Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday sought to quell a crisis that threatens his chances of re-election, expelling from party ranks two former Cabinet members he said had undermined the ruling Liberals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trudeau said former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and former Treasury Board chief Jane Philpott would no longer be allowed to sit as Liberal legislators. They were also barred from running for the party in the federal election this October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCivil wars within parties are incredibly damaging because they signal to Canadians that we care more about ourselves than we do about them,\u201d said Trudeau, 47, who took office in November 2015 and faces a tough re-election battle this autumn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wilson-Raybould, who tweeted news of her ouster before Trudeau\u2019s announcement, was demoted in January and resigned the next month. Philpott quit shortly afterward, saying she had lost confidence in how Trudeau was handling the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Liberals have been in turmoil since Wilson-Raybould said in February that officials had inappropriately pressured her last year while she was justice minister to ensure that construction company SNC-Lavalin Group Inc escape a corruption trial.\u201cThe trust that previously existed between these two individuals and our team has been broken,\u201d Trudeau told an emergency meeting of caucus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The expulsion represented a change of course for Trudeau, who said as recently as last week that the Liberals needed strong legislators with differing points of view.But increasingly angry parliamentarians had demanded both women be removed from caucus on the grounds they were undermining party unity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opinion polls show the crisis has cut public support for the Liberals to such an extent that they could lose in October to the official opposition Conservatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trudeau, who came to power promising \u201csunny ways\u201d and a greater role for women in politics, admitted it \u201chas been a difficult few weeks.\u201dThe scandal also cost him the services of his closest aide, Gerald Butts, and Michael Wernick, the head of the federal bureaucracy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday sought to quell a crisis that threatens his chances of re-election, expelling from party ranks two former Cabinet members he said had undermined the ruling Liberals. Trudeau said former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and former Treasury Board chief Jane Philpott would no longer be allowed to sit as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58408,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58409,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58407\/revisions\/58409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}