Strange as it sounds, the Trudeau scandal is good for Canada — and for those Liberal 'sunny ways'

This week, someone who has spent a career with Canada’s ruling Liberals told me Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's latest troubles are unprecedented. What about it? I asked. His perceived political interference in a judicial matter?

No, no, no, the person responded. It was the way that the justice minister and attorney-general at the time, Jody Wilson-Raybould, resisted what she said was repeated pressure from Trudeau and his staff.

Ah.

Handshakes in the smoke-filled room must happen all the time. Canada is certainly not the world’s bastion of moral leadership — a reputation built largely on Trudeau’s idealistic vision for doing politics differently, distilled into a famous “sunny ways” election-night speech in 2015.

But this scandal actually moves Canada closer towards its glowing international reputation.

Wilson-Raybould eventually resigned, and another senior minister did the same. They saw that smoke-filled room and said no. And they said so publicly. The two former ministers represent precisely Trudeau’s sunny ways, even if he himself seems to have strayed.

This scandal, which spiralled out of revelations last month by the Globe and Mail newspaper, proves Canada’s moral fortitude, not lack thereof.

The cynical view is that there really is nothing to see here in Trudeau’s allegedly trying to give a break to the Canadian construction giant SNC-Lavalin, which is facing bribery charges relating to its business in Libya.

SNC-Lavalin is, after all, a major employer in Trudeau’s home province of Quebec, and an election is looming. Putting partisan political interests above all else — it’s really not that unusual.

I revealed in 2016 that Trudeau’s government extended its military deployment in South Sudan, despite concerns about its soldiers' safety and even the entire mission's viability, after a senior official said doing so served the Liberal party’s political goals.

The SNC-Lavalin affair is also hardly the first time Trudeau failed to live up to the high bar he set when his Liberals swept into power in 2015, championing equality, openness and social justice and even outflanking a farther-left rival party.

Trudeau never entirely fulfilled his promises of electoral and government-transparency reform. He never fully achieved better relations with the country’s socio-economically disadvantaged aboriginal people. He violated conflict-of-interest laws by vacationing with a billionaire religious leader. The list goes on.

Sunny ways was gone long before the SNC-Lavalin affair.

But Wilson-Raybould’s move — and that of her colleague, the recently resigned treasury-board president Jane Philpott — brought sunny ways back.

The two former ministers are first-term political outsiders, brought in by an in-opposition Trudeau to pit energy and vibrancy against a Conservative government lazy and comfortable from its decade in power.

Wilson-Raybould and Philpott were untainted by the ways of the so-called old boys' club, where partisan unity and loyalty before individual ethics is sometimes valued.

What they did in the SNC-Lavalin affair is what the prime minister should have expected. It is entirely in line with the idealism and diversity of experience and opinion promised by Trudeau when he began his term.

And their choosing of principle over the party line might just be infectious. They are hardly the only first-timers in the Liberal caucus, and polls show most Canadians side with Wilson-Raybould. She and Philpott have shown there is nothing wrong with proudly being political outsiders.

Already, after a Thursday press conference in which Trudeau said instances of simple “conversation” with Wilson-Raybould had been mischaracterised as pressure, a backbench Liberal legislator publicly challenged the prime minister’s leadership style. Such breakaways weaken Trudeau, and politics is a game in which weakness is quickly sensed. Someone, somewhere, is no doubt sharpening a knife. Maybe it’s even one of the two former ministers, holding the whetstone if not the blade.

To be sure, the affair has not escalated to the point of Trudeau’s losing his position. But it does need to go that far for Canadian politics to change in some way.

Like my Liberal acquaintance said, the manner with which politics is done for ages is already being disrupted. Trudeau deserves some credit for bringing about that change.

Sunny ways is among the few promises on which the prime minister actually delivered. It's just that, rather unfortunately, Trudeau likely never saw himself as a part of it.

Ethan Lou is a Canadian writer