Following The Trail Home

Letter-writers in today's Star ask questions that demand to be answered. The first makes a point that occurred to me early on when SNC-Lavalin averred that bribery and fraud charges were the result of rogue employees, an oft-used disclaimer by those seeking to evade criminal responsibility:

Re PM loses top aide, Feb. 19

This excellent article mentions that SNC-Lavalin has pleaded not guilty to bribery and fraud charges related to its work in Libya, saying any wrongdoing or illicit payments made to the regime of Moammar Gadhafi were made by employees without its consent.

It seems highly unlikely that those employees would fund such initiatives out of their own pockets. Once again, the key to unravelling sordid affairs of this nature is to follow the money.

Harry J. Rollo, Toronto

The SNC-Lavalin affair seems to be mostly about our prime minister doing all kinds of things to keep that company running as it is now. Why is he doing this? It smells like money.

First, the company is well-known to be a strong supporter of the Liberal Party. More importantly, the goods the company manufactures in Canada for export ensure a steady flow of money into the federal treasury.

Note that this includes war materials sold, indirectly, to Saudi Arabia. Does this not matter to us?

Alan Craig, Brampton

Then again, perhaps the above writers are clinging to a sense of morality and justice that is quickly becoming but a quaint notion. If so, our nation has deeper problems than the hyped-up loss of 50,000 jobs should SNC-Lavalin be held accountable for its crimes. (Have we no other engineering companies in Canada to bid on contracts and employ people?)

For What It's Worth

I would like to use this post to comment on one of the questions swirling around the resignation of Jody Wilson-Raybould, one that came up yet again on last night's At Issue panel:

Why did Wilson-Raybould wait until she was was moved to Veterans Affairs to resign from cabinet?

The implication of the question is that hers was a 'sour-grapes' resignation, not a principled one, since the time to resign was when she felt she was being pressured to change her mind about the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. Indeed, early on in this scandal, Justin Trudeau cited her ongoing presence in the cabinet as evidence of her contentment, after which the former Justice Minister resigned.

I beg to differ. And I believe yesterday's testimony to the justice committee by Michael Wernick, the clerk of the privy council, sheds some light on this sordid episode; pertinent are three meetings in particular:

The first was a meeting on Sept. 17 between himself, the prime minister and Wilson-Raybould.

... Wilson-Raybould told the prime minister that a deferred prosecution agreement “was not a good course and she had no intention of intervening,” Wernick recalled. In turn, the prime minister told Wilson-Raybould the decision to intervene in the case was hers alone, he said.

Ergo, it is clear that Wilson-Raybould had made her decision not to direct the Public Prosecutor to offer SNC-Lavalin a DPA (deffered prosecution agreement). If we are to take Wernick's testimony at its face value, that should have been the end of the matter if, indeed, Trudeau said it were her decision alone.

The next event he predicted Wilson-Raybould would raise was a conversation between her chief of staff and officials from the Prime Minister’s Office on Dec. 18. Wernick, however, said he was not there and is not aware of what transpired.

Strangely, although Wernick claims no knowledge of the nature of the meeting, he predicts she will bring it up in her testimony.

Finally, Wernick highlighted his own conversation with Wilson-Raybould on Dec. 19. Wernick said he wanted to “check in” with her on SNC-Lavalin and the possibility of mediating the criminal charges against the company, as well as other legal issues before the government.

“I conveyed to her that a lot of her colleagues and the prime minister were quite anxious about what they were hearing and reading in the business press about the future of the company, the options that were being openly discussed in the business press about the company moving or closing,” Wernick said.

Asked later if he pressured Wilson-Raybould to intervene in the case and halt the SNC-Lavalin prosecution, Wernick said no — he doesn’t believe he improperly pressured her.

“There’s pressure to get it right on every decision, to approve, to not approve, to act, to not act. I am quite sure the minister felt pressure to get it right,” he said.

