Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t want SNC-Lavalin to face criminal charges. That is as close as it comes to an undeniable fact in the ongoing Lavscam saga. And it looks like the PM is not getting his way.
The debatable question about this scandal over the past few months was not whether Trudeau and those around him had a preferred outcome but whether they pushed for it in an illegal way, in a way that obstructed justice.
But did he hold these views in the first place? Everything we’ve learned, from news reports to Jody Wilson-Raybould’s evidence to admissions on the part of the PMO itself, tells us that he did.
The PM then must have been pretty peeved to learn that on Wednesday morning a Quebec court judge ruled that there’s enough evidence against the engineering firm for it to be tried on bribery and fraud charges.
Beginning in 2015, federal prosecutors alleged that SNC-Lavalin paid millions of dollars in bribes to Libyan officials between 2001 and 2011. The firm, which maintains its innocence, says there’s since been a management shake-up and potentially offending individuals are no longer around and as such the company should be eligible for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA), an option that was only created in a recent Liberal omnibus budget bill following the firm lobbying for its inclusion.
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See Also:
(1) If Trudeau falls, don’t expect Mark Carney to be the next Liberal Messiah
(2) Senate committee approves changes to solitary confinement bill
(3) In pursuit of $19B contract, Sweden’s Saab offers to build fleet of fighter jets in Canada
