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How to solve a problem like Jody?

In his submission to the ethics commissioner’s investigation into the SNC affair, Justin Trudeau said his relationship with Jody Wilson-Raybould had become challenging and tense.

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His counsel claimed she felt collaboration with Trudeau’s office and cabinet was not something she should have to do.

By many accounts, Wilson-Raybould did not play well with others. At the time SNC’s push for a deferred prosecution agreement was becoming an issue in fall 2018, another issue was causing friction between the then attorney general and her colleagues — the government’s proposed legislative framework on Indigenous rights.

Trudeau had proposed that he would recognize Indigenous rights, rather than have Indigenous people have to claim them. Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett was the lead member of cabinet on the file but Wilson-Raybould was a key voice at the table. The problem was that her views did not coincide with Bennett’s.