Resignations rattle Justin Trudeau
The departure of Gerald Butts, the Canadian prime minister’s closest aide, has not calmed a scandal
WHEN JUSTIN TRUDEAU, Canada’s prime minister, demoted Jody Wilson-Raybould, the justice minister and attorney-general, in a cabinet shuffle on January 14th he gave no explanation. On February 7th the Globe and Mail, a newspaper, provided one. It quoted anonymous sources as saying that Ms Wilson-Raybould was being punished for resisting pressure from someone in the prime minister’s office to drop the prosecution for fraud of SNC-Lavalin, a construction and engineering firm. The company, which is accused of paying bribes in Libya during the rule of Muammar Qaddafi, would have been let off with a fine, the report alleged.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Butts out”
From the February 23rd 2019 edition
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