“I was not aware of that erosion of trust, and as prime minister and head of cabinet, I should have been,” the Canadian prime minister said at a news conference.
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said on Thursday that a dispute with his former justice minister that has ballooned into a political crisis came from a breakdown in trust and communication.
“I was not aware of that erosion of trust, and as prime minister and head of cabinet, I should have been,” Mr. Trudeau told a news conference in Ottawa. “Ultimately, I believe our government will be stronger for having wrestled with these issues.”
The remarks were Mr. Trudeau’s first about a brewing controversy in which the prime minister had been depicted as inappropriately and repeatedly pressuring his justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to settle a corporate criminal case to protect Canadian jobs.
And they followed a month of controversy that in some ways seems quaint: No money changed hands and no laws appear to have been broken.
The political wreckage from that perception has been huge.
[You can read more here about the SNC-Lavalin case and how it has entangled Mr. Trudeau.]
The prime minister’s popularity has sunk, calls for his resignation still echo, two powerful female ministers — one of them the justice minister — have resigned in protest — and he has lost his top political adviser, who is a close friend, in the mess.
Seven months before the national election, he needed to convince the country that he was still the feminist, “sunny ways” politician, committed to righting the country’s wrongs and doing politics in open, transparent way.
