Of course, the Liberals denied any such assertion during yesterday's committee meeting, as they
... denounced Opposition suggestions that SNC-Lavalin had gotten the Liberal government to change the law to allow deferred prosecutions for companies like the Quebec engineering giant facing fraud charges.If the allegations are true, this is a far, far bigger scandal than simply trying to pressure Wilson-Raybould to go easy on SNC-Lavalin. It reeks of the rankest corruption imaginable.
In the closest thing to an explanation anyone on the government benches has offered for the change since the scandal broke last week, Boissonault said Canada adopted the legal change to allow deferred prosecutions for companies facing fraud charges to align with its trading allies and called Opposition allegations of political favouritism “specious.”
This one has far reaching, government changing consequences, Lorne.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Liberals have no one but themselves to blame, Owen.
DeleteIf nothing else, the Lavalin business has put to rest any fanciful ideas of "Canadian values" Lorne.
ReplyDeleteWe're told there's no choice, lest Lavalin be barred from government contracts for 10 years. The illogic there is that the argument assumes that this wayward Quebec company almost has some right to those contracts. Those are Lavalin's contracts - despite what they did in Libya, despite the Montreal hospital scam, despite the current Montreal bridge scandal - by some divine right.
No, they're only Lavalin's contracts because that's politically expedient for political parties vying for seats in Quebec. Those contracts would not go unfilled. We have other engineering firms, without SNC-L's record of corruption, that would bid for that work. They would also employ workers to do those jobs.
This whole DPA is geared to ensuring Lavalin has an undeserved advantage over other firms. The fix is in. What's the point of tendering if everyone knows the winner has already been chosen to the point of amending the criminal law of the land to see them prevail?
This kind of thing does no good for faith in our institutions, Mound. Truth, honour and principle seem to be the biggest casualties of this whole sordid affair.
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