'The last thing Trudeau wanted was another fight over a Quebec jewel so I presume that word went out to his folks in the PMO: 'Fix it.' And we got what we got.'

Justin Trudeau has been fearless in confronting Saudi Arabia over its treatment of women and dissidents and hasn’t minded angering China over the Vancouver arrest of a senior executive at Huawei, the giant telecom firm. So why does he appear to have been so freaked out over an old corruption case involving a Canadian engineering firm in Libya?

The answer is Quebec and its popular new nationalist premier, François Legault. If Trudeau is going to survive and get a second term, it’s essential for him to capture most of the 78 seats in vote-rich Quebec. If he can increase his seats in the province and hold his own in the Atlantic provinces, it can compensate for anticipated losses in Ontario and elsewhere.

If not, the Liberals are toast. So defusing the political landmines laid by Legault to extract money and power from Ottawa over the next several months are key to Trudeau’s survival, which in part explains the SNC-Lavalin saga.

I cannot verify The Globe and Mail’s blockbuster story alleging political interference by the Prime Minister’s Office in an effort to get former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to drop criminal charges against the Montreal-based construction and engineering giant. But despite the legalistic denial from Trudeau that he did not “direct” his former minister to do anything, the whole story makes eminent sense.

In Wilson-Raybould’s extraordinary statement last month after her demotion to veterans affairs minister, she stated that in our democracy it’s essential that “our system of justice be free from even the perception of political interference.” Then she added that the Attorney-General must be non-partisan, transparent and “always willing to speak truth to power.”

What exactly did she mean by that? Normally, speaking truth to power is something expected of senior bureaucrats when confronted by the machinations and unreasonable demands of their political masters. As Attorney-General and a senior member of cabinet, you would have thought that Wilson-Raybould was the very definition of “power.” Unless, of course, she felt excluded from or attacked by the real source of power, namely Trudeau and his henchmen at PMO. And when she pushed back, she got fired.

Back to Quebec. It’s sometimes hard for Canadians outside Quebec to understand the influence and emotional attachment that Quebecers can feel toward a homegrown company that they see as successful and the best representation of French Canadian achievement, firms like Cirque du Soleil or Bombardier. In a society where religion has been tossed aside, these firms are a new source of devotion and inspiration.

SNC-Lavalin is one of those homegrown success stories. Its predecessor firm built the Manic 5 dam for Hydro-Quebec. After merging with Lavalin, it built the James Bay hydro project, Highway 407 near Toronto and Vancouver’s Canada Line plus many big projects abroad. It’s currently building the new federally-owned Champlain Bridge across the St. Lawrence River.

The Quebec desire to protect corporate “jewels” like SNC extends to these companies even when they screw up. Bombardier may have lost gobs of taxpayer money on the C Series aircraft before giving it away to Airbus and may still have huge problems acting as a reliable supplier of mass transit systems to customers in places like New York, Toronto and Switzerland, but God forbid anybody who puts down the company.

The same goes for SNC-Lavalin. The company’s name has been caught in a swirl of corruption cases for years, involving the McGill Hospital in Montreal, the Federal Bridge Corp., Elections Canada, the African Development Bank and the list goes on. But of course, I need to mention here that SNC sees itself as a victim throughout this whole affair. SNC insists, with a straight face, that all of these cases have nothing to do with the company and were only the work of a few rogue former employees (including a just-convicted former CEO).

The Libya case is the one exception, where the company itself is facing criminal charges, a trial it desperately wants to avoid because if found guilty, it will be hit with a multi-year a ban on federal contracts.

Yet despite this cloud over the company and its own internal problems, like its unfortunate bet on oil and gas investments and big cost overruns at a mining project in Chile, SNC-Lavalin still has a halo over its head as far as Quebecers are concerned.

Legault, a former separatist who cares little for the niceties of federalism, knows he’s got Trudeau where he wants him and is shameless. He actually wrote up a political ransom note of sorts, listing his asks from Trudeau and other federal leaders in the run-up to the fall election: more power over immigration; handing over administration of federal income tax to Quebec; $300-million for the costs of asylum seekers and more.

Despite SNC’s recent problems, Legault calls it “a beautiful company,” the kind of business “that creates value in Quebec and there aren’t enough of them.” With the recent drop in its stock price, SNC would normally be seen as a takeover target but Legault has warned that the province will do whatever it can to stop outsiders from getting a hold of it. The Caisse de Depot, the provincial pension fund manager, already owns 20 per cent and Legault said a Quebec government agency, could buy more.

Neil Bruce, the Scot who heads SNC, is already blaming Ottawa for the company’s problems getting new contracts in Saudi Arabia after Canada’s outspoken defence of human rights activists, even though much of the company’s recent travails seem self-inflicted.

With the Libya corruption trial likely to start sometime soon and an outcome that could leave SNC even more weakened, don’t be surprised if Legault is getting ready to blame it all on an unsympathetic government in Ottawa.

The last thing Trudeau wanted was another fight over a Quebec jewel so I presume that word went out to his folks in the PMO: “Fix it.” And we got what we got.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.