LILLEY: Trudeau a punchline on The Simpsons but Lavscam's no laughing matter

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Justin Trudeau had a bad weekend, you can’t deny that.

On Saturday the Prime Minister was out visiting a flood zone in Ottawa’s west end when an angry volunteer let him have it, claiming Trudeau was in the way of work getting done. It was all captured on video and then broadcast on TV as well as going viral on social media.

Sunday he met with Shinzo Abe, the Prime Minister of Japan, and then twice referred to Japan as China while standing or sitting next to him.

Then came The Simpsons episode.

Have you seen it?

During the Canada-themed episode Trudeau answers questions over Skype from Lisa Simpson. As he is asked about the SNC-Lavalin scandal, Trudeau leaves his office through the window and runs away.

When our PM and one of his scandals is a punchline on The Simpsons, things are not going well for him.

Today he made it worse with his description of that scandal.

I asked him about being a punchline and whether he still thought giving a sweetheart deal to SNC-Lavalin was a good idea, he answered that it is all about jobs.

“A key part of my job is always going to be to look out for jobs and protect Canadian workers, right across the country,” Trudeau said.

As for the controversy surrounding SNC-Lavalin, Trudeau simply described it as “an internal disagreement” within the government that “wasn’t fun to go through.”

That’s a bit rich.

His government is accused of trying to get a well-connected company off of bribery and corruption charges by pressuring the attorney general to enter a deferred prosecution agreement with them and when she refused he fired her.

That’s called two tiered justice. But to Trudeau it is just “an internal disagreement.”

The man is tone-deaf.

He lost two cabinet ministers over this “internal disagreement” when both Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott said they could not be in cabinet and support the government’s handling of this.

Trudeau’s top political advisor, Gerry Butts, resigned over this scandal leaving the government drifting for the past few months.

Then the top civil servant, Michael Wernick, the clerk of the privy council, resigned from his post after the opposition lost faith in him.

Wernick was heard on that infamous recorded phone call telling Wilson-Raybould to take over the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin’s bribery case because the independent prosecutor wouldn’t give Trudeau what he wanted, a deferred prosecution that would let the company escape a conviction.

This internal disagreement saw the OECD Working Group on Bribery announce that they were monitoring the situation in Canada.

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It also saw the Liberals lose plenty of support in the polls as Canadians took stock of what they saw and decided they didn’t like it.

The PM has tried to dismiss this story from day one when he claimed it was all false.

He’s changed his story many times since then and now wants you to think this is just about jobs.

His government is still looking for a way to give SNC that sweetheart deal and will likely do so when they think the political heat has died down and people aren’t paying attention.

If Trudeau does that he will have turned the justice system into one that depends on who you know in the PMO.

And that is why it can’t be allowed to happen.

blilley@postmedia.com