Instead of hiring fixers, David Johnston should have resigned.
With David Johnston’s reputation in tatters and no public inquiry in sight, fixers hired to manage the fallout may find themselves on the pointy end of the political spear instead.
In politics, the term "crisis communications firm" is a polite way of referring to a group of lobbyists who charge big bucks to help people in deep caca fix their reputations, particularly when the poop is still hitting the fan.
So it didn't come as much of a surprise when the CBC's Ashley Burke broke big news late Friday that the Canadians were footing the bill for Navigator Ltd., a crisis communications firm, to provide communications life support to foreign interference scandal Special Rapporteur David Johnston's critically injured professional reputation.
What is more of a surprise is that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and David Johnston somehow determined that the foreign interference crisis was sufficiently bad enough to warrant the services of an expensive group of fixers, but not bad enough to warrant a public inquiry.
Equally as surprising is that Navigator itself either didn't recommend going to a public inquiry or decided to stay on to provide further services after their client refused to do so.
These facts have raised big questions about the judgment of all involved.
That's because Johnston has come under fire for failing to recommend a public inquiry into a foreign interference scandal that has seen threats leveled against sitting Canadian elected officials. Johnston’s objectivity on the matter has been questioned given his long-standing family ties to the Trudeau family and its namesake foundation. News of Navigator's hiring also comes on the heels of the passage of a Parliamentary motion that called upon Johnston to resign from his position, and Johnston subsequently refusing to do so.
And Navigator has recently made headlines of its own. Hockey Canada paid the firm $1.6M as it was amid a sexual assault crisis. And in the early days of the 2022 trucker convoy protest, Navigator was retained by the Ottawa Police.
There is no doubt that the government’s retention of Navigator’s services will dominate Question Period on Monday. The federal government will be asked tough questions about how much money they have paid to Navigator and other firms who are being paid to support Johnston in a role that Parliament just voted to have him resign from.
That's because the issues with Navigator's hiring are legion.
For starters, at a time when the Trudeau Liberals have also come under fire for spending millions upon millions on consulting firms like the opioid-crisis-linked McKinsey Co., many observers will find it bananas that Navigator would have opened itself up to its own reputational risk in staying with Johnston as a client, particularly given that it seems like the government ignored warnings that a sitting Member of Parliament was under direct threat from a foreign government.
And then there's the failure of Navigator, Johnston, and Trudeau to acknowledge a fact that’s plain for anyone with half a brain to see: if Johnston's reputation and task required the services of an elite crisis communications firm, he should have resigned instead.
The only logical, albeit highly speculative, conclusion I can make as to why Navigator took this contract is that somebody must have put one hellaciously lucrative contract on the table. The amount of cash on offer would have to outweigh the obvious potential reputational risk of the firm (to find out, I've put a question on the Order Paper about the contract). But with news of their hiring becoming public after a week that saw Parliament call for Johnston’s resignation, Navigator may have inadvertently bitten off something more than even they can chew.
Here’s why.
There’s no doubt Johnston has served Trudeau well from a political point of view. As long as the press and the opposition are questioning his judgement and perceived conflict of interest, they're spending less time looking at where things went wrong in the government and putting less pressure on Trudeau to call a public inquiry. But now with Johnston's reputation in the toilet and his utility in deflecting public scrutiny away from the Prime Minister's Office almost spent, one has to wonder how Trudeau will keep the attention off of him for three more weeks before Parliament rises for the summer.
So the Liberals might be banking on the Navigator contract revelation to provide the exact type of distraction the Liberals need to get through the finish line of this Parliamentary session, out of the eye of the Globe and Mail's Robert Fife and Steve Chase, into the warm, comforting embrace of the summer barbecue circuit. With the previous Liberal government-ending Gomery Inquiry still relatively fresh in the minds of many of Trudeau's inner circle, avoiding a public inquiry into the foreign interference crisis will be priority number one.
The Navigator's slogan is "When you can't afford to lose."
The following high-stakes week in federal politics might test just how true that rings.