CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

RCMP reportedly investigating Liberals' SNC-Lavalin affair over obstruction of justice

Story by Bryan Passifiume • Yesterday National Post

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at an event for Liberal supporters in 2022.

Nearly four years after Canada’s prime minister broke federal ethics laws by pressuring a former justice minister to intervene in the prosecution of a Montreal-based engineering firm, the RCMP have reportedly opened an investigation into allegations of prosecutorial obstruction in connection with the SNC-Lavalin affair.

A May 25 response to an access to information request filed by Democracy Watcher co-founder Duff Conacher was partially denied by the Mounties, as the requested records concerned a matter “currently under investigation,” inviting him to re-submit his request once court proceedings had concluded.

“As it did in February 2021 in a letter to the RCMP, Democracy Watch again requests records with regard into all decisions made concerning the examination and any subsequent investigations that have been undertaken, and all decisions concerning prosecuting anyone involved in the situation of the allegation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former finance minister Bill Morneau, some members of their staff, and former Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick obstructed justice by pressing then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to stop the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,” read Conacher’s original access-to-information request to the RCMP.

The National Post has asked the RCMP for comment but has not yet received a response.

The last time the RCMP spoke publicly about the SNC-Lavalin affair was in 2019, when a police service spokesperson told CBC that they were “examining this matter carefully” and will take “appropriate actions as required.”

That was shortly after the federal ethics commissioner deemed the prime minister had violated Section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act by improperly pressuring then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to curtail criminal prosecution against SNC-Lavalin.

“The RCMP should have confirmed long ago that it was investigating the situation given the evidence,” Conacher told the National Post.

“And that more than four years have passed since the situation was made public, and almost four years since the Ethics Commissioner’s ruling finding that Prime Minister Trudeau violated the federal ethics law pressuring the Attorney General.”

The ordeal began in Feb. 2015 when the RCMP filed fraud and corruption charges against the Montreal-based engineering firm in connection with their business dealings in Libya.

Three years later, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada declined a request by SNC-Lavalin to negotiate a remediation agreement in connection with those charges in Sept. 2018 — a deal that would allow them to avoid a criminal trial in exchange for accepting responsibility for the crime, paying a fine and agreeing to an oversight regime.

The Trudeau Liberals passed a bill that March allowing for such remediation agreements, a provision lobbied for by SNC-Lavalin.

In September, Wilson-Raybould claims the prime minister asked her to “find a solution” for SNC-Lavalin — a request that prompted the former justice minister to ask if he was attempting to politically interfere with the matter, to which Trudeau said he wasn’t.

Despite threats to cleave the company in two and divest itself of its Canadian offices and workforce, the prosecution service again denied SNC-Lavalin’s request for a remediation agreement — even after pleas from the company’s board chair to former Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick, who told him it was up to Wilson-Raybould.

Wilson-Raybould was shuffled out of her position in Jan. 2019, and replaced as justice minister with David Lametti.

SNC-Lavalin settled the matter in Dec. 2019 by pleading guilty to a single count of fraud , accepting a $280-million fine to be paid over five years, and three years’ probation.

As RCMP investigators began to look into the matter throughout the summer of 2019, The Globe and Mail reported that in September that investigators’ efforts were being hindered by the federal government’s refusal to lift cabinet confidentiality . The story was reported one day before Parliament was dissolved ahead of that fall’s federal election.

An RCMP source told the newspaper at the time that investigators were looking into launching an obstruction of justice investigation.

Conacher said there needs to be more urgency in any investigation.

“Are the RCMP and prosecutors waiting for a third federal election to pass? Or doing what often happens in Canada when powerful politicians and government officials are involved in alleged illegal activities: delaying with the hope that they can eventually bury the results of the investigation?” he said.

— With files from The Canadian Press