forefront of our minds at all times.
00:08:57.880If anything could be done to protect those innocent people, we were told to work with the professional public service to make sure that option would be given every due consideration.
00:09:08.860He told us to keep in mind, at all times, that the decision to direct the DPP rests with the Attorney General and the Attorney General alone.
00:09:19.400We implemented that direction faithfully and with integrity.
00:09:22.600I was personally involved in the file on only a few occasions, but it was principally my responsibility to ensure that the Prime Minister's direction was followed by PMO staff.
00:09:34.160I have no doubt that they did so to the highest standards.
00:09:38.200He talked about the thousands of innocent people whose jobs were at stake.
00:09:46.800I should tell you that in the course of today's testimony, both by him and others, not a single person, including Gerald Butz, had any evidence whatsoever that prosecuting this corrupt company would cause any job losses whatsoever.
00:10:03.060In fact, there was evidence to the contrary, the claim that maybe SNC-Lavalin would leave Montreal.
00:10:09.400They actually have a legal agreement that they must keep their headquarters in Montreal to at least the year 2024.
00:10:16.680But that whole argument that it was about jobs, it was about jobs, even that is not acceptable under the law.
00:10:26.140Now, you'll remember that Butz just said, Justin Trudeau directed us that the decision here is for the Attorney General to make about the Director of Public Prosecutor.
00:10:34.880Do you actually think Justin Trudeau said that?
00:10:38.640Do you actually think Justin Trudeau had that kind of a command of the situation?
00:10:43.000I don't think we can take Gerald Butz at face value.
00:10:46.660What he's trying to do, though, is saying, sure, we broke a few eggs to make this omelet, but we were doing it to save jobs.
00:10:53.960But that's the thing. See, the Canadian Criminal Code specifically says that economic matters are not relevant to whether or not you can prosecute a criminal.
00:11:06.140It's just not how we do things in Canada.
00:11:10.160Otherwise, we would literally favor any rich person, any big company, and let them off, but just go after the poor people.
00:11:16.400Think about it. Put that up just for a second.
00:11:17.540Again, I'm going to read. This is from the Criminal Code.
00:11:22.900This is on deferred prosecutions. This is what SNC-Lavalin asked for.
00:11:28.080Look at this. This factors not to consider.
00:19:14.500The second and final meeting I had on the file was with Jessica Prince, the minister's chief of staff, and Katie Telford.
00:19:21.100There was no urgency to attend that meeting.
00:19:24.100I remember that meeting very, very differently than the account given last week.
00:19:28.240I remember Ms. Prince saying that the minister didn't want to consider quote-unquote political factors in the decision and was worried about the appearance of political interference.
00:19:39.120I said that it's the minister's decision, of course, but to my mind, 9,000 people are not a political issue.
00:19:47.120Again, it's a lie with no evidence behind it.
00:19:54.960SNC-Lavalin is a multi-billion dollar company.
00:19:58.340Prosecuting it for a crime is not going to push it out of business.
00:20:01.720It'll be an embarrassment, and it'll probably cost it.
00:20:04.780I don't know, 48 million bucks, the money they stole and paid in bribes?
00:20:08.720Yeah, they can obviously afford 48 million bucks in bribes.
00:20:11.580They can afford 48 million bucks in fines.
00:20:14.000But it's not going to put 9,000 people out of work.
00:20:16.840He kept saying that, and I'm sure you'll see the media party and the Justin Journos who were signing up for their bailout repeating that.
00:20:25.420But there was no evidence offered whatsoever that 9,000 people would be put out of work.
00:20:30.620And even if, in some hypothetical scenario that was not proven, even if SNC-Lavalin were to go out of business, that doesn't mean that those engineers and other people working for the company would never get work.
00:20:42.980They would reassemble in an ethical company.
00:21:22.940This, to me, begs the entire question of what exactly constitutes pressure.
00:21:27.380According to the former minister's testimony, 11 people made 20 points of contact with her or her office over a period of close to four months.
00:21:37.840Four of these people never met with the attorney general in person.
00:21:42.120In my case, the attorney general solicited the meeting.
00:21:45.200That's two meetings and two phone calls per month for the minister and her office on an issue that could cost a minimum of 9,000 jobs.
00:22:11.300Now, he's saying, well, listen, 20 phone calls and meetings.
00:22:14.600You know, that's not a lot of pressure.
00:22:16.940He said he was just trying to persuade not to pressure.
00:22:19.340And no, no, no, it wasn't political, even though Jody Wilson-Raybould said that Justin Trudeau's re-election was specifically a reason that Justin Trudeau demanded she reconsider.
00:22:32.660I want to read to you another section of the Criminal Code.
00:22:36.020I showed you the section that said factors not to consider.
00:22:43.380Everyone who willfully attempts to obstruct, pervert, or defeat the course of justice is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years.
00:22:55.740Everyone who willfully attempts in any manner other than a manner described in subsection 1, and that was financial manner.
00:23:03.420So it doesn't have to be undue influence.
00:23:07.100Gerald Butts is saying, well, sure, there were 20 attempts, but, you know, it was over a few months.
00:24:01.760Gee, it's almost like they don't want the facts to come out.
00:24:03.860All right, well, after Gerald Butts' self-serving testimony, which I have to say was very out of character for him, I showed you that online where he's unguarded, where he's himself, he's the most partisan, vicious man around.
00:24:19.000Here he was low energy and polite, even, politely calling Jody Wilson-Raybould a liar.
00:24:24.660But then Lisa Raitt, a conservative cabinet minister who is actually a lawyer herself, I believe, started to press Gerald Butts with a few questions.
00:24:32.560I want to show you some of those interactions.
00:25:27.120And I'm asking who then picked the texts that you were to receive and look at?
00:25:31.100You may recall there was a small story on the front page of the Globe and Mail about this a few weeks ago.
00:25:38.860And when that story ran, I said to myself, actually, it wasn't when the story ran.
00:25:45.640It was the next day when I got a very specific question from the Globe and Mail through the office directed at me about my meeting with Minister Wilson-Raybould.
00:25:57.940I believe they were even specific enough to say at the Chateau Laurier Hotel, where my first instinct was to look at my phone and see if I remembered it as correctly as I thought I did.
00:26:12.500You'll notice he didn't answer the question.
00:26:14.320He gave a roundabout story, but he didn't answer who chose the texts and how did you get it.
00:26:25.460Mr. Butts, did you know that on September 17th, Jody Wilson-Raybould indicated that she instructed her staff to ensure they had a very detailed chronology of all meetings and conversations about the SNC-Lavalin and deferred prosecuting agreements because she was worried about what was going to be happening in the coming months?
00:26:47.040Well, she did, which I found interesting.
00:26:48.940As we were talking about what the Prime Minister's office staff was doing to try to get to the Director of Public Prosecution, the second type of legal opinion that was sought was different, and this time it was a legal opinion sought on the actual Director's decision to not grant a deferred prosecution agreement.
00:27:11.860Were you aware that Mr. Elder and Mr. Bouchard requested that?
00:27:16.560I'm not even sure I know what that means, Ms. Wright, to be honest.
00:27:21.540It sounds like you are a lawyer, correct?
00:27:25.720These are important issues, Mr. Butts, and because you're testifying here that you are the link between the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's office, and yet the Prime Minister's staff was clearly over the line of appropriateness.
00:27:38.500That's testimony from Jody Wilson-Raybould, and that's my assumption based upon the fact that she put forward.
00:27:43.980So, at the end of the day, you are responsible for these matters, and your responsibility flows up to the Prime Minister.
00:50:45.340I hope you don't think I spent too much time going through the minutiae of Gerald Butts.
00:50:49.700I have to say it took up all my day and I was left feeling unsatisfied by it.
00:50:54.080But I was left with a bit of a worry that they're just going to try and tough it out.
00:50:58.840And I think the hands of this country are in the fate of another cabinet minister or MP if they stand down and quit as, for example, Jane Philpott did.
00:51:09.400I think that would change the math or if the RCMP did.
00:51:12.900But failing those two things, I think Justin Trudeau is going to brazen it out.
00:51:17.920And if you look at the polls right now, the liberals are behind.
00:51:21.140In every single poll I see, they're behind between five and ten points.