I believe the key to evaluating the ethics commissioner’s report on the SNC-Lavalin affair is the commissioner’s determination that in intervening on behalf of the corporation to see that it received a fine rather than being prosecuted, the prime minister was acting “in his own political self-interest.” My contention has been and remains that he was acting in the national interest, the interest of the province of Quebec, and of the city of Montreal, as well as his own political interest and that he is entitled to the benign presumption that his principal motivation was the public interest as represented by all those jurisdictions. I think the commissioner, Mario Dion, is mind-reading in a way deliberately biased against the prime minister. He is presuming that the prime minister’s own personal political interest was his principal motivation. I don’t think it would have affected Justin Trudeau’s political interest very much if SNC-Lavalin had been prosecuted and simply departed the jurisdiction, inviting the federal justice minister and everyone else in this country to get stiffed. In fact, Trudeau could have put on a fine histrionic performance with all the usual pious bunk about the rule of law, Canada being above suspicion, principle before filthy lucre, and so forth. It would not have been of much help to the 10,000 people SNC-Lavalin laid off in Quebec, but it could have been a boffo performance.
With that said, it is hard to conceive of a more severely, amateurishly and sleazily bungled operation as this entire initiative, which all participants must have realized was one of acute sensitivity. Once he realized that the-then justice minister, Ms. Jody Wilson-Raybould, was digging her heels in, he should have informed Parliament that he was revoking the decision in the national interest and the eminent domain of the federal government to exercise the remedies of justice prudently in calculating competing priorities of national revenue, humanitarian concerns to avoid unnecessary job layoffs, the desirability of retaining in Canada such a sophisticated international engineering company, and the direct fiscal interests of the junior jurisdictions, the country’s second-most populous province and second-largest city. This would have been the open and appropriate way to do it, and though there would have been debate about it, Parliament would have supported the prime minister’s decision, and it would not have lingered as much of a controversy. It would have been Ms.Wilson-Raybould’s decision whether to resign or not on the principle involved, but there would not have been any move to expel her from the Liberal party unless she became extremely publicly abusive.
[…]
See Also:
(1) Read the report from the ethics commissioner on the SNC-Lavalin affair in full
(2) Jihadi Jack: ISIS terrorist stripped of UK passport as Justin Trudeau goes ‘berserk’
(3) Canada has flipped the burden of proof for bail in cases of repeated intimate partner violence
(4) Sole source armoured vehicle deal with General Dynamics costs double original estimates
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