Justin Trudeau blocked access to key information on SNC-Lavalin affair
True North
Published on Aug 15, 2019
Justin Trudeau and his office obstructed the investigation of the ethics commissioner.
Trudeau blocked access to key documents and witnesses during the commissioner’s investigation, despite claiming he did nothing wrong. Does that sound like a Prime Minister that has nothing to hide?
True North’s Andrew Lawton has more.
The 2019 election has always been Justin Trudeau’s to lose. Now he may have done just that.
The most obvious reason is the finding by federal Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion that the prime minister and his office violated the Conflict of Interest Act in the SNC-Lavalin scandal. That flies directly in the face of Trudeau’s consistent denials of having done anything wrong.
It also vindicates two former Liberal cabinet ministers, Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, who said senior government officials and the prime minister improperly tried to influence the criminal justice process as it dealt with allegations of bribery by the Quebec engineering firm.
Dion found that Trudeau and his top advisors worked to “circumvent,” “undermine” and “discredit” a justice department decision to proceed with a criminal corruption and bribery case against SNC-Lavalin, rather than offer a so-called deferred prosecution agreement. Under such an agreement, which the company heavily lobbied for, it would not have faced a criminal prosecution.
In a taped conversation, Michael Wernick, the country’s top bureaucrat at the time, told then justice minister Wilson-Raybould that Trudeau was quite firm in wanting a change in the decision relating to SNC-Lavalin.
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But it’s far worse than that.
The ethics commissioner not only found that Trudeau and his inner circle of staffers improperly pressured Wilson-Raybould to change a decision made by her director of public prosecutions in a live criminal case; they did it to further the interests of the company charged, SNC-Lavalin.
That finding does nothing to lift suspicions that the prime minister may have attempted to obstruct justice in this case.
Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch said that Trudeau’s behaviour “crosses the line” into obstruction and that there is enough evidence in Dion’s report to justify a criminal investigation of the prime minister.
Conacher told the CBC that if the RCMP decides not to investigate Trudeau, it must provide the public with a full explanation of the decision.
And something else Trudeau has done will raise questions about his respect for due process.
Trudeau forwarded a report on the SNC-Lavalin affair by Liberal partisan and former justice minister Anne McLellan to the federal ethics commissioner before that office released the results of its own investigation. The prime minister commissioned McLellan to produce the document that he now claims is a “great” report.
The most obvious reason for doing that would be to influence the report of the Ethics Commissioner. Again, that could be seen as interfering in an independent investigation by an officer of Parliament with the intention of influencing his report. Making the rules, not playing by them.
The effects of the ethics commissioner’s findings are legally meaningless. There are no consequences for Trudeau and his staff beyond a possible fine and embarrassment.
It is worth noting that former ethics commissioner Mary Dawson also found that Trudeau had violated four ethical guidelines by accepting a free trip to a tropical island owned the Aga Khan, a billionaire philanthropist.
Trudeau is the first prime minister found guilty of violating a federal statute.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/08/14/Justin-Trudeau-Ethics-Violation-Political-Dynamite/
Oh OH...Justin is just in some very deep deep hoid now.