Today Gerry Butts resigned. This is not a surprise as someone had to pay the price in PMO for the SNC- Lavalin mess. However, there is nothing at this point to link him directly to the scandal.
All too often political players get attacked in the media with little if any evidence of actual wrong-doing. We have had plenty of evidence of that over the last few years- just think of the Senators who were pilloried in the media as just one example.
While there will be all sorts of speculation and pontification from various pundits and media types trying to link him to the resignation of the minister- no one really knows at this point if he was involved or not. That story has yet to come out.
I spent over 15 years doing political issue management and one thing it taught me was to never fully believe the first days run of any story. As I used to say to staff, this is only the first shoe to drop, do what we have to do, but wait for the second shoe to drop as well.
With the election fast approaching the Liberals had to quickly shut down this issue before it damaged their brand as badly as the sponsorship scandal did to Chretien and Martin. We will see if it worked this time or not.
Either way with the loss of such a skilled political advisor the election dynamic has suddenly changed.
The SNC-Lavalin scandal still has a lot of twists and turns in it. There will be plenty of other shoes to drop before this story is done. It will be quite a ride, sit back and enjoy it.