Canada's top civil servant to quit as scandal's toll on Trudeau mounts

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS MARCH 18, 2019 / 9:33 AM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO

Canada's top civil servant to quit as scandal's toll on Trudeau mounts

David Ljunggren
4 MIN READ

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The head of Canada’s federal bureaucracy said on Monday he was quitting over his role in handling a corporate corruption case, dealing another blow to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he battles the biggest political crisis of his tenure.

Polls suggest that Trudeau’s Liberals - who a few months ago looked certain to be re-elected in October - are now at risk of losing power to the official opposition Conservatives.

Trudeau has been on the defensive since Feb. 7 over allegations that top officials leaned on former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to ensure engineering and construction firm SNC-Lavalin Group Inc avoided a corruption trial.

Top civil servant Michael Wernick told Trudeau he would be retiring in the coming weeks because opposition leaders had lost confidence in him over the scandal. Two high-profile women cabinet ministers and Trudeau’s closest personal aide had already quit over SNC-Lavalin before Monday’s resignation.

Wernick, the clerk of the privy council, is supposed to be non-partisan, like the rest of the federal bureaucracy. But his strong defense of government officials over the SNC-Lavalin affair and his insistence that no one had done anything wrong triggered widespread criticism from opposition legislators that he was siding with the Liberals.

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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-politics/canadas-top-civil-servant-to-quit-as-scandals-toll-on-trudeau-mounts-idUSKCN1QZ1KK

[applegrove]

1. I'm with Perry Bellegarde of the AFN... get back together liberals so

they are ready for the election while studying whether the justice minister and attorney general should be separate roles as they are in Britain. Get it done because liberals have alot more work to do in negotiations on aboriginal issues that the conservatives will never allow.

The conservatives will also deny climate change. And destroy Canadian democracy and civic capital. They will play groups off against each other and foment ignorance.

I'm all for changing corruption laws to give a financial reward to anybody who turns in Canadian corporate officials who do graft abroad... making all the grafters afraid of each other....if it can be proven in court. Then the individuals and the corporations should be massively fined. Come on people. Use some military tactics to mess up the corruption.

AFN is The Assembly of First Nations.