The PM's former right hand voiced respect and affection for Jody Wilson-Raybould. Then he contradicted her.
It’s easy to picture Jody Wilson-Raybould’s testimony before the House of Commons justice committee last week as a series of calendar squares—days on which she painstakingly laid out, like the prosecutor she is, a series of phone calls and in-person meetings she perceived as a “barrage” of attempted political interference in the SNC-Lavalin case over the course of four months last fall.
Except for a couple of tense exchanges with opposition members of the committee near the end of the two-hour session, Butts’s tone was respectful, conciliatory and even elegiac. It was clear that he arrived in that committee room, which feels oddly subterranean despite being a huge space located on the fourth floor of a slickly refurbished government building, acutely aware that it would be politically disastrous for him to look like he was impugning Wilson-Raybould in any way.
It was not about second-guessing Wilson-Raybould, Butts said, it was about making sure she had the best possible information on which to base her decision. Everyone involved knew it was her call to make, he said, and they made it clear that even if she were to follow their recommendations and seek outside legal counsel, such as from a former Supreme Court justice, that she was then free to accept or reject whatever advice came of that.
“In that version of the events, the attorney general made the final decision, after weighing all of the public interest matters and a new law involved, in just 12 days,” Butts said. “Imagine for a moment that on September the 16th—the day the former attorney general told this committee the decision was made, firmly and finally—that she made a public announcement to inform Canadians of that decision.
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