Up until six weeks ago, it looked like Justin Trudeau had fine-tuned his operation into election readiness for 2019. The SNC-Lavalin affair has blown those best-laid plans to smithereens, to say the least.Now, with a budget on the immediate horizon and an election just seven months away, Trudeau has some immediate repair work to do, which will go well beyond the mere fine-tuning originally envisioned for this year. In the days ahead, it bears watching how the prime minister goes about shoring up operations at the very heart of his government — an effort that can conveniently be summed up as a 5C exercise. Cabinet: It’s been almost forgotten in the heat of the back-and-forth over Jody Wilson-Raybould, but another cabinet member, Jane Philpott, stepped down from her Treasury Board post less than two weeks ago.It’s an important, if low-profile job in government and right now, it’s being carried by Carla Qualtrough, one of the more impressive performers in Trudeau’s cabinet. But she can’t keep doing double duty as Treasury Board president and minister in charge of public services and procurement. So once again, the prime minister has to do some kind of shuffle — his third one this winter — and he’ll be gambling that this one causes him less trouble than the January shuffle that started this whole mess in the first place. Counsel: Gerald Butts was no ordinary principal secretary in the Prime Minister’s Office. He was the advisory equivalent to a minister of everything. No one can recall any previous administration with someone this omnipotent at the heart of the PMO. Very little happened in Trudeau’s government without some kind of input from Butts. Read more:Jody Wilson-Raybould says she was target of ‘veiled threats’ over SNC-Lavalin prosecutionSNC-Lavalin affair: We answer your most pressing questionsSNC-Lavalin spent $1.95M on escorts, booze for Libyan dictator’s sonButts has been ...
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