“Part of my conversation,” he added, “was conveying context that there were a lot of people worried about what would happen, the consequences — not for her — the consequences for the workers in the communities and the suppliers.”

Now, many will argue, as Wernick himself did, that there was nothing improper about these meetings and that he didn't consider them to constitute undue pressure. We all know that politics is a rough and tough arena, so that may well be. I do not have the expertise to make that assessment. But I do have some thinking ability, and here is where it has led:

To return to the point I began with, the character-undermining question being asked is why Raybould-Wilson did not immediately resign if she felt she was being pressured to change her decision. My question (and answer) is, why would she?

She had remained firm in her conviction that SNC-Lavalin should receive no preferential treatment. She had received the assurance from Mr. Trudeau that the decision was hers alone. She successfully weathered pressure from both the PM and the PMO to change her mind. Presumably, she felt that she had prevailed in upholding her own principles in the matter, and the issue was closed. Until, of course, it wasn't.

On February 11, Wilson-Raybould tendered her resignation, mere hours after Trudeau publicly declared all was well, attested to by her ongoing presence in the cabinet. I suspect this assertion was the breaking point for Raybould-Wilson, that and the likely belief that her replacement as Justice Minister, David Lametti, would ultimately order a DPA.

In his testimony yesterday, Michael Wernick expressed his fears about the direction in which Canada is heading. He

told MPs he’s worried Canadians could lose “faith in the institutions of governance in this country.”

As a citizen who loves Canada, I have the same fears. However, Messieurs Wernick and Trudeau should look to their own house as one source of this crisis of faith. Justin Trudeau came to office with great promises, including 'doing politics' in a new way.

In that, he would seem to have failed abysmally.

Dissecting Justin

The first cut, they say, is the deepest.



And now, for something completely different:

Breaking News: Gerald Butts Resigns!

For those who claim the SNC-Lavalin affair is much ado about nothing, this is certainly an interesting development:

OTTAWA—Gerald Butts, Justin Trudeau's principal secretary and long-time friend, has resigned amid allegations that the Prime Minister's Office interfered to prevent a criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

In a statement, Butts unequivocally denies the accusation that he or anyone else in the office improperly pressured former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to help the Montreal engineering giant avoid a criminal case on corruption and bribery charges related to government contracts in Libya.

Yeah, I forgot. It is always the innocent who resign.

Mike Pence's Very Bad Day

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Vice- President Mike Pence quickly realized that things were not going as planned. The rest of the world can, I hope, rejoice at the strong message he receives in the following:

Speaking to a security conference in Munich, Pence tells his audience he brings greetings from President Trump... and not a single person claps. #awkward pic.twitter.com/JkFpsKqfgk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 16, 2019

But wait! There's more! Note the juxtaposition of the following, where only one person in the room withholds her applause for Angela Merkel.

OMG -- Pence was visibly shook in Poland when he received absolutely no reaction to what was clearly supposed to be an applause line about how "the time has come for our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal." pic.twitter.com/biRxARZkcM

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 16, 2019

It would seem that actions, or the absence thereof, do indeed speak louder than words.

The 'Evolving' Story Of Justin And Jody

Evolving is one of those words I have never particularly cared for. It can, and should, of course, most be used when pertaining to the growth and change over time of various forms of life. Too often, however, it is used as a weasel word, one that is employed to try to suggest that the first answer was incomplete rather than a lie. For a good illustration of this tactic, read about Donald Trump's evolving justifications for a border wall.

In the Justin Trudeau SNC-Lavalin Jody-Wilson Raybould imboglio, I believe we are now witnessing a concerted effort on the part of the Prime Minister and his functionaries to 'evolve' their explanation of this sordid business. Consider, for example, what the country's doe-eyed leader had to say just the other day as he engaged in some victim-blaming:



According to this story, Justin was absolutely blind-sided by her unhappiness.

Now, that 'story' has 'evolved':




Presumably, this public admission was prompted by the Trudeau government's fear that Wilson-Raybould's version of events will soon be made known; hence