Because we can’t go a single day without yet more nonsense in the interminable Double-Hyphen Affair fallout, we had news yesterday that Andrew Scheer is being personally sued by prime minister Justin Trudeau for libel following press releases in which he intimated that Trudeau committed a crime and is attempting to cover it up. Scheer says bring it on, and make it fast. And then come the narratives – Conservatives say that the prime minister is trying to intimidate them, or bully them into silence, but at least with the lawsuit he’ll have to testify under oath. The Liberals are saying that this is just calling out Scheer’s lies and shows that they have consequences, and it demonstrates that Trudeau is willing to testify under oath as a result. And the pundit class wonders why they would want to continue to drag this out for months, if not years, as this drags on in the court system. (And for those of you who recall, Stephen Harper once planned to sue Stéphane Dion for libel over allegations made in the Chuck Cadman Affair, but he eventually dropped it after Dion was no longer Liberal leader). So, something for everyone, really.

I wonder if anyone will ask Scheer if it was equally bullying and wrong for his party's former party leader to threaten to sue Stephane Dion, two other Liberal MPs and the Liberal Party itself over the Cadman bribery allegations.

— kady o'malley (@kady) April 7, 2019

The big takeaway from the S. 5 notice, for those of you alleging that #lavscam is a coverup, is that Trudeau himself is willing to go into discoveries. He’ll testify to everything.

— James Bowie (@JamesDBowie) April 7, 2019

https://twitter.com/robert_hiltz/status/1114959070136537088

Meanwhile, Wilson-Raybould says that all of the anonymous leaks are “trampling over” the confidences around the discussions she may or may not have had with the prime minister. Err, except her own side has been leaking stuff too, even if she insists it’s not her doing it. She also says that she has no desire to help Andrew Scheer win the next election, and doesn’t see herself as a floor-crosser but will operate as an independent Liberal for the time being.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau took his son Xavier to a basketball clinic run by the Toronto Raptors as part of his current charm offensive.
• Trudeau also warned that the Ford government in Ontario was endangering lives by closing supervised injection sites.
• Following the Canadian International Trade Tribunal ruling on anti-dumping steel tariffs, the government will lift them on five products (over industry objection).
• Here’s a look at the Canadian training mission in Ukraine.
• Her Excellency, Governor General Julie Payette is currently on an official visit to Rwanda to mark the 25^thanniversary of the genocide in that country.
• Liberal MP John McKay wants to sound the alarm about Russia’s military build-up in the Arctic. (Defence analysts will tell you the threat is exaggerated).
• While both Jagmeet Singh and Elizabeth May say they’d be interested in having Wilson-Raybould and Philpott join them, Singh says they’d need “assessment.”
• Tony Clement is doing some media rounds now that he’s decided not to run again this fall.
• Jen Gerson writes a long piece about the rising discomfort with Jason Kenney and the image that the UCP paints of Alberta.
• Andrew Coyne insists the real scandal in the Double-Hyphen Affair is the attempt to normalise interfering with a prosecutor’s independence.

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