Today, readers are responding to news that the PMO received information last fall that there was an internal dispute between the independent Director of Public Prosecutions and one of the lower-ranking prosecutors handling the SNC-Lavalin bribery and fraud prosecution. The information did not come from prosecutors on the case but rather from someone associated with SNC-Lavalin.
The headquarters of SNC Lavalin is seen Thursday, November 6, 2014 in Montreal.Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press
Obviously, Bouchard and Marques need to be called to testify about whether they did know of an internal dispute and, if so, where they got the information from so Canadians can learn the truth. Oh right, they shut down the hearing so Canadians can't learn the truth.
There are a number of things upsetting about this scandal. But the worst of it is that the Justin Trudeau Liberals are stonewalling information from the Canadian public. They have effectively shut down the House hearings. They have imposed tight rules on what Jody Wilson-Raybould can say and cannot say. The "ethics commissioner" is limited in his investigation to looking at conflicts of interest, not improper pressure on the Attorney General. And the ethics commissioner is on sick leave, to boot. The Liberals want to wait things out, hoping the media's interest fades before October. Globe and Mail, keep digging for the truth. Do not let the stonewall practitioners win.
SNC-Lavalin cleaned itself up five years before this whole thing came to ahead last fall. I don't understand why they didn't qualify for some kind of plea bargain. All the bad guys are facing criminal charges and no longer work there and the company is willing to pay punitive fines. Isn't that penalty enough? I can understand why Trudeau would have been livid with the Attorney-General's team.
It would appear that someone in the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (not necessarily a prosecutor assigned to the SNC-Lavalin case) or someone in the Department of Justice leaked info to representatives of SNC-Lavalin. How else would they have known? If that is true, it is an extremely serious offence and completely negates the protestations of SNC-Lavalin and its apologists that it has reformed its ways.
Surely Trudeau could ask his immediate subordinates how they learned rather than waiting for the Ethics Commissioner!
Whoa, back up a moment. The prosecutor actually handling the case (or at least one of them) had assessed the case and in his or her discretion was prepared to negotiation a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin? I don't recall hearing this before. And it certainly puts a different light on things - like who was trying to pressure whom?
Drew BC in response:
Not necessarily so. A prosecutor arrived at a decision. The DPP arrived a different conclusion that was concurred in by the A-G. Seems completely normal to me.
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