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Political scandals bring to light figures who are largely unknown to the wider public. The SNC-Lavalin affair has done such for the clerk of the Privy Council, Canada’s most senior bureaucrat, Michael Wernick.

Wernick is hardly obscure; at a conference of public administration scholars he would be a star keynote speaker. But he remains largely hidden, as is fitting for his role. The SNC business brought him into the light, where he demonstrated quickly that he is better kept in the shadows.

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It turns out that he is something of a delicate flower with a paranoid touch, which must be a very stressful way to live. He began his first appearance at the Commons justice committee denouncing the “vomitorium” of social media, and musing that Canada is in danger of political figures being assassinated. The sesquicentennial of the last such assassination, D’Arcy McGee, fell just 11 months ago, so perhaps Wernick just meant that Canada was overdue for another.

It turns out that he is something of a delicate flower with a paranoid touch

In preparation for his second appearance, Canada’s most senior public servant had assigned one his legions of subordinates to compile a list of nasty things said about him on social media. With an evidently wounded amour-propre, Wernick suggested that the committee would want to investigate this shocking phenomenon of people saying mean things on the internet. The women on the committee, in particular, seemed less than impressed that the clerk had stumbled upon a phenomenon heretofore known only to newspaper columnists, sports figures and high school students.