| Better dirty hands than empty bellies |
"Better dirty hands than empty bellies" is the Trudeau doctrine as enunciated, not by Justin Trudeau, but by Pierre Elliot Trudeau, speaking about the delivery of lethal military equipment to the US during the Vietnam war.
It now appears that, during the fall, Justin Trudeau acted in accordance with the Trudeau doctrine by bringing pressure to bear on his now ex Justice Minister and Attorney General, Jodie Wilson-Raybould, urging her to scotch the prosecution of Quebec-based global engineering firm SNC Lavalin on charges of bribery and corruption. In so doing, he presumably resorted to the argument he has made repeatedly in public that prosecution of SNC Lavelin would put many Canadian jobs at risk.
The trouble for Trudeau with this line of action and logic is two-fold.
First, under the law, a company guilty of corruption cannot be granted a "remediation agreement" instead of prosecution on the grounds of "national economic interest," , as Trudeau may have urged.
Second, when Trudeau discussed the prosecution of SNC Lavalin with the Attorney General on September 17, a prosecution had already been launched, which gives the Prime Minister's intervention the appearance of an attempt to pervert the course of justice.
To an adherent of the Trudeau doctrine, obstruction of justice for the sake national economic interest might well be considered a reasonable trade-off. But if so, it proved to be a mistake to demote the Attorney General to the lowly cabinet portfolio of Veterans Affairs so soon after she apparently refused to join the Prime Minister in a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in the Lavalin case.
As a consequence of her demotion, Ms. Wilson-Raybould seems not to have been chastened, but rather embittered, giving rise to vilification by some cabinet colleagues and senior officials who reported her behavior in Cabinet to be self-centered and confrontational.
In response, it seems, to that further humiliation, the former Attorney General resigned her new cabinet post, while giving no reason since, so she claimed, as the former Attorney General, what she had to say was subject to solicitor-client privilege that only the Prime Minister can waive.
It is now reported that Ms. Wilson-Raybould will appear next week to testify before a Parliamentary committee. Whether she will speak freely remains to be seen. In the meantime, young Justin may be wishing he'd kept his hands clean.
