Editor:
Last week’s SNC-related letters “Woman of integrity” and “PM unfit to hold office” demonstrate how Canadians can be so easily outraged on cue. A calm rebuttal: PM Trudeau. A prestigious name for otherwise leaderless Liberals. Canadians’ preference versus despised Harper and hapless NDP. Campaigned on equality – forward enough to appoint Canada’s first female Aboriginal senior cabinet member. Iron-fisted? No. Struggling? Yes.
Judy Wilson-Raybould (JWR). Credible? Indeed. Integrity? Oodles. Prudent? Unknown. Out of her depth? Clearly. Team player? Hardly. Elected by Canadians as minister of justice and attorney general? Negative! Appointed to serve at the pleasure of the PM? Yes.
SNC-Lavalin. Canadian-based world-class engineering firm with a history of shady business dealings, now reportedly on track for clean corporate governance.
Expectations that anyone from Trudeau on down to SNC janitors would not all have reason to often voice “recommendations” to JWR seem naively simplistic. Locking one of Canada’s 100 largest companies out of federal business for 10 years based on these accusations is not a best outcome for Canadians, JWR’s vaunted “integrity” notwithstanding. Governing is compromise: JWR must know this, serving in cabinet despite massive objections to Canada’s Indian Act (JWR’s alleged reason for declining the minister of Indigenous affairs role). Governing is comprehending “what one does in Rome”: yes, business in Libya means unsavoury practices there – but the injured parties were Libyans, not Canadians. Governing means the greater good: Canada is not served by pushing SNC and its $8-billion revenues overseas.
JWR should have settled the matter and moved on; Canada has much bigger problems to address.
In closing, one wonders how Canadians Kovrig, Spavor and Schellenberg, all detained in China, might react to Buzz Bennett’s farfetched contrast of the SNC affair to Huawei CFO Wanzhou’s house arrest (assuming they check the Internet regularly).
Alan Donenfeld, Gibsons
