Former Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould told the House of Commons justice committee last week that she and her staff had been subjected to persistent unwelcome pressure.
During Drouin's remarks, she told the committee that she was asked by the minister's office when Wilson-Raybould was at the helm to hold back a report to the PCO about the consequences a criminal conviction may have on SNC-Lavalin.
She claims they continued to "hound" her from September to December after she made known her decision not to offer SNC-Lavalin a deal.
But, a spokeswoman for the company said Trudeau changed his schedule.
She resigned nearly a month after former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould resigned from federal cabinet.
Don Rusnak says he still stands behind Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, insisting what has come out publicly so far as the SNC-Lavalin scandal continues to evolve is only one side of the story.
If testimony from Gerald Butts was supposed to be the Hail Mary pass that would let the Liberals pull victory from the jaws of defeat after Jody Wilson-Raybould's devastating testimony, the ball ended up six rows into the bleachers.
Justin Trudeau's government never directed Canada's attorney general to intervene in a Quebec construction company's legal case but did suggest she seek an outside opinion on the matter, a former top aide said.
Butts said all officials working on the file knew that the decision to direct Director of Public Prosecutions Kathleen Roussel to enter into negotiations on a DPA or remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin was exclusively at the discretion of the attorney general. Which is to say that he returned the whole scandal to exactly the place the Liberals want it - a political soap opera of "he said, she said", where only subjective perspectives are known and the facts remain forever hidden. It was clear that he arrived in that committee room, which feels oddly subterranean despite being a huge space located on the fourth floor of a slickly refurbished government building, acutely aware that it would be politically disastrous for him to look like he was impugning Wilson-Raybould in any way. He walked the committee through the chronology she presented last week: that she learned of the DPP decision on Sept. 4, while she was out of the country, then she returned on Sept. 12 and her mind was made up by Sept. 16.
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That pressure was not illegal, she said, but "raised serious red flags in my view".
"Can you imagine, if when we were kids, and the coal mines closed ... the best explanation someone could give us is that they thought about it for 12 days?" said Butts, whose father is a retired coal-miner.
SNC-Lavalin openly lobbied the Canadian government for an out-of-court settlement that would mean paying a fine and agreeing to compliance measures. Wilson-Raybould had the power to scrap the decision to go to trial, but decided against it.
On the Prime Minister's website no cancellation has been announced, however an "update" to his itinerary has just one event scheduled for Toronto on Tuesday.
On Wilson-Raybould: "She was always the decision maker and she was always assured she was the final decision maker".
Since leaving office, she has told politicians she experienced "consistent and sustained" pressure from Trudeau's inner circle to interfere in the case, including "veiled threats".
Liberal justice committee member Randy Boissoinault said Butts' testimony was "very revealing", though opposition MPs were less impressed.
Small Business Minister Mary Ng said in an interview that she does not see the cabinet departures as having an impact on the Liberal government's feminist agenda.
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