LavScam

Friday December 20, 2019

December 20, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 20, 2019

After year of political turmoil, SNC-Lavalin gets most of what it wanted in plea deal

After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s failed efforts to see SNC-Lavalin avoid prosecution led to him losing two key ministers, his edge in the polls and (almost) his party’s hold on government, the Quebec engineering firm at the centre of the controversy walked away today with a plea deal that looks a lot like what it asked the government for in the first place.

August 20, 2019

A judge on Thursday accepted the plea deal that a division of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. struck with the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). Under the agreement, the company pleaded guilty to one charge of fraud over $5,000 in relation to the company’s activities in Libya.

All other charges have been dropped.

“We are happy. The company is happy,” said SNC-Lavalin lawyer François Fontaine. “The fact that the charges are no longer pending over the head of the company is good. The uncertainty around that kind of proceeding is bad for business, is bad for the company.

“So we’re very happy that it’s now over. We are free to bid as normal. This guilty plea does not prevent construction, or any other entity of the group, to bid on public contracts.”

April 2, 2019

After SNC-Lavalin was hit with fraud and corruption charges over its actions in Libya between 2001 and 2011, officials from the Prime Minister’s Office spoke with then justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould, asking her to reconsider offering the firm a deferred prosecution agreement.

Under newly passed legislation, a deferred prosecution agreement would allow the company to avoid trial providing it paid hefty fines and continued to adhere to a number of conditions for a period of time.

Had the company been convicted in court of bribing Libyan officials — including Saadi Gadhafi, son of the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi — to get lucrative government contracts, it could have been blocked from competing for federal government contracts in Canada for a decade.

“I have long believed in the essential necessity of our judicial system operating as it should — based on the rule of law and prosecutorial independence, and without political interference or pressure,” Wilson-Raybould said today on Twitter.

February 9, 2019

The allegation that Trudeau improperly tried to influence the attorney general significantly depressed the prime minister’s voter support.

Trudeau defended his actions by saying that he was trying to prevent the loss of jobs in Quebec, but the damage to the prime minister’s reputation had been done — just as federal political parties were readying themselves for a fall election.

The deal SNC-Lavalin struck to avoid trial may not have been a deferred prosecution agreement, but it resulted in almost the same outcome for the company.

All other charges were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on one charge of fraud over $5,000, plus an agreement to pay $280 million in fines and comply with a probation order for three years. (CBC) 



 

Tuesday August 20, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday August 20, 2019

Justin Trudeau’s ‘Just Watch Me!’ Moment

June 18, 2019

Justin Trudeau doesn’t apologize, at least for non-historical transgressions. His non-apology apologies tend to follow a formula: to assert his behaviour was “appropriate” and unimpeachable, to suggest “people can experience interactions differently” (and that his interpretation of the experience is the correct one), and then to wrap it all into a “teachable” moment.

But the prime minister’s flagrant “I can’t apologize” on Wednesday after he was found in violation of the Conflict of Interest Act for not the first, but the second time, established a breath-taking new level of righteous imperiousness, even for him. It even brings to mind his father’s defiant “Just watch me!” line during the 1970 October Crisis. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was responding at the time to a reporter’s question about how he planned to restore order in Quebec. Days later, Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act, leading to a police crack-down against dissidents—and a national controversy.

May 10, 2019

The subject under discussion now isn’t civil liberties. It’s another democracy bedrock: a justice system free from political interference. After conducting an independent investigation, Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion released a damning report Wednesday that found the prime minister and his staff made a “flagrant attempt to influence” the judicial process in efforts to press justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson Raybould to halt criminal prosecution of the Montreal-based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin. Dion found Trudeau violated a section of the Act that prohibits public-office holders from using their position to try to influence a decision that would improperly further the private interests of a third party, in this case SNC-Lavalin.

January 15, 2019

Trudeau’s response to the report suggested a haughty disregard on several levels—to the office of the ethics commissioner, to the Conflict of Interest Act, as well as to Canadians’ basic comprehension of what words mean. He “accepted” Dion’s report and took it “very seriously,” Trudeau said, while also saying that he disagreed with a central conclusion: “Where I disagree with the Commissioner is where he says that any contact with the attorney general on this issue was improper.” He delivered a generic: “What happened over the past year shouldn’t have happened.” And, for good measure, he said, “I take full responsibility,” calculated to be repeated in media headlines, which it was.

But not only did the Prime Minister not take any responsibility, he reframed his violation of the Conflict of Interest Act as a civic virtue, and a probable campaign-trail mantra: his job is “to stand up for Canadians and to defend their interests,” Trudeau said. And Canadian “interests,” by Trudeau’s own metric, equals jobs: “I can’t apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs because that’s part of what Canadians expect me to do.” (Chatelaine) 

Wednesday February 20, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 20, 2019

Gerald Butts and Justin Trudeau ‘would finish each others’ sentences’

The two men, who met at McGill, forged their bonds in debate club. In an interview with McGill News, Trudeau said the experience helped convince him he wasn’t cut out for a career as a lawyer or a debater.  

January 21, 2016

Nonetheless, in 2013, like a throwback to his college days, he was smack back in a debate while running the campaign that would land him in the PMO, and Butts was advising during each commercial break.

“Butts … practically pinned his friend against the wall,” according to a 2015 Maclean’s profile. “He slung a jacketed arm over Trudeau’s shoulder and spoke in hushed tones, inches from his face. It wasn’t so much aggressive as intensely friendly — a boxer with his longtime coach — with Trudeau occasionally nodding at Butts’s words.”

January 12, 2007

That helped reinforce a stereotype that Butts served as the brain of the operations while Trudeau provided the charming smile and personality to woo voters.

Their life stories, are of course vastly different: Butts, 47, born to a coal miner and nurse in Cape Breton, graduated from McGill, and after earning a master’s degree even briefly pursued a PhD in literature at York University in Toronto.

Before finishing his degree, he entered politics, rose through the ranks of former Ontario Premier Dalton McGinty’s office and later became chief executive of World Wildlife Foundation-Canada.

90s sensation: Beavis & Butts

Trudeau, meanwhile, the son of a former prime minister, pursued a career as a teacher after McGill until decades later, Butts helped convince him to run for office.

“I often did get the sense that they often would finish each others’ sentences,” said Jonathan Kay, who helped Trudeau with his autobiography and was a columnist for the National Post.

Kay said their personalities helped balance each other out, and the stereotype of Butts as the brains behind the operation is a mistake.

“They were very much equals,” he said, adding, “when they’re together they balance each other out.” (Continued: Financial Post)