MONTREAL, March 1, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Canada’s former attorney general has
provoked the worst political crisis for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s
Liberal government by accusing senior officials of attempting to head off the
fraud prosecution of engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.
Here’s what you need to know.
– What are the accusations ? –
Jody Wilson-Raybould testified at the House of Commons Justice Committee
that Trudeau, one of his ministers and close advisors applied “inappropriate”
pressure on her, including “veiled threats” to intervene in a criminal
prosecution.
She said that from September to December 2018 officials “hounded” her to
ask prosecutors to settle the case out of court. The company was charged in
2015 with corruption for allegedly bribing officials in Libya between 2001
and 2011 to secure government contracts during former strongman Moamer
Kadhafi’s reign.
Wilson-Raybould refused, and the trial is set to proceed.
The allegations were first reported by The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing
unnamed sources, and were confirmed Wednesday by Wilson-Raybould herself
while testifying at the justice committee.
– Why help out SNC-Lavalin? –
The Montreal-based construction and engineering company is one of the
world’s largest.
It heavily lobbied the government, including senior officials in Trudeau’s
office, for an out-of-court settlement that would include paying a fine and
agreeing to put in place compliance measures.
It has argued that those responsible for alleged wrongdoing left the
company long ago, and that holding it accountable for their criminal actions
would severely hurt its business. A guilty verdict would notably result in a
10-year ban on bidding on Canadian government contracts.
There were suggestions in the press that it might also move its
headquarters to London if that happened.
– What’s the government’s position ? –
Trudeau said he “completely disagrees” with his former attorney general’s
characterization of events, insisting that he and his team were rightly
looking to safeguard up to 9,000 Canadian jobs, including in his own Quebec
electoral district — which Wilson-Raybould referred to as improper “partisan
political considerations.”
He has insisted that he made clear to his former attorney general that the
“decision around SNC-Lavalin was Wilson-Raybould’s and hers alone to make.”
The attorney general and justice minister are conjoined positions in
Canada, which critics say blurs their separate responsibilities — the former
is the country’s top prosecutor and independent from the political, partisan
role of a cabinet minister.
Wilson-Raybould suggested they should be split.
– What are the political consequences for Trudeau ? –
The Globe and Mail newspaper unleashed a major political controversy when
it reported on February 7 that Trudeau’s office attempted to pressure Wilson-
Raybould to intervene in the case — months from the next election.
Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s first indigenous attorney general, was shuffled
to veterans affairs in January, and a month later resigned from cabinet. Days
later, Trudeau’s longtime friend and top advisor Gerry Butts also quit.
“I think if the Liberals had not replaced Ms Wilson-Raybould in January as
attorney general, we might never have heard about any of this,” said Daniel
Beland, a politics professor at McGill University in Montreal.
The accusations weigh all the more heavily on Trudeau because he has
repeatedly affirmed the independence of Canada’s judiciary, notably in the
case of Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive of Chinese telecommunications firm
Huawei who was arrested in Vancouver on a US warrant and faces possible
extradition.
The opposition Conservatives have seized on the controversy to call for
Trudeau’s resignation and a federal police investigation into the matter.
“Trudeau’s image,” said Beland, “has been tarnished. This is a prime
minister who boasted about being a feminist and a strong advocate of
reconciliation with indigenous peoples, so this has created dissonance
damaging to him.”
A poll taken since the scandal erupted put the opposition Conservatives in
the lead ahead of the ruling Liberals, for the first time since Trudeau came
to power in 2015.