The old saw about crisis management is that the goal is to figure out where the crisis ends and get there as quickly as possible.
But when Liberal cabinet minister Dominic LeBlanc met reporters on the Saturday morning after the resignation of David Johnston to talk about next steps, he was back where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was three months ago, on March 6.
That was the day when Mr. Trudeau, facing mounting controversy over reports of foreign interference in elections and opposition calls for a public inquiry, had hastily convened a press conference and instead promised to name a then-unspecified “eminent Canadian” to look into the whole business.
The Liberals’ crisis management took the most torturous route away from where the whole thing was going to end up, in an inquiry, and caused them to suffer as many wounds as possible along the way.
When Mr. Trudeau realized back in March that he had to do something about this, pronto, he did not look ahead to how it would end.
You’d think it would have been obvious even then that any eminent Canadian named as “independent special rapporteur” should be someone demonstrably indifferent to people named Trudeau. And that ordinary folks could be persuaded to question the impartiality of someone who was a friend of the first prime minister Trudeau, and knew the current one when he was a boy.
On Saturday, Mr. LeBlanc complained about toxic partisanship, and there certainly was some, but political heat around allegations of foreign interference was apparent back in March. It was already clear then that a “rapporteur” who rejected calls for an inquiry – as Mr. Johnston eventually did – was going to face a wave of criticism. Mr. Trudeau threw Mr. Johnston into that bubbling cauldron anyway.
Now, three months later, the Liberals are saying they are open to a public inquiry. Mr. LeBlanc even asserted that the idea of holding one was never off the table – apparently because Liberals have blotted out the uncomfortable memory of the 17 days between Mr. Johnston’s first report and his resignation. You know, the period when an inquiry was off the table.
But now it is do-over time.
There is one thing that the Liberals have gained from the three months of self-harm and the panoply of attacks on Mr. Johnston’s role, and that is the ability to put some pressure back on opposition politicians.
The only joy Mr. LeBlanc got out of his Saturday press conference was the opportunity to put the onus on opposition parties to get together and say how they would set up an inquiry – an opportunity to accuse opponents of unserious and irresponsible criticism and press them to present a joint proposal.
The three major opposition parties had passed an NDP motion calling for Mr. Johnston to resign that also asked the government to call an inquiry headed by a figure with unanimous support from all major parties. Mr. LeBlanc essentially dared them to start drafting the details, including details of the terms of reference, the deadline, suggested names for who would lead it, and how they would deal with the handling of top-secret intelligence in a public inquiry.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre quickly promised he would talk to the Bloc Québécois and NDP about answering those questions. “Yes, yes, yes, and yes,” he said at a Parliament Hill press conference.
Maybe Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Trudeau will end up regretting that they ever issued the invitation. Certainly, Mr. LeBlanc offered no guarantees that the government will accept what the opposition cooks up.
But it’s hard to imagine now that this fiasco ends in any other way than an inquiry. That was the case three months ago, too.
In the meantime, the Liberals have been taking on more and more allegations of stonewalling and cover-up – or, at the least, being unwilling to set up a process that can be widely trusted over something as serious as foreign interference in Canadian elections.
And there was Mr. LeBlanc holding a crisis press conference right back at the starting line.