Jody Wilson-Raybould - Indian in the Cabinet

For Kaija, Kaylene, and Kadenceyou make all sacrifices worthwhile

T he sun was flooding through the third-floor windows of the Signature private plane terminal at Vancouver International Airport as I sat waiting for the prime minister to arrive. The terminal is distant and isolated, far from the bustling main terminal and the eyes of the public and the media. My husband, Tim, had dropped me off and then parked to wait for me among the cars of the prime ministers motorcade. The PM was late. Building in me was a creeping realization that this was the beginning of the end. It was here. The time had come.

It had been three days since Robert Fifes front-page story in the Globe and Mail set off a series of ongoing convulsions over the Liberal governments attempts to pressure me on the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. As soon as the story broke, the prime minister said that the allegations in the Globe story this morning are false. Neither the current nor the previous attorney general was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter. The governments response over the next seventy-two hours had been a case study in hubrisat once both surprised that they had been caught and offended that anyone could think they would ever do anything wrong. In the Indigenous political world I had come from, we always talked about how government practice, for generations, was to deny, delay, and distract when it came to Indigenous issues. I had heard that phrasedeny, delay, and distractsince I was a kid. The past three years had shown me that governments use that strategy far beyond their dealings with Indigenous peoples. Sometimes all Canadians are treated contemptuously. On SNC-Lavalin, few were buying it. And they were right to be skeptical.

I wished it had not come to this. I felt a familiar conflict inside of me that had been there my whole life: A deep desire to believe in people. To expect the best out of them. To want them to do the right thing. Almost a protective desire to see them do right. And yet simultaneously knowing that sometimes this does not happen. That when people act a certain way time and again, they are likely to repeat it, whatever my hopes and wishes may be.

As I sat there in that rooma big room, all by myselfwaiting for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to arrive, I asked myself why I felt that I had to try to help him out of this mess, to protect him. Especially when his government had been digging a deeper and deeper hole by the hour by not coming clean on how I was pushed to take over the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin to enable them to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement, or DPA. Especially when his office had been telling their MPs to repeat lines they knew were not accurate.

I was anxious as I sat there. I could feel my lingering hope that I would be proven wrong and that everything was not as terrible as it seemed. I wished that the government would just admit their wrongdoing and deal with it openly and transparently. I knew the only way to deal with it was to tell the truth. Full transparency. It was as clear to me as sunlight. The prime minister had to simply acknowledge that the attempts to apply pressure were not proper and take concrete steps to address the wrong actions. Deep down I think I knew better than to expect him to own up. However, at that moment, I still wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I saw the Canadian Armed Forces Challenger land and pull up to the private terminal. As the prime minister walked up the stairs, I could hear him talking to someone moments before he entered the room. He greeted me in his typically physical and warm way, with a hug and expressions of appreciation. I so want you to keep being part of this government, he said.

As always, from the first time I met him in Whitehorse in 2013, he reflected on the good we can do for the country. This is so Justin Trudeau. Taking control and setting the tone. Trying to remind everyone in the roomin this case mewho is in charge. I dont think that you leaked the story [to the Globe], he said. Unless I told him otherwise, he added. A power play. He was trying to push the ball into my court.

Looking back, I do not think the prime minister had a clue what I was going to say in this meeting. As it turned out, this was the first of three private meetings with the PM over the next thirty-six hours, before I eventually resigned from his Cabinet. That resignationand everything that led to itwould lead to him tossing me out of the Liberal caucus and then removing me as the confirmed Liberal candidate for Vancouver Granville in the 2019 general election.

The prime minister and I had not communicated since the Globe story brokenot even by phonebut the world had exploded around me. The public and media barrage was unlike anything I had ever experienced or could ever have anticipated. And it was a similar firestorm for the prime minister and his office. Intrusive, relentless, and everywhere.

I know the prime minister had always considered me a bit of a challengenot political enough, too independent-minded, and ultimately not part of the inner Liberal crowd. I think I was foreign and incomprehensible to him. After all, I was from the other side of the tracks. I was an Indigenous girl from a small fishing villageCape Mudge, on the southern tip of Quadra Island just off Vancouver Island. I am Kwakwakawakw. The PM did not grow up in my neighbourhoods, with the kids I grew up with. None of his family went to residential schools. My childhood memories are closer to Comox and Cape Mudge than Rockcliffe. My political point of reference was the Big House, not the House of Commons. To be fair, he did not choose how and where he grew up or who his parents were. But Liberals? Political parties? Not my world.

With the ice cracked but not broken, I started softly, reminding the prime minister where I had always stood. I got into politics because there are issues that I am seriously committed to helping resolve. I recalled for him then one of our first conversations when he was recruiting me for the party. We were in Whitehorse, and we had talked about our visions of the country and how we seemed to have similar views. I got involved with the Liberal Party largely because I believed we shared those views, and because I thought he would be a good prime minister and create a good team. I had believed all that Id said to him five and a half years earlier. As I repeated it in that big airport room, I found myself wondering exactly when I first realized I had been wrong.

I got to the heart of the matter. Since you brought it up, I did not leak the story, and it is absurd and offensive you would suggest that. I wondered if he knew that I had warned Gerry Butts, his principal secretary, that I had been cornered by Robert Fife after Cabinet on February 5 as I came out of the elevator on the ground floor of West Block. Fifes questions had been so detailed they indicated something explosive was coming. I rhetorically asked the PM about the leak: Why would I ever do that? There was so much I had come to Ottawa to accomplish. For Indigenous peoples and all Canadians. I had traded my life as I knew it to enter federal politics, just as I knew 337 other people had. Taking myself down, which in any scenario was the most likely outcome of the story leaking, did not advance those causes. Absurd. Like so much else that was to follow.

There is no question in my mind that the prime minister knew there were attempts to pressure me to avoid a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, and while those attempts failed, thankfully, they were wrong and he knew it. Instead of simply addressing the issue publicly and accurately, the government was sending out talking headsthe new attorney general, David Lametti; Marco Mendicino; Arif Viranito make comments that evidence has now shown were not accurate or right. I told him that he should be telling Canadians the truth.