VANCOUVER—Constituents in Jody Wilson-Raybould’s riding say a ruling that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke ethics laws in the SNC-Lavalin affair will impact how they vote in the general election this October.

Yet political observers in British Columbia are already arguing that ethical dilemmas about government accountability likely do not matter to voters as much as more tangible issues like housing or the environment.

Wilson-Raybould, who was Canada’s first Indigenous attorney general and justice minister, was ousted from the Liberal caucus in the fallout of the scandal. In May, she announced she would run for re-election as an independent in her Vancouver-Granville riding.

Maxime Rejouis, out for a walk in his lowrise neighbourhood Wednesday, said he was glad to hear Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion found Trudeau broke conflict-of-interest laws.

“I’m glad she was vindicated and I hope that it leads to a fair trial and that this can start to move forward,” Rejouis said.

Though he voted for Trudeau’s Liberals in the last election, Rejouis said his opinion on the prime minister has changed.

“I’m not going to vote for Justin if this is the kind of thing he’s going to keep doing. It’s not what I voted for him for the first time,” he said.

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Justin Trudeau broke conflict of interest law in SNC-Lavalin controversy, ethics commissioner rules

The Liberals still have plenty of time to turn the narrative around, said Vancouver pollster Mario Canseco.

“I think there is an opportunity for the Liberals to reassemble the deck,” said Canseco, president of Research Co. “This gives them a little bit of room to face the music and talk about what happened.”

In a written statement Wednesday, Wilson-Raybould characterized the ethics commissioner’s ruling as a “vindication” of the attorney general role and the “rule of law and prosecutor independence.”

But she said she also experienced sadness.

“In a country as great as Canada, essential values and principles that are the foundation for our freedoms and system of government should be actively upheld by all, especially those in positions of public trust.”

Kathyn Wilder, who has lived in the Vancouver-Granville area for two years, said she’s reserving judgment until she gets more information from Dion’s report.

“I’m not going to throw Justin under the bus yet,” she said. “Maybe he hasn’t been forthcoming with the exact information but then he’s probably in a position where he has to be careful what he says also.”

Dion concluded that Trudeau’s interventions in the case violated the section of the Conflict of Interest Act that prevents him from using his position to improperly advance “another person’s private interests” — in this case, SNC-Lavalin’s.

The controversy revolves around criminal charges against SNC-Lavalin and a desire by Trudeau and senior aides to have the director of public prosecutions grant the company a deferred prosecution agreement. That would have spared the Quebec engineering firm the risk of a criminal conviction and, with it, the threat of losing lucrative government contracts.

Such issues of government ethics and accountability don’t rank high on voters’ list of priorities, said Canseco.

His company conducted a countrywide poll in July in which only six per cent of 1,000 respondents said “accountability and leadership” was one of the “most important issues facing Canada.” Respondents ranked issues like the economy and health care much higher.

In B.C., one in five respondents said housing, homelessness and poverty was the most important issue to them.

Kathryn Harrison, political science professor at the University of British Columbia, agreed that questions about whether the prime minister interfered in prosecutorial independence are likely not at the forefront of voters’ minds.

“These are very abstract things that most voters don’t spend a lot of time thinking about and probably don’t understand,” she said. “It doesn’t speak to their everyday concerns about cost of living, their children’s future with global warming and so on.”

But in the Vancouver area, where the Liberals’ decision to approve and buy the Trans Mountain pipeline has complicated the party’s climate-change record, the SNC-Lavalin affair could have a compounding effect, said Harrison.

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“The central question for me is: In cases where in ridings or for voters who are already disillusioned by the Liberals by some other issue, how does this reinforce that? To what degree does this push more people away from the Liberals?”

With polls showing it’s a tight race between the Liberals and Conservatives two months out from the federal election, even a shift in the margins can be impactful, said Harrison.

“When it’s tight, they can’t afford even small cuts.”

Jamal Al Abdul Wahid and Harry Hammer, longtime residents of the area that is today Vancouver-Granville, were on their way to a morning yoga class when they learned what the ethics commissioner had to say.

“We’ve heard a lot of conflicting reports on both sides, so it’s very difficult to be certain, without a doubt, on who is truly at fault,” said Al Abdul Wahid, who has lived in the neighbourhood for 15 years.

Hammer said that from his point of view, the ordeal was part and parcel of how politics is conducted nowadays.

“We’ve had problems with our parties for years and can never resolve it. It just gets worse, calms down, and then it comes up again,” he said.

Al Abdul Wahid said he supported Wilson-Raybould in the previous election but doesn’t plan to give her his vote in October.

“It should have been handled way better and it should have been handled inside (the party),” said Al Abdul Wahid.

Danielle Tinker, another of Wilson-Raybould’s constituents, said she admired the former attorney general for doing what she believed was right.

“I thought that it was a really big and brave move that Jody made,” she said.

However, Tinker said she’s still looking for more information.

“I’m curious about why she chose to step down (as attorney general),” she said. “I’m a little bit disappointed in that (because) I thought she was doing a great job and she stepped down from a very important position.”

With files from Bruce Campion-Smith, Tonda MacCharles, Alex Ballingall and Alex Boutilier

Correction—Aug. 14, 2019: A previous version of this story misspelled Kathryn Harrison’s name.

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