Jane Philpott was known as a fixer in Justin Trudeau’s government. Well, the newest former member of the cabinet has definitely fixed things now, but not in any way that works for Trudeau and his chances of being a two-term prime minister.

More to the point, Philpott’s departure proves that women have indeed done politics differently in this government — just not in the way Trudeau anticipated.

Philpott has exited Trudeau’s cabinet in the same way that Jody Wilson-Raybould bolted: explosively, unexpectedly and clearly in full recognition of the massive damage it would cause to the boss, the government and the chances of the Liberals being re-elected this fall.

Together, they are a double-barrelled shot to the heart of all that was supposed to be the shiny new brand of the Trudeau government: one far more friendly to women, Indigenous people and rookie politicians such as Philpott and Wilson-Raybould.

In all the senior jobs these two ministers did for Trudeau — health, justice, Indigenous services, Treasury Board and veterans’ affairs — Philpott and Wilson-Raybould were poster politicians for all the claims of a different kind of government.

One is reminded of Oscar Wilde’s old quip about parents: to lose one is unfortunate, to lose both looks like carelessness.

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Yet these two ex-ministers remain avowed Liberals, still-standing members of the caucus — essentially daring Trudeau to kick them out, despite their public statements of non-confidence in the prime minister and his way of doing business.

This is something we have never seen before in Canadian federal politics, or at least in recent memory of bombshell cabinet exits by male politicians. When men have left, they tended to slam the door on the way out, to pursue other ambitions — forming another party or a rearguard leadership run.

No bigger endgame is in sight for either Philpott or Wilson-Raybould, which makes their protests harder to dismiss as mere ambition or disagreement. They haven’t even left the prime minister room to call this a principled disagreement — both have claimed to be in the moral right and the prime minister to be in the moral, if not legal wrong.

Again, this is new: when men have stomped out of previous cabinets, they haven’t been as explicit in their condemnations of the standing prime minister’s actions. They have let their presence, or lack of it, “speak for itself,” as the prime minister said not so long ago when he thought he could keep Wilson-Raybould in cabinet.

At a rally in Toronto on Monday night, the prime minister continued to present himself as the happy, carry-on, presider-in-chief over spirited disagreement. “I know Ms. Philpott has felt this way for some time,” he said, and “while I am disappointed, I understand.”

That minimalist reaction might work if one sees this departure, to cite Oscar Wilde again, as merely unfortunate, and not carelessness. Nor does it seem adequate to the unprecedented nature of this cabinet-level erosion of confidence.

On this one, Trudeau has no playbook to consult; no tried-and-true tactics to counter an implosion of this magnitude or rarity. Nothing he has done to date has contained this scandal — not even the loss of his principal secretary and right-hand man, Gerald Butts — and what’s been done to date, or not done, may have only made it worse.

Whatever Butts was planning to say on Wednesday at the Commons justice committee in defence of Trudeau’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair, it is no doubt under serious revision now. This isn’t he-said, she-said anymore — it’s he-said, they said, and it’s not just double trouble, but a crisis increased vastly more than twofold.

Five short weeks ago, Wilson-Raybould, Philpott and Whitby MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes sat huddled together at a festive social event, laughing and enjoying themselves at an annual Robert Burns dinner on Parliament Hill.

Caesar-Chavannes made a highly provocative speech, taking a poke at the touchy issue of Wilson-Raybould’s demotion from cabinet, and her replacement with a “white man,” Montreal MP David Lametti. Here’s the part that made many in the room do a sharp intake of breath — all except Wilson-Raybould and Philpott, who applauded and cheered loudly. (Caesar-Chavannes supplied this excerpt to the National Post the next day.)

“Speaking of Jody Wilson-Raybould, if Robbie Burns was a member of our government, she would have been asked to remove him from our Parliament, not just our caucus, based on his exploits,” she said.

“If she didn’t succeed, she would have been fired. If she succeeded in removing Robbie Burns, she would have been fired. You can’t have an Indian doing that to the White Man. Lametti can, you can’t. The lads are better at that sort of thing.”

Did these three women politicians know that they’d be hitting the exit button in Trudeau’s government within a little more than a month? Caesar-Chavannes announced she wasn’t running again over the weekend; she said on Twitter on Monday, in the wake of Philpott’s departure, that her own withdrawal from politics was not SNC-Lavalin-related.

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Of the three, only Caesar-Chavannes has plotted a clear exit path. By the end of this year, she will no longer be a Liberal MP. Philpott and Wilson-Raybould are blazing a very different, entirely unpredictable trail, for themselves and for their government.

How, exactly do they intend to continue to sit in a caucus led by a prime minister in whom they have no confidence? If they do run in the next election as Liberals, how does that work? No political-science textbook covers this possibility. New ones may have to be written.

On this promise, to see a different kind of politics at the highest levels in Canada, Trudeau has delivered. It’s just not in a way that any of us, or the prime minister himself, may have envisioned.

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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