The Truth That Justin Trudeau's "Brain," Did Not Mean to Tell

Gerald Butts, former Principal Private Secretary to Prime Minister Trudeau, testifying before the Parliamentary Justice Committee to address charges that the Prime Minister's Office had improperly interfered in the work of the former Attorney General, opened with the words:

I can assure all members of this committee that I will tell the truth.

Oh good oh, now we can be confident of learning the unvarnished truth.

Butts then continued:

I would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the Algonquin people.

Wow! From a Prime Minister with a former Principal Secretary so sensitive to First Nations sensibilities, how could it be true, as alleged by the father of former Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, the first First Nations person to serve in the Federal Government, that Justin Trudeau had kicked said Attorney General in the teeth?

In fact, from such a source, it seems hardly worthwhile to consider the specifics of his testimony. The guy is all spin and groveling flattery. But one thing he makes absolutely clear is that, in his view, government is not about facts and logic, but about ends. To the desired and predetermined ends, all facts and logic must be made to conform. And if that effort to create the Prime Minister's own reality does not at first succeed, then there must be meetings, and more meetings, and consultations, text messages, pressure even, and perhaps some interference in the course of justice, until the bullshit ultimately baffles brains. No wonder then that the Prime Minister's brains seem to be made of mush.

Clearly many liberals want out of this mess, and in particular, want new leadership. In 2015, after failed attempts by Martin, Dion, and Ignatieff, Trudeau, the man with the looks, the name, and the trendy SJW agenda, swept the liberals to power. But the promise far exceeded the performance, and in the wake of LavScam, the Libs face the possibility of a near wipe-out in the forthcoming fall election, their standing in the polls falling by the day. The sooner Trudeau steps aside to make way for a steady hand and level head at the helm, the better.

For the Conservatives, exactly the opposite consideration holds. The multi-balls-up Trudeau is their best hope of power under the leadership of the very pleasant and ineffectual-seeming Andrew Scheer. In the coming weeks, we may expect, therefore, to see the Tories offering little more than half-hearted criticism of Trudeau. Indeed, they must surely be hoping to see Gerald Butts, the PM's erstwhile brain, back at the PMO filling the PM's ear with soothing flattery and dreams of endless power.

Related:

Macleans: Paul Wells

... Taken together, Butts’s testimony adds up to a portrait of a governing inner circle that would not ever take a “no” from a director of public prosecutions as final. They would not ever take Jody Wilson-Raybould’s refusal to correct the prosecutor as final. They could not believe an important decision could be made in a week and a half. They could not, themselves, manage a cabinet shuffle in a much longer span of time, except by making a mockery of its central strategic imperative. And they can provide no evidence for the jobs claim that, to this day, Gerald Butts still uses to browbeat anyone who would disagree with the government’s behaviour throughout this saga. This was Team Trudeau’s best day since the saga began, because at least it featured somebody close to the Prime Minister speaking in complete sentences in a setting outside a campaign rally or a space-exploration news conference. I still found very little of it encouraging. ...

And this:

Trudeau's offer of Indigenous Services to Wilson-Raybould like 'asking Nelson Mandela to administer apartheid'

And this:

NaPo: Andrew Coyne

More than once in the course of his testimony to the Commons justice committee Gerald Butts said that he was not there to call anyone names or to cast aspersions on the character of Jody Wilson-Raybould. Which is why the prime minister’s former principal secretary confined himself to depicting her as sloppy, closed-minded and unco-operative, while heavily implying the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada was a serial fabulist who said nothing to anyone about attempts to interfere with her authority over criminal prosecutions until after she was shuffled out of her “dream job” in January. Otherwise he might have gotten really nasty. ...

And this:

NaPo: Colby Cosh

...The government has tried to explain its belabouring of Wilson-Raybould as being perfectly appropriate. She was supposed to verrrry carefully consider the fate of 9,000 SNC-Lavalin jobs and a head office in Quebec, and then consider it again, and then consider it again. Butts tells us that they weren’t looking for a particular politically convenient answer, mind you.  They just stayed after her to keep reconsidering the answer she kept giving, explicitly or implicitly. They reassured her at every turn that the decision was hers. And then they got rid of her and made it someone else’s. ...

T


How much more punishment will the Liberals absorb before ditching Trudeau?