John Manley on Justin Trudeau’s Political Scandal

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Can I just ask you again about Prime Minister Trudeau’s direct role in this? I want to play a little bit of a clip from the former attorney general describing a face-to-face meeting that she had with Trudeau, and that was in September of this past year, 2018, discussing the SNC Lavalin affair. This is what she said and how she described it.

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JODY WILSON-RAYBOULD, FORMER CANADIAN ATTORNEY GENERAL: At that point, the prime minister jumped in stressing that there is an election in Quebec, and that, “I am an MP in Quebec, the member for Papineau.” I was quite taken aback. My response, and I vividly remember this as well, was to ask the prime minister a direct question while looking him in the eye. I asked, “are you politically interfering with my role, my decision as the attorney general? I would strongly advise against it.” The prime minister said no, no, no, we just need to find a solution.

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AMANPOUR: So, very quickly, do you believe that the prime minister politically interfered with her role as attorney general?

JOHN MANLEY, FORMER CANADIAN DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Well, I don’t, and I’ll tell you why. Because, first of all, the answer that she put in his mouth is the appropriate answer — it is your decision. And to this day, that decision still stands. Secondly, as I say, I think it’s a rather different thing to say you have a tool in your toolkit. It’s called a deferred prosecution agreement. It’s used in virtually every other developed country in the world. According to SNC, about 3/4 of its global competitors have been parties to such an agreement, at one time or another. This can be a business in which these kinds of things happen. And so, why are you not using the tool?

AMANPOUR: So that calls for a big, big fine obviously, and not a criminal prosecution. To that end, let me just say what the prime minister said.

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: In regards to standing up for jobs and defending the integrity of our rule of law, I continue to say that there was no inappropriate pressure.

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AMANPOUR: Well, I mean, he’s pretty much saying what you’re saying. But how do you think this is going to play out?

MANLEY: I think the problem is it hasn’t been very well explained, in terms of a narrative from the outset. Canadians now are thinking, well, he was trying to let SNC off the hook. That language is used regularly in media descriptions of this. If you understand what a deferred prosecution agreement is, it’s anything but getting off the hook. In fact, it’s quite an onerous set of responsibilities, but they’ve lost the narrative on this. And so, my belief is that they can certainly recover from it. I think Margaret MacMillan made that point as well. This is more of a political crisis than it is an actual scandal. But they are going to need to get on to other subjects and change the topic soon.