A day after his former principal secretary and the head of the Privy Council testified, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made his most comprehensive comments to date on the SNC Lavalin scandal.
It was a message of contrition, but there was no apology from Trudeau as he faced reporters in the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Instead, Trudeau confessed to a break-down in communications and trust between his office and former Justice Minister and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould.
"What has become clear is that over the past months, there was an erosion of trust between my office, and specifically my former principal secretary and the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General," said Trudeau. "I was not aware of that erosion of trust. As prime minister and leader of the federal ministry, I should have been."
"One of the things central to my leadership is fostering an environment where my ministers, caucus, and staff feel comfortable coming to me when they have concerns. Indeed, I expect them to do so," he continued. "In Ms. Wilson-Raybould's case, she did not come to me, and I wish she had."
Echoing previous testimony before the Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Human Rights by former principal secretary Gerald Butts and head of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, Trudeau emphasized nothing illegal or unethical took place during discussions between the Prime Minister's Office and Wilson-Raybould or her staff. He told reporters Canadians can have faith in the institution of their government and the rule of law. However, he confessed that there are lessons to be learned.
"I'm obviously reflecting on lessons learned through this, and I think Canadians expect that of us," he explained. "Anytime we go through periods of internal disagreement and indeed, challenges to internal trust as we have, there are things that we have to reflect on and understand and do better next time."
Last week, Wilson-Raybould testified before the committee that she had been pressured repeatedly between September and December of last year to drop criminal prosecution against SNC Lavalin, a Quebec engineering firm accused of bribing officials in Libya to land contracts.
Butts and Wernick have testified that although they reminded Wilson-Raybould of the 9,000 jobs on the line should SNC Lavalin leave Canada, and encouraged her to seek independent counsel on the use of new legislation that would allow the company to defer prosecution, they told her the decision was hers and hers alone.
Trudeau’s comments came before he gets on a flight to Iqaluit to apologize to Indigenous leaders for the way the government handled the outbreaks of tuberculosis in the far north in the 1940s and 1960s.