Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, wants to give his side of the story in the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Butts wrote the House of Commons justice committee Thursday, requesting he be called as a witness.
His request came one day after former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould testified that she faced relentless pressure — and even veiled threats — from Trudeau, senior prime-ministerial aides, Canada’s top public servant and the finance minister’s office to interfere in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. Butts was among those she accused of inappropriate pressure tactics.
Butts said he believes he has evidence that will help the committee get to the bottom the affair. He added that he will need a short time to receive legal advice and compile relevant documents before testifying.
Trudeau’s longtime friend and most trusted adviser resigned as his principal secretary last week amid the mushrooming controversy over the government’s attempts to help SNC-Lavalin avoid a criminal trial on charges of bribery and corruption related to its bid to secure contracts in Libya.
In a statement announcing his resignation, Butts categorically denied that he or anyone else in Trudeau’s office pressured Wilson-Raybould. He said he was quitting to avoid distracting from the government’s agenda and suggested he wanted to be free to defend himself.
“My reputation is my responsibility and that is for me to defend,” he said in the statement.
On Wednesday, Wilson-Raybould specifically accused Butts and Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, of pushing for an external legal opinion on the option of negotiating a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin — a kind of plea bargain that would force the company to pay restitution but avoid the potentially crippling impact of a criminal conviction. In a Dec. 18 meeting, Wilson-Raybould said Butts told her chief of staff, Jessica Prince, that there was “no solution here that does not involve some interference.”
Earlier Thursday at an event in Montreal, Trudeau said it will be up to the federal ethics commissioner to decide who is telling the truth in the SNC-Lavalin affair — Trudeau or Wilson-Raybould.
But Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer argued that it’s time for the RCMP to investigate what he contends is possible obstruction of justice by the prime minister.
Scheer wrote RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki on Thursday, calling for an investigation. He also reiterated his call for Trudeau to resign.
Trudeau said he totally disagrees with how Wilson-Raybould characterized discussions she had with him and others about the case. And he said ethics commissioner Mario Dion can be trusted to settle disagreements over what happened. Dion initiated an investigation into the affair two weeks ago.
“Canadians need to know that we have an officer of Parliament who is tasked with a specific role to make sure that in questions where there are disagreements amongst politicians, amongst elected officials, there is an arbiter who is empowered to be like a judge, who is an officer of Parliament, who will make a determination in this issue,” Trudeau said after an announcement at the Canadian Space Agency.
Over nearly four hours of explosive testimony Wednesday, Wilson-Raybould told the House of Commons justice committee there were 10 meetings and 10 phone calls involving 11 people between September and December 2018, all aimed at getting her to “politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role as the attorney general of Canada.”
Wilson-Raybould detailed a September meeting she said she had with Trudeau where he brought up the possibility of SNC-Lavalin leaving Quebec and the spectre of job losses during a provincial election campaign. Trudeau did not deny there were “many and broad conversations about the importance of defending jobs” across the country but he insisted those discussions did not cross any legal lines.
“Canadians expect their government to look for ways to protect jobs, to grow the economy, and that’s exactly what we’ve done every step of the way,” Trudeau said. “We’ve also done it in a way that has respected our laws, and respected the independence of the judiciary — of that there actually is no doubt. There are disagreements in perspective on this, but I can reassure Canadians that we were doing our job and were doing it in a way that respects and defends our institutions.”
