Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has expelled from his ruling Liberal Party two dissident former cabinet members who have been taking the government to task over its handling of the SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. (TSX:SNC) scandal.
Trudeau said that former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and former Treasury Board Chief Jane Philpott would no longer be allowed to sit as Liberal legislators. They were also barred from running for the party in the federal election taking place this October.
In announcing the decision, the prime minister said that the two former cabinet members were actively undermining his government concerning the SNC-Lavalin case. The governing Liberals have been in turmoil since Wilson-Raybould said in February that officials had inappropriately pressured her while she was justice minister to ensure that construction company SNC-Lavalin would escape a corruption trial.
The expulsions are a change of course for Trudeau, who said last week that the Liberals needed strong legislators with differing points of view. But increasingly angry parliamentarians had demanded both women be removed from caucus on the grounds they were undermining party unity. Recent opinion polls show the crisis has cut public support for the Liberals to the point that they could lose the October election.
Last Friday, Wilson-Raybould released the audio of a confidential conversation she had with Michael Wernick, Clerk of the Privy Council Office, who did not know she was recording him. The recording showed that Wernick, who recently resigned from his senior post, pressuring Wilson-Raybould to settle the SNC-Lavalin case quietly and expeditiously.
Trudeau was seeking a remediation agreement that would allow SNC-Lavalin, one of the world’s biggest engineering firms, to avoid criminal proceedings on corruption and fraud charges related to its business activities in Libya.
In the recorded phone call, Wernick repeatedly asks Wilson-Raybould why she is not using all the tools at her disposal in the SNC-Lavalin case. She pushes back, saying she would not override the decision of the director of public prosecutions to pursue a criminal prosecution against SNC-Lavalin for bribery and fraud.
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