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Canada’s former attorney general has resigned from Justin Trudeau’s cabinet amid a report she was pressured by the prime minister’s office to intervene in a legal case involving SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.
Jody Wilson-Raybould announced her resignation on her website Tuesday, after days of saying she couldn’t comment on work she did as the government’s chief lawyer. She was moved from the justice ministry to veterans affairs last month.
“We’re bound by cabinet confidentiality. In our system of government, of course, her presence in cabinet should actually speak for itself”
The statement doesn’t offer a reason for her departure. Wilson-Raybould has retained former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Thomas Cromwell to advise on what she is able to say in public.
Wilson-Raybould said she ran for office “with the goal of implementing a positive and progressive vision of change” and a “different way” of doing politics. “My resignation as a Minister of the Crown in no way changes my commitment to seeing that fundamental change achieved,” she wrote.
A report last week by the Globe and Mail newspaper about pressure on Wilson-Raybould to seek an out-of-court settlement for the Montreal-based engineering and construction giant has dominated political debate in Canada ever since.
SNC-Lavalin has long lobbied for a negotiated settlement in the case, which dates back to 2012 and has cost the company at least C$5 billion ($3.8 billion) in lost revenue, Chief Executive Officer Neil Bruce said in December.
The company’s shares were down 0.6 percent in trading Tuesday, to C$33.79 as of 12:49 p.m. New York time, and down 30 percent since late last month after SNC issued two separate profit warnings unrelated to the Wilson-Raybould matter. The stock is on pace to close at its lowest level since April 2009.
Trudeau said Monday he told the Vancouver lawmaker last fall that any decision to direct prosecutors in the case was hers alone. Her resignation adds to political damage for the governing Liberal Party heading into the campaign for an October election, coming the day after the parliamentary ethics watchdog opened an investigation into the matter.
Wilson-Raybould will stay on as an member of parliament, but was silent on whether she’d stay in the Liberal caucus or sit as an independent.
Trudeau, a day earlier, tried to strike a collaborative tone, and said Wilson-Raybould’s continued seat at the cabinet table was a signal. “We’re bound by cabinet confidentiality. In our system of government, of course, her presence in cabinet should actually speak for itself,” he told reporters Monday in Vancouver.
(By Greg Quinn and Josh Wingrove)
