Are cabinet departures a cover for something else?

By Letter to the Editor on March 20, 2019.

Recently, there has been much angst and skirmish in Ottawa regarding the Liberal cabinet. Both Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott stated they left because they lacked confidence in the prime minister and government. However, is what we see in the press just smoke and mirrors? Is one story obscuring what was happening or about to happen?

Wilson-Raybould, when she was attorney general, was in a no-win situation. If she over-ruled the director of public prosecution (who refused to negotiate a remediation agreement regarding SNC-Lavalin’s corrupt and illegal activities) then she herself would appear part of the corruption. If she went against the DPP, then 9,000 employees of SNC might lose their jobs, pension funds invested in the corporation would suffer, and she would be at the receiving end of the political fallout.

As for Philpott, as president of the Treasury Board, she was responsible for the huge fiasco, the Phoenix Accounting System. This system was supposed to have saved $70 million, it lost about $1 billion, and after three years it is still a mess. The worst parts however, are that the losses were mostly to pay IBM $1.3 billion for implementing their system (does software really cost that much), that bonuses were paid to executives both in IBM and in the federal services, and in the next few months three-quarters of federal employees will be having great difficulty filing false claims due to their upcoming income tax returns based on incorrect payments.

No, for these ministers, it would appear that it was far better to blame the current government, and to bail out from their respective disasters, than to face what is about to get far worse.

John Cherwonogrodzky

Medicine Hat

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