Everyone in politics is a communications expert, it’s said. The exception, as demonstrated throughout the past seven weeks of the SNC-Lavalin saga, appears to be almost everyone in Justin Trudeau’s government.

The issues at stake in the SNC-Lavalin affair go well beyond good or bad communication strategy, obviously.

But the handling of the controversy is a chapter itself in some future manual on crisis management in politics — a case study in all the wrong ways to deal with serious challenges to government integrity.

This is a serious challenge. It requires more than tight scripts, half-answers and post-dated replies to allegations of impropriety at the highest levels of Trudeau’s government. Even when the government has tried to match one damaging leak for another — the latest being a report about Jody Wilson-Raybould’s questionable choice for a Supreme Court of Canada appointment — the effort only invites more controversy.

Ironically, the chronic communications fails were cast into stark relief on Tuesday when a lone Liberal MP showed how it was possible to meet the SNC-Lavalin controversy head on.

Granted, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith was part of yet another effort to keep a Commons committee from doing further inquiry into SNC-Lavalin, but he managed to do it without any of the ham-handed communications tactics that his fellow Liberals have been practising for nearly two months now.

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Once again, Trudeau’s Liberals have left themselves open to charges that they are covering up the controversy or trying to shut it down or muzzle the two women who have left cabinet in protest against how SNC-Lavalin was handled. But others in Trudeau’s government could take some lessons from this rookie Toronto MP from Beaches-East York, who has a bit of a reputation as a principled independent.

Erskine-Smith answered questions. He gave considered answers. He didn’t try to pretend that he had them all. He certainly didn’t duck a chance to speak at the ethics committee meeting on Tuesday, as his fellow Liberal MPs did, and he didn’t run away from reporters’ questions afterwards either. In fact, he returned to the scrums to clarify where he stood.

Erskine-Smith readily acknowledged he was looking for more information on what Wilson-Raybould has alleged about the “inappropriate” pressure she said she faced on whether to extend a plea deal to SNC-Lavalin. He talked about contradictions that needed to be sorted out between her testimony to the Commons justice committee last month and other subsequent witnesses, such as Trudeau’s former principal secretary Gerald Butts.

He is not joining the increasing chorus of Liberal MPs pushing for Wilson-Raybould or former minister Jane Philpott to simply walk into the Commons and use their legal privilege in Parliament to tell the truth.

Instead, Erskine-Smith is in favour of Trudeau and the government giving them expanded waiver powers to say all they know about SNC-Lavalin.

“To get at the truth, there should be a broadening of that waiver,” Erskine-Smith said.

When asked how much guidance the Prime Minister’s Office had given him on how to handle Tuesday’s committee meeting, Erskine-Smith flatly said, “Zero.”

This could be the secret of his success. The best communications strategy may be no communications strategy at all. It probably reveals something about the current political culture around Parliament Hill that Erskine-Smith is a rare breath of fresh air.

It is all too easy to give communications advice from the spectators’ seats — a practice that the punditry business indulges far too often.

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To be clear, the media’s fundamental interest in the SNC-Lavalin saga has been to get the full story — not one side or another, just the complete tale of what happened to cause all this turmoil in Trudeau’s government.

What’s clear is that all the communications strategies in the world — on either side of the partisan divide — are not useful to achieving that goal. Nor does Parliament seem to be up to the task, given the dysfunction of committees and Question Period. Erskine-Smith also said flatly on Tuesday that Commons committees weren’t all that effective at legal work.

Whenever — or if ever — the dust settles on SNC-Lavalin, we might well want to consider how the institutions at the heart of Parliament and government couldn’t get at some basic truths, and why MPs such as Erskine-Smith are outliers in the prevailing political culture.

Susan Delacourt is the Star's Ottawa bureau chief and a columnist covering national politics. Reach her via email: sdelacourt@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @susandelacourt

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