Surely, after 60 days of crisis, the Liberals would never do something absolutely bonkers like threaten to sue Andrew Scheer? Oops, too late

A few weeks ago, when the SNC-Lavalin scandal was only 42 days old, I wrote here in the Post , “The Liberal response to the entire affair has been almost unfathomably bad, counterproductive at every turn.”

We’re now 60 days into this. The above is truer than ever.

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Set aside the core issues of political and accountability and transparency that were so exhaustively and effectively explored by Andrew Coyne this past weekend . Let’s just look at the SNC-Lavalin scandal purely as politics: the Liberal response has been terrible. They have not been able to answer the public’s questions about the affair, they have not been able to change the channel and they have not been able to simply move on, weathering the attacks. In fact, almost everything they’ve done has had the opposite effect of what was intended. Like I said 18 days ago, their every effort has been counterproductive.

Their every effort has been counterproductive

Consider this weekend’s revelation by the Conservative party that Justin Trudeau is threatening to sue Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer over statements made during the scandal, statements the prime minister claims are false and defamatory. In fact, consider just one specific element of this: consider above all else the timing.

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The letter that the Conservatives revealed on Sunday, sent to Scheer by lawyer Julian Porter on behalf of Trudeau, was dated March 31. This was the day before the Liberals imposed their carbon price on the four provinces that had declined to develop provincial analogues that met the Liberals’ standard. The Liberals are very proud of this carbon plan, as they’ll tell anyone within 50 feet of an open Twitter app. The letter was sent two days before the Liberals booted Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from their caucus, theoretically in an effort to put this whole matter behind them — to staunch the bleeding. It was sent five days before the Liberals announced a major infusion of $1.3-billion in cash and loans to the country’s largest city, to help finally end chronic repair backlogs at the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

The Conservatives, who are apparently more politically astute than the Liberals these days, for whatever that's worth, chose to publicize the letter

You don’t have to agree with or like any of the above moves to recognize that, if nothing else, they were something new to talk about. Any of these stories offered the Liberals at least a chance — maybe not a great one, but a possibility — of moving past the affair that has bogged them down for two full months, and maybe even getting some positive press, from those inclined to be impressed. After a disastrous two months, that’s all the Liberals have left to try, really: make some announcements, roll out some policy, and then do your damnedest to not pour any more carbon-intensive fossil fuels onto the flames of the scandal.

In other words, don’t do something absolutely bonkers like send a letter to Andrew Scheer threatening to sue him for statements he’s made during the scandal.

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But, alas, that’s what the Liberals did. The Conservatives, who are apparently more politically astute than the Liberals these days, for whatever that’s worth, chose to publicize the letter, and issue a simple challenge to the prime minister: he can proceed with his lawsuit, and subject himself to legal disclosure and the potential of testifying under oath, not to mention prolonging the public’s interest in the matter. Or the prime minister can back down and simply do nothing, in which case the Conservatives will declare victory over a prime minister who clearly (the Tories will tell us) has something to hide.

This is not some stroke of strategic genius on the part of Scheer’s team. This is precisely what any political party that had not utterly lost its mind would do. The Tories know full well that the Liberals won’t dare proceed with a lawsuit that would make this an even bigger scandal and subject the prime minister to elevated transparency obligations. The Liberals want to seal this thing up and shut it down, not prolong it and blow it wide open (if they wanted to do that, they could just allow Philpott and Wilson-Raybould to speak openly on this, and co-operate fully with further investigations).

So now, the best choice the Liberals have is to shut up, stop talking about, and basically pretend it never happened. The Conservatives will ride them hard on this for a few days and then it’ll be over.

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But that means whatever bounce they were looking for, for their tough-on-carbon stance, is going to get lost. The huge cheque they’re writing Toronto will be forgotten, at least in the short term. The eviction of Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from caucus, entirely intended to put this issue behind the Liberals, has been negated by the Liberals intentionally going out of their way to put this issue back into the headlines, in front of Canadians.

It’s madness, but it’s strangely consistent. From the outset, they’ve been incapable of settling on a strategy or even a plausible explanation and then sticking with it. Along the way, they’ve actually made things worse for themselves, repeatedly.

Which, now that I think about it, has me doubting my own words above, where I said the Liberals won’t dare actually proceed with the lawsuit, since it’s an objectively terrible idea. Given their recent track record, perhaps that’s what they’ll do. It’ll be completely contrary to their own self interest. But that’s par for the course these days, for them.