Canada’s Top Bureaucrat At Heart Of SNC-Lavalin Affair To Step Down
OTTAWA — Michael Wernick — the country’s top bureaucrat — is leaving his job, telling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that recent events have made it clear it would be impossible for him to maintain a “relationship of mutual trust” with the opposition parties.
In a letter to Trudeau released Monday, Wernick says he plans to leave his post before this fall’s federal election campaign kicks off, partly because the clerk needs to be viewed as “an impartial arbiter of whether serious foreign interference has occurred” as part of a new federal watchdog panel.
“It is now apparent that there is no path for me to have a relationship of mutual trust and respect with the leaders of the opposition parties,” Wernick writes. #cdnpoli