On the Lavalin allegations, one would have expected an energetic denial, not some bloodless, exquisitely phrased sentence

“What are you saying? Of course we didn’t. The idea that I, or anyone who works in my office, would interfere or pressure the Justice Minister in her proper role as the guardian of the rule of law — so much as lift an eyebrow when she is in the room — is preposterous, insulting, and absolutely and without qualification FALSE. And to be doubly clear on this, I’d instantly fire anyone who even brought up a whisper of a suggestion of it.”

Apart from proving that I’ll never be a playwright, the above smidgen of invented response is meant to display how a party leader would naturally speak when a newspaper has questioned his honour and the honour of his government on a matter as profound as attempting to influence the course of justice or pressure a justice minister in her function as guardian of the rule of law.

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The denial would be energetic, spontaneously expressed, a rush of words thrown back at the questioner and directly addressing the point of the question.

The denial would be energetic, spontaneously expressed, a rush of words thrown back at the questioner

It would not be some bloodless sentence, exquisitely phrased, designed in committee by crisis-management teams, evasive and equivocal, and delivered in a frozen robotic monotone with all the passion of some of those painfully overacted Heritage Moments we lately hear so much about.

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The prime minister in responding to a direct question on the SNC-Lavalin affair went the bloodless, pre-written, robotic route: “Neither the current nor the previous attorney general was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.” As the always perspicuous Chris Selley noted in these pages, “Interestingly, no one had alleged what he denied.”

A worthy reporter noting the particular stress Mr. Trudeau had put on the word “directed” went back with “are you saying now categorically there was no influence, or any pushing whatsoever …?”

Photo by John Mahoney/Postmedia News

Mr. Trudeau, totally ignoring the questioner’s point and his explicit request for categorical denial of “pushing” or “influence” — it was as if it had not been asked — then repeated, word by exquisite word, the exact, inadequate, prefabricated stream of words he had already given.

The reporter, admirably, tried again “… but not necessarily direct, Prime Minister, was there any sort of influence whatsoever?” Then for a third time (I expected a cock to crow somewhere) Mr. Trudeau flopped back to the identical stilted reply he had already given twice.

The prime minister called up the almost faded memories of the great equivocator himself

The reporter could have been questioning an old-fashioned teletype machine, preset for one reply only, for all the attention his actual questions were receiving.

In sticking to “direct” as his lexical life raft, the prime minister called up the almost faded memories of the great equivocator himself, that maestro of semantic misdirection, Bill Clinton, who famously exploited the lexical latitude of the verb “to be.” Ah, lord, he was a wonder. He may have been president, but America missed a genius grammarian in the process.

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There’s a whole lot in this latest flare. And hardly the least, beyond the allegations of favouritism to a Quebec company and lobby efforts with the PMO and others, is the cloud not hovering over the government’s high sanctimony — so furiously invoked in the diplomatic crisis with China — regarding its dedication to the rule of law.

Photo by Sean Kilpatrick/CP

The crisis over SNC-Lavalin merges here with the crisis over the arrest of Huawei Technologies’ CFO Meng Wanzhou. It is difficult to parade under the principled banner of the rule of law abroad when there is a reasoned allegation that it’s tattered at home.

And then there is the question of the previous minister of justice, and her recent ejection from the high table of government ministers to the lesser role of Veterans Affairs. In an explicitly feminist government, with a pledge to make Aboriginal issues its prime moral concern, the demotion of this minister, Aboriginal and female, seems to puncture the piety on both fronts. (A not so incidental point — why is she not the lead cabinet voice, the minister, on Indigenous Affairs and Reconciliation?)

Should it turn out that she was scapegoated — and the question is not nearly resolved on this point — but should it turn out so, it will be a nuclear political detonation for a government that has offered piety after piety on its “sensitivity” and concern for both women and Aboriginals.

Should it turn out that Jody Wilson-Raybould was scapegoated … it will be a nuclear political detonation for this government

Let me return to what I regard as Mr. Trudeau’s strange strain of response to the Globe and Mail’s reporting.

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When a person knows that an allegation is completely off the rails, knows that what is being hinted at or directly charged is baseless, without merit, completely off track, that person is immediately invested with a miraculous fluency and liberality of expression. He can really let fly. Politicians in particular pray for such moments. Even the poorest speaker in such a case is suddenly gifted with marvellous eloquence and directness and dismisses the question with blistering scorn, utterly without qualification or equivocation.

There was no energy, no force, no impulse of conviction or outrage in the early Trudeau replies on Thursday. It was a stumbling and nerveless, lawyerly as we say when we wish to indicate someone is dancing barefoot on hot coals and pretending the shoes he isn’t wearing are a little tight.