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Photo by Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

The prime minister, according to Wilson-Raybould, was very much at the centre of these efforts. But even if he hadn’t been, the culture is set at the top. He is responsible for what ministers, staff and civil servants do in his name. Neither can he, or they, hide behind claims of ignorance: either that they did not know it was wrong to pressure the attorney general with regard to a prosecution, or that they were unaware of her repeated objections to being so pressured.

There has been much talk, in the wake of this scandal, of the desirability of separating the offices of minister of justice and attorney general, as they are in Britain, so as to insulate the attorney general from any possibility of interference. That may well be advisable, as structural fixes often are: it is not enough to trust in the willingness of people in power not to abuse it. But neither is it enough to rely on structural fixes.

The independence of the attorney general is already supposed to be ironclad — the convention is one of the bedrocks of Canada’s system of government. The office of the DPP was likewise set up to be (largely) independent of the attorney general. And yet a brigade of senior officials in this government was apparently quite prepared, not to say determined, to break through both barriers, undeterred by either. Only the resistance of an uncommonly principled attorney general prevented them from getting away with it.

Conventions, laws, regulations: all are valuable and necessary. But rules are no substitute for will — the willingness to abide by the rules. Whatever structural reforms might be in order, a few heads on pikes might prove equally salutary.