Holy Moly—Wilson-Raybould is declared newsmaker of 2019

Above: Jody Wilson-Raybould's full speech on winning re-election in the Oct. 21 federal election.

Former Justice minister and Attorney General of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould has been chosen as the 2019 Newsmaker of the Year by news editors across the country surveyed by The Canadian Press.

Wilson-Raybould battled her own Prime Minister, Liberal insiders and the clerk of the privy council for prosecutorial independence in the SNC-Lavalin affair, a controversy that transfixed a nation as it unfolded and may have cost PM Justin Trudeau his second majority mandate.

She was the “runaway choice”, reads a Canadian Press announcement. Trudeau polled a distant second.

"Jody Wilson-Raybould made us think about governance and fairness and loyalty and how all of those things play out every day behind the scenes on Parliament Hill," said Toronto Star senior editor Janet Hurley in the CP article.

"She lifted the curtain and let us see inside…"

Wilson-Raybould paid a heavy price though for being a bulwark in defence of the decision made by the director of public prosecutions to move forward with a criminal trial against the Quebec-based SNC-Lavalin, and against those who would interfere in that decision. She was removed from the Justice and Attorney General portfolios and shuffled to Veterans Affairs, which many deemed a demotion for the first Indigenous person to hold such high level positions within government.

She would soon resign from Cabinet and was eventually kicked out of the Liberal caucus altogether, but not before long hours of testimony in front of the Commons Justice committee.

She would also reveal a secretly-recorded phone conversation with top bureaucrat Michael Wernick, who is heard ramping up the pressure with what Wilson-Raybould would describe as veiled threats to grant SNC a deferred prosecution agreement. Wernick resigned soon after from a decades-long career in the public service. Other fall-out included the resignation of principal secretary and trusted Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts.

Wilson-Raybould ran and won as an independent in the Oct. 21 federal election, considered a long-shot without party affiliation.

In her speech to her supporters after the win, a jubilant Wilson-Raybould’s first words were “I love you too….Holy Moly.”