If Jody Wilson-Raybould felt she was suffering “undue pressure” before in her spat with the Prime Minister’s Office, it is looking like a walk in the park compared to what the former minister in Justin Trudeau’s government must be feeling now. Thanks to an extraordinary intervention on Thursday by Michael Wernick, Canada’s top civil servant, Wilson-Raybould is now essentially being dared to come out from under the murky cloud of anonymous media leaks, cryptic gestures and non-answers that have fuelled the story we’re now calling the “SNC-Lavalin scandal.” “There was no inappropriate pressure put on the minister at any time,” Wernick flatly declared at the Commons justice committee, in an appearance that could have been titled: “Enough of this b.s.” Wilson-Raybould, who is due to appear at the committee next week, now has to decide whether she wants to call Wernick — and by extension, none other than the prime minister himself — a liar. She stood in the Commons earlier this week and said she was keen to speak “her truth.” However, it’s not Wilson-Raybould’s truth we urgently need to hear now, but just the plain old truth. Wernick, who prefaced his testimony with a cri de coeur about the toxicity of politics, is clearly exasperated with the ways in which this tale has unfolded in what he called the “vomitorium” of social media. It’s hard to disagree with him on that; one gets the sense he was also speaking for his boss, the prime minister, who lost his right-hand man, Gerald Butts, amid the wreckage of this 2-week-old controversy. Read more: No ‘inappropriate pressure’ on Jody Wilson-Raybould in SNC-Lavalin affair, top civil servant saysJody Wilson-Raybould wants to ‘speak my truth’ as Liberals quash call for SNC-Lavalin inquiryThe SNC-Lavalin affair: meet the main playersWernick has even argued that Wilson-Raybould ...
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