In the October 2019 general election, Wilson-Raybould ran as an independent in the Vancouver-Granville riding winning handily by over 3,000 votes and becoming the first woman to win an independent seat in Canada’s Parliament. Both she and Philpott continued to serve as Independent MPs. In April 2019 both Jody Wilson-Raybould and her long-time cabinet friend Jane Philpott, who had stood by her throughout the controversy, were removed from the Liberal caucus. In February 2019 following her resignation, Wilson-Raybould appeared before the justice committee’s televised hearings into the SNC-Lavalin affair. A month later continued pressure relating to the SNC –Lavalin controversy eventually forced her to also resign from that portfolio. In January 2019, with Wilson-Raybould holding true to her position and refusing to bow to political pressure relating to the SNC –Lavalin corruption scandal, and after three-and-a-half years as MOJAG, the PM shuffled her from the minister of justice and attorney general of Canada portfolio to minister of veterans affairs and associate minister of national defence. “I was simply doing my job of ensuring the law was followed, and trying to ensure that the government did not engage in wrongdoing.” “It was wrong and an affront to the rule of law and prosecutorial independence,” writes Wilson-Raybould in her book Indian in the Cabinet –Speaking Truth to Power. Her refusal led to four months of intense pressure from the prime minister and the Prime Minister’s Office to change her mind. In 2019, under pressure from the prime minister and the Prime Minister’s Office, AG Wilson-Raybould controversially chose not use the Deferred Prosecution Agreement to defer prosecution of fraud and bribery allegations against the engineering/construction firm SNC-Lavalin. Following the election, she was sworn into cabinet as minister of justice and attorney general of Canada (MOJAG), the first Indigenous, and only the third woman, ever to hold that position.ĭuring her time as minister, Wilson-Raybould introduced, and saw the passage of, 13 pieces of legislation most significantly an act permitting Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), an act legalizing cannabis use, and significant reforms to the criminal justice system and family law. In 2013 Liberal leader Justin Trudeau approached Wilson-Raybould to join the Liberal party and endorsed her to run in the 2015 election in the Vancouver-Granville riding. In 2009, the 203 First Nations of BC elected her a regional chief of the BC Assembly of First Nations, and in 2012 she was re-elected winning 80 per cent of the vote. In 2004, she was elected commissioner by the chiefs of the First Nations Summit, and served as a commissioner for nearly seven years, one and a half years of which she spent as the acting chief commissioner, earning a reputation for bringing opposing sides together in the complex treaty negotiation process. In 2003, she became a process advisor at the BC Treaty Commission, a body established to oversee the negotiations of modern treaties between First Nations and the Crown. Her father Bill also holds a law degree from that institution, only the second Indigenous person ever to earn such a degree.Īfter graduation, Jody became a provincial Crown prosecutor on Vancouver’s Downtown East Side and, following in her father’s footsteps, involved herself in First Nations’ politics.

She and her family are all members of the We Wai Kai Nation of Cape Mudge, Quadra Island where Jody and her husband Tim live.įollowing high school, Jody attended the University of Victoria and later the University of BC, where both she and her sister earned law degrees. Jody Wilson-Raybould PC, OBC, QC – also known by her Kwak”wala name, Puglaas: “woman born to noble people.”īorn in 1971, to Chief Bill Wilson, a First Nations hereditary chief, and his wife Sandy, a school teacher, Jody attended Highland Senior Secondary School in Comox with her sister Kory. The Comox Valley Walk of Achievement committee is pleased to announce the induction of author, lawyer and former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, the Hon.

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