Lavscam 2.0

SHORT EDITORIAL

Last week, the LavScam scandal gripping Ottawa's political crowd went from bad to worse for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who had a chance to give a fulsome apology for the crisis in his Liberal government, but didn't.

Instead, he admitted to an “erosion of trust,” and then threw his best friend and former principal secretary, Gerald Butts, for not informing him earlier that one of his marquee cabinet ministers was totally ticked off.

But there was no “I'm sorry.”

Jody Wilson-Raybould, the first Indigenous woman to ever hold the title of both justice minister and attorney general, had packed up her downgraded position as Minister of Veteran Affairs and left cabinet the moment Trudeau tried to tell everyone that all was well.

Not soon after, another powerful woman in his cabinet, Jane Philpott, left as Treasury Board President because she no longer had confidence that the scandal surrounding a plea deal with Quebec's SNC-Lavalin would ever reach a successful conclusion without more wheels coming off.

Before heading off to Iqaluit to formerly apologize to the Inuit for the shabby treatment they got when the tuberculosis epidemic gripped their community for three decades beginning in the 1940, Trudeau called a press conference where he would speak for the first time about LavScam, despite the crisis being more than three weeks old.

A week is a lifetime in politics; three weeks an eternity.

Political insiders put out word that Trudeau was going to accept some blame so that the scandal would move on.

But there was no contrition and no apology.

There was only buck-passing. He hung Gerald Butts out to dry, and said nothing that would appease Jody Wilson-Raybould or Jane Philpott.

What he did, instead, was acknowledge, without directly saying it, that Wilson-Raybould was the one who told the real truth when she testified before the justice committee.

In other words, Trudeau blew it.

Worse, he doesn't know he did. He couldn't get past his arrogance and his unwillingness to admit to doing wrong.

Canadians, however, got to know him a little better.

The wise ones will not have liked what they saw.