OTTAWA, Ontario -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada on Thursday spoke directly about the political controversy that has consumed the country for the past month, saying there had been a breakdown in trust and communication but that he had not done anything wrong.
Asked by a reporter in the packed national press gallery in Ottawa if he was apologizing, he offered an indirect denial.
"In regards to standing up for jobs and defending the integrity of law, I continue to say that there was no inappropriate pressure," he said.
In the brewing political crisis, the prime minister and his staff have been depicted as inappropriately and repeatedly pressuring his justice minister and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to settle a corporate criminal case to protect Canadian jobs.
The prime minister's popularity has sunk, calls for his resignation are echoing, two powerful female ministers -- one of them Wilson-Raybould -- have resigned in protest, and his top political adviser, who is a close friend, has stepped aside.
"I was not aware of that erosion of trust, and as prime minister and head of Cabinet, I should have been," Trudeau said. "Ultimately, I believe our government will be stronger for having wrestled with these issues."
On Thursday, seven months before a national election, Trudeau said he was still a feminist, and still committed to righting the country's wrongs against indigenous people and to conducting politics in an open, transparent way.
He pointed out that after his remarks, he was heading straight to the Arctic to apologize to Inuit people for historic wrongs and would be celebrating International Women's Day in Toronto.
He said he looked forward to defending his government's record during the election campaign in the fall.
At the center of the controversy is the giant Canadian engineering and construction company SNC-Lavalin, which in 2015 was charged with bribing Libyan officials during the dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi and defrauding the Libyan government.
Trudeau and his top aides were accused of trying to get Wilson-Raybould to allow the company to avoid a conviction -- which would bar it from government contracts for a decade -- and instead negotiate a monetary penalty.
The prime minister initially dismissed the accusations.
He also seemed to criticize Wilson-Raybould for not raising her concerns with him about impropriety late last year, when the debate about how to handle the case was underway.
Last week, Wilson-Raybould offered testimony to a House of Commons justice committee. She described months of being hounded by members of the prime minister's team, long after she told them her mind was made up to pursue a criminal conviction.
She called their behavior inappropriate and described "veiled threats."
On Wednesday, Gerald Butts, the prime minister's former chief political adviser, appeared before the justice committee, and said that Wilson-Raybould was asked to get an outside opinion about using the monetary penalty because of the potential job loss if the company lost business.
"When 9,000 people's jobs are at stake, it is a public policy problem of the highest order," Butts said. "It was our obligation to exhaustively consider options the law allows."
A Section on 03/08/2019