The Liberals Should Give Philpott and Wilson-Raybould a Break
By: Fiorenzo Arcadi & Mike Ambrowics
Neil MacDonald’s most recent CBC News article, “At this point, the Philpott-Wilson-Raybould end game is obvious – destroy Trudeau”, is rather food for thought. However to be quite frank, it really makes no sense that Wilson-Raybould and Philpott have “co-ordinated” and plotted a sinister attack conspiracy against Justin Trudeau. Firstly, kudos to the Liberals for releasing a budget that pleased the majority of Canadians with numerous middle-class incentives. If the Wilson-Raybould-Philpott is to hold, then it has to remain consistent and persistent in the social media context in order for voters to be influenced in their future election decisions.
I think Wilson-Raybould and Philpott will enjoy an enormous amount of support in their ridings as mavericks whereby principle is governed by their own conscience. The only caveat is Wilson-Raybould’s father who once had a showdown with Pierre E. Trudeau. Her father indicated that one day his daughters would want to be Prime Minister too. Pierre E. Trudeau took off his glasses, smiled, and perhaps showed a glimpse of ridicule towards Wilson-Raybould’s father, he responded, “Tell them I’ll stick around until they’re ready.” Unfortunately Pierre E. Trudeau didn’t stick around. In the meantime, Jody Wilson-Raybould catapulted herself amongst the Liberal party ranks to a position with high prestige and one where her opinion holds weight.
Author Neil MacDonald’s choice of references weren’t surprising. He mentioned Brian Mulroney publicly pretending to be loyal to Joe Clark while his operatives secretly worked to destroy Clark’s shaky Tory leadership. MacDonald also brought up Liberal MPs working as operatives for pre-elected Jean Chrétien in the 1980s behind incumbent leader John Turner’s back. Finally, he referenced Lucien Bouchard who he alleges convinced the province of Quebec that they were played a fool by Anglos, to which he stormed out of Brian Mulroney’s government and shouted that this leader’s word must be “as straight as the sword of the king”, to which he followed up with the establishment of the Bloc Quebecois. Although all these examples did in fact take place, we simply live in a different world today where these examples portray different meanings. I heard another expat Conservative went off to try to establish a competing party against the Conservatives. This guy could actually do a lot of damage.
The Wilson-Raybould case illustrates a different paradigm. If you’re working for a major corporation and you have an enormous amount of clout within that organization, when issues arise that pertain the breakdown of company culture, then you want to voice not only your opinion, but the narrative as to what truly happened. Women feel that they can not allow men in power to get the best of them, and they deserve to hold true to that. If the Prime Minister can’t hold true to that, what good is he?
Author Neil MacDonald has indicated that the Philpott-Wilson-Raybould developments have been a “power play”. This is simply not true; the power play was based on the Prime Minister’s office. That’s why the disgraced Gerald Butts was shown the door, and needless to say a whole bunch of other people followed suit. The reason why this is gaining momentum is not because the Conservatives continue to badger the Liberals to obtain Wilson-Raybould’s testimony, but simply because the Liberals also feel within their conscience that Wilson-Raybould did not deserve to be demoted. Most recently, the Huffington Post published an article stating that Trudeau won't say if the office leaked stories about Wilson-Raybould's top court pick. Of course it was the Prime Minister's office that leaked the story as they try to gather and retain caucus support in order to get rid of Wilson-Raybould and Philpott. Frankly, Justin Trudeau is not the type of guy to get his hands dirty.
The boys wanted to protect themselves and are now facing more stories from different angles regarding the narrative. Sheila Copps indicated that Philpott and Wilson-Raybould are “dangerous” and therefore need to be distanced as far away from the Liberal Party as possible. This is ludicrous; what they displayed was common human nature that their roles should have been separate and independent. For example, if a man cheats on his wife and he denies it religiously, then we can all be certain that his wife will never trust him again.
Is there a good possibility that Trudeau loses the upcoming election? Of course anything is possible. However if the competing parties come out and believe that Canada’s international credit is good, they may just up the ante and give seniors a 50% bonus to their social security. They may also up the ante further by increasing the first-time buyer home incentive, a quick way to capture the votes of millennials. Instead of a $40,000 home incentive, why not offer up to $100,000? That would be the real game-changer.
If Justin Trudeau loses the election, that could mean the self-fulfilling prophecy could come true; that Jody Wilson-Raybould is finally ready.