Global News - today   
      
   Justin Trudeau needs to remove Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott from   
   caucus   
      
      
   How much longer will Prime Minister Justin Trudeau allow Jody Wilson-Raybould   
   and Jane Philpott to remain in the federal Liberal caucus?   
      
   In Ottawa, that question dominates the conversation, from cocktail parties to   
   cab rides. It started after Philpott’s extraordinary sortie in Maclean’s,   
   where she said that “there’s much more to the story that needs to be   
   told.”   
      
   It reached a boiling point when Wilson-Raybould promised to provide “copies   
   of text messages and emails” to the justice committee that would “further   
   clarify statements I made and elucidate the accuracy and nature of statements   
   by witnesses in    
   testimony that came after my committee appearance.”   
      
   What’s next, people are asking, a tell-all on The National?   
      
   It’s almost as though the two women are daring Trudeau to expel them, daring   
   him to repudiate his status as a champion of feminism, Indigenous rights and   
   doing politics differently.     
      
   It’s as if they’re daring him to act like any other leader — Stephen   
   Harper, Jean Chretien or his own father, the late Pierre Trudeau — would   
   have done and assert his authority over wayward MPs.   
      
   It’s not like Trudeau hasn’t done that before.  In 2014, he took a number   
   of decisive actions.  In November of that year, when Liberal MPs Massimo   
   Pacetti and Scott Andrews were accused of sexual misconduct by two NDP MPs,   
   Trudeau expelled them from    
   caucus without hesitation — or any semblance of due process.   
      
   In May, Trudeau issued a fatwa against any MP or aspiring candidate who   
   didn’t support abortion rights by denying them the opportunity to run for   
   the party.   
      
   And in January, Trudeau expelled 32 members of the Senate from the Liberal   
   caucus — for no other reason than that they were Liberals, and he wanted to   
   take a stand in light of the Senate expenses scandal.   Taken together, these   
   acts burnished his    
   feminist credentials, bolstered his “doing things differently” mantra and   
   cast him as decisive to boot.   
      
   So why hesitate now?  What is it that Trudeau fears?  What do Wilson-Raybould   
   and Philpott know — or could they say — if he cast them out of caucus?   
      
   Speculation runs rampant, but some scenarios appear more plausible than   
   others.  The main one is that SNC-Lavalin wasn’t the starting point for the   
   women’s discontent but only a convenient tipping point.   
      
   The theory is that other issues — the government’s failure to settle   
   Indigenous land claims, the lack of material advancement on First Nations   
   issues — are really what made them mad.  They may have concluded that   
   Trudeau’s embrace of these causes    
   was a fraud, mere virtue-signalling for votes, and they weren’t going to   
   take it anymore.   
      
   (It is interesting to note that a spokesperson for new Attorney General David   
   Lametti just confirmed that Wilson-Raybould’s directives on First Nations   
   litigation will be respected — 20 guidelines that profoundly change the way   
   the Crown will    
   prosecute indigenous lawsuits, and which encourage settlement out of court).   
      
   Whatever their rationale, it now appears that Wilson-Raybould and Philpott are   
   mounting a full-blown coup.  The longer Trudeau waits to crush it, the weaker   
   he appears.   The flurry of MPs and ministers rushing to his defence only   
   further diminishes his    
   stature; what kind of PM needs to be saved by his own people? Shouldn’t it   
   be the other way around?   
      
   But not everyone is on Team Trudeau.  In the Tyee, Martyn Brown, former aide   
   to B.C. Liberal premier Gordon Campbell, opined that the “fear of losing   
   Trudeau needs to be flipped on its head if left-leaning progressives want to   
   minimize the chances of a    
   Scheer victory this fall.  The Liberals can now only hope to regain the moral   
   high ground that is so vital for securing the values they purport to represent   
   by replacing their leader.”   
      
   The only other option to avoid tossing Wilson-Raybould and Philpott would be   
   for Trudeau to call a snap election.  But with the federal Tories high in the   
   polls and having just called a byelection for Nanaimo for May 6, it appears   
   Trudeau has taken that    
   option off the table.  An early election in late June or July might still be   
   possible, but that would still require Trudeau to act now to staunch the   
   bleeding.   
      
   Everything else the Liberals have tried — replacing the clerk of the Privy   
   Council, appointing Anne MacLellan to recommend changes to party governance,   
   putting a big-spending budget in the window — has failed to change the   
   channel, because the PM’s    
   own MPs keep stabbing him in the back.   
      
   Unless he wants this election to become a referendum on his leadership or his   
   own party to turn against him, Trudeau needs to cut the Gordian knot — and   
   kick them out.   
   __________________   
      
   Tasha Kheiriddin is the founder and CEO of Ellipsum Communications and a   
   Global News contributor   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)