What were you, Justin Trudeau, to do when, after winning the October 2015 election, you realized that the presence of a respected former leader of your party, Stéphane Dion, in your cabinet would serve as a constant reminder of progressive positions you’d rather not be reminded about?

You know, positions on such small matters as climate change, electoral reform, and handing over detainees to be tortured.

You could leave him out of cabinet entirely but, then, that would be a distinctly cloudy way to signal the start of a sunny new day in Ottawa.

You could instead decide to learn to live with this respected colleague’s penchant for taking principled stands. After all, as prime minister, you will call the final shots and everything this MP has done since you were elected leader has shown that he is loyal, arguing his case to Liberals behind closed doors but not making waves outside the caucus room.

Or you could take a more calculating tack: appoint him foreign minister for a while, partly in order to keep him away from a crucial domestic issue during your first 18 months — electoral reform — because you know he has a great passion for and expertise in this area while favouring a system you disfavour, one with a significant degree of proportional representation.

You could then make sure the biggest foreign policy issue of our times — global climate change — be tacked onto the portfolio of a rookie environment minister rather than having the lead minister on this file be a proven environmentalist who heads the department that (ironically) you rename Global Affairs Canada.

At the same time, when you head off to the Paris Climate Change Conference within days of your election victory, you could lean on the new foreign minister’s worldwide environmental reputation to help other states believe that you as PM are serious on climate change.

Then, less than one year into your government, you could remove him from the cabinet’s environmental committee because — heaven forbid — he is (so the story is now spun) stepping on toes in an effort to make a progressive imprint on government policy.

You could also then freeze your foreign minister out of the decision on whether to call a commission of inquiry into one of the biggest foreign policy controversies of the last decade — the policy and practice of ordering our soldiers to transfer Afghan detainees to the known and substantial risk of torture at the hands of Afghanistan’s security services, police and army.

For you recall the Liberal Party (and you) voted for such an inquiry when in opposition — indeed, it was a Liberal motion. And you know Minister Dion, when an opposition MP, reviewed a wide range of material (along with two other MPs assigned to study the material) on the transfer-to-torture issue and, in view of what he had seen, publicly stated that Canadians needed to know more.

So, rather than putting this issue in the hands of Foreign Minister Dion, you could assign this file to Defence Minister Sajjan. You could do this knowing he served in a key military capacity in Afghanistan that means he would be a relevant witness for any inquiry — such that he would be in a conflict of interest if he decided (as he — and the PMO — did decide) that there would be no inquiry.

But, most of all, you could plan from the very beginning to force this insistently principled colleague out at the time of the first major cabinet shuffle — usually, about 18-24 months after the election. To accomplish this, for starters your team could spread the rumour that he “did not play well with others” — which, translated, means that he took strong positions in a cabinet apparently composed of very fragile souls.

But such a plan would ultimately need to see your minions mount a whisper campaign to be fed to the media and the punditry circuit that would lead to a lemming-like parroting of the view that he had not performed well.

The starting point would be to put him in a political no-win position on a major file that he would then take the heat on. Say, just for example, sales of weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

All the better if certain key information is initially kept from him, so as to have him inadvertently claim the arms contract was further along in the approvals process when the Liberals took over than was actually the case. And then you could watch him twist in the wind in media and Question Period, and wait for the moment to go in for the kill.

You could then get “lucky.” Kill time comes earlier than expected.

Trump is elected and, so, the case arises for a new minister based on the perceived need for someone with a trade expertise and a big U.S. Rolodex to step in to manage the relationship with the U.S. as the (new) most important foreign policy issue.

But, as it turns out, you show your Machiavellian hand, revealing your combined intent to force Minister Dion from cabinet all along and at the same time make sure the electoral-reform file comes nowhere near a proportional representation result.

You simultaneously shuttle another minister (Maryam Monsef — who had also been set up to fail) out of the single portfolio that would be the perfect fit for Minister Dion, namely, the minister of democratic institutions.

Rather than offer this newly open portfolio to a senior statesperson like Minister Dion with more interest and expertise on democratic reform than the entire cabinet combined, you, prime minister, choose to bring in another rookie who, doubtless, you are confident will follow the lead of the PMO in preventing real electoral reform.

Simultaneously and in the result, you summarily dismiss a great Canadian who busted a gut fighting for this country’s unity, who bravely took an early lead in advocating the need for a Great Greenshift, who generally served as a model of decency and integrity in our political life, and who was actually performing strongly as foreign minister notwithstanding the poison chalice of the Saudi arms deal handed to him by the PMO.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

This is the opposite of treating a person with respect and dignity, regardless of what non-cabinet position may or may not have been offered.

Apart from declining to act callously and ruthlessly, what was a prime minister to do?

Craig Scott is a professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School and former NDP MP for Toronto-Danforth.

Read more about: