How Justin Trudeau Lost His Rock-Star Popularity

On the phone, Mr. Wernick said the company, SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., was considering selling itself or moving abroad, and Mr. Trudeau believed it should be given the chance to negotiate an out-of-court settlement.

Mr. Wernick, unaware of the recording, said: “I think he is going to find a way to get it done.”

Ms. Wilson-Raybould didn’t relent: “This is going to look like nothing but political interference by the prime minister, by you, by everybody else that has been involved in this.”

That’s exactly how it looked to many Canadian voters when the recording surfaced after parliamentary hearings in February and March exposed details of the Trudeau government’s moves to advocate for the engineering-and-construction firm. Testimony in the hearings captivated the public and turned Ms. Wilson-Raybould into one of the most recognizable Canadian politicians outside Mr. Trudeau.

Now, several polls show Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals trailing the rival Conservative Party or in a statistical tie, after beginning 2019 with a comfortable lead. Nearly two-thirds of Canadians disapprove of the job he is doing, according to polls released in mid-July by Ipsos Public Affairs and Angus Reid Institute. They cite the SNC-Lavalin matter as a primary reason.

The Canadian leader, who had a rock-star following among progressives for championing clean governance—and a promise to let women and ministers have more governing say—had sided with a scandal-plagued company and overruled his attorney general, eventually moving her to a lower-profile position.

Based on current data, some pollsters say, the best Mr. Trudeau can expect from the election is a minority government needing another party’s support to govern. “If the election becomes a referendum on Justin Trudeau,” says Nik Nanos, head of Ottawa-based Nanos Research, “the Liberals may lose.”

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office referred to Mr. Trudeau’s remarks in a March press conference that he regretted the erosion of trust between his office and Ms. Wilson-Raybould and has “learned a lot about how we can do better.”

SNC-Lavalin, which has commented on some specifics of the case in past months, declined to answer queries last month.

Mr. Trudeau, his senior advisers and other government representatives have publicly said their discussions with Ms. Wilson-Raybould were to ensure she considered all legal options, with livelihoods of 9,000 SNC-Lavalin employees in Canada at stake.

“It is our job as parliamentarians to defend the interests of the communities we were elected to represent,” Mr. Trudeau said in the March press conference. “I stressed the importance of protecting Canadian jobs and reiterated that this issue was one of significant national importance.”

Ms. Wilson-Raybould says she remains puzzled by the pressure Mr. Trudeau’s office placed on her. “I know that there was a huge lobbying effort by that company,” she says. “But the motivations for the prime minister or all of those people that engaged with me in the way that they did? You’d have to ask them.”

Mr. Wernick declined to comment. In the parliamentary hearings, he said his phone call and other communications with Ms. Wilson-Raybould “were entirely appropriate, lawful, legal.”

SNC-Lavalin is based in Montreal, a portion of which Mr. Trudeau represents in the legislature. Aides in his office met 23 times with its representatives during a roughly three-year period between the Liberal government’s election in late 2015 and late 2018, lobbying records show.

That was nearly five times as many meetings SNC-Lavalin secured over the prior three years with aides to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Compared with the Liberals, the company got little traction from the Harper administration, say people familiar with the firm and former members of the Harper government.

Members of Mr. Trudeau’s administration had personal ties with the company, a reminder of the tight circles that can make up the top levels of business and politics in Canada. SNC-Lavalin Chairman Kevin Lynch was Mr. Wernick’s boss between 2006 and 2009, when Mr. Lynch was Canada’s chief bureaucrat and Mr. Wernick was a top public servant. SNC-Lavalin said Mr. Lynch declined to be interviewed.

A Trudeau cabinet minister, François-Philippe Champagne, was the first Liberal government official to meet with SNC-Lavalin lobbyists about the firm’s bid for an out-of-court settlement, according to lobbying records. He had worked closely with the company’s then-CEO, Neil Bruce, between 2008 and 2012 while at a U.K. engineering firm, U.K. securities filings show.

Mr. Bruce didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Champagne says his past relationship with Mr. Bruce had no bearing on any meetings with SNC-Lavalin.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trudeau says that the government’s actions on SNC-Lavalin’s behalf and meetings with its lobbyists weren’t influenced by any past links and that Mr. Trudeau’s office meets regularly with companies on a variety of matters.

In retrospect, says a senior Trudeau-government official, taking so many SNC-Lavalin meetings might not have been a wise decision.

Fraud allegations

With about 10 billion Canadian dollars ($7.5 billion) in 2018 sales, SNC-Lavalin employs 50,000 world-wide. It is working on a nuclear-power plant in Britain, Nevada freeways and Riyadh’s subway.