OTTAWA—Former attorney general and justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould sparked questions about legal ethics on Friday, when a parliamentary committee published audio that she secretly recorded of a tense phone conversation with Canada’s top bureaucrat.

It was the latest flare in the ongoing SNC-Lavalin controversy that has consumed federal politics since the first week of February, and it had at least one Ontario lawyer “seriously” contemplating filing a complaint about Wilson-Raybould’s conduct to the Ontario law society.

James Bowie, an Ottawa criminal lawyer and past Liberal staffer, said he believes Wilson-Raybould — who was called to the Ontario bar as Canada’s attorney general in 2016 — is bound by the same ethical rules as all Ontario lawyers. Those rules state: “A lawyer shall not use any device to record a conversation between the lawyer and a client or another legal practitioner, even if lawful, without first informing the other person of the intention to do so.”

Michael Wernick’s lawyer, Frank Addario, a Toronto criminal law expert, said he agrees with Wilson-Raybould’s own admission that the secret recording was inappropriate.

Wernick, who announced this month that he is resigning as clerk, first found out Friday that Wilson-Raybould recorded their Dec. 19 phone call, Addario said.

“I don’t know any lawyer who records conversations with work colleagues or clients. I don’t get the covert ops program or holding on to the tape for a convenient moment,” he said.

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“She was the chief legal officer for the country. She didn’t give her tape to the RCMP. She didn’t give it to the (prime minister) or the ethics commissioner. She didn’t even give it to the committee when she first testified. I don’t understand that behaviour.”

Because Wilson-Raybould, as attorney general, was acting as the lawyer for the Canadian government, and Wernick was an agent of the government, the secret recording was a clear violation of Ontario’s professional rules, Bowie said. He said he will contemplate the matter over the weekend, and that he may submit a complaint about the recorded conversation to the Ontario law society.

“It’s a clear violation because everyone there is an agent for the government. They’re speaking to the lawyer for the government about government business,” he said.

“It’s important that the government should have confidence when speaking to their own attorney general that that person is an ethical lawyer who will abide by the rules.”

As part of her disclosure to the House of Commons justice committee, which was made public late Friday afternoon, Wilson-Raybould submitted an audio file of a 17-minute conversation with outgoing Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick. Wilson-Raybould said she was “anxious to ensure” she had an accurate record of the Dec. 19 conversation, because she suspected the clerk would continue what she alleges was an inappropriate campaign to pressure her into settling fraud and bribery charges with SNC-Lavalin.

“I took the extraordinary and otherwise inappropriate step of making an audio recording of the conversation without so advising the Clerk,” she wrote in her submission.

“This is something that I have never done before this phone call and have not done since. I did this simply to ensure that my notes were accurate and given the ongoing pressure and attempts to interfere in this case,” she said.

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Others said it is less clear whether Wilson-Raybould breached professional rules. Jennifer Quaid, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, pointed out that Wilson-Raybould was called to the Ontario bar because of her role as Canada’s attorney general. Ontario law society rules state the attorney general is entitled to be called to the bar “without complying with the Law Society Act or any of the regulations or rules of the Society as to licensing, examinations, payment of fees or otherwise.”

That makes it hard to say definitively that Wilson-Raybould broke rules, even if secretly recording the conversation seems questionable at first blush, Quaid said.

“Is she trying to record evidence of something she thinks is problematic? Maybe that’s defensible,” she said. “These disciplinary ethical obligations are highly context-specific.”

Howard Anglin, a constitutional law expert who was deputy chief of staff to former prime minister Stephen Harper, said the question hinges on whether Wernick and Wilson-Raybould were in a solictor-client position when the conversation was secretly recorded. In his view, Wernick was in no legal position to instruct Wilson-Raybould on the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, so he was not acting as her client in this situation.

“Therefore her actions, including recording the conversation with Mr. Wernick, would not be subject to the ethical rule against recording a conversation with a client or another lawyer,” he said.

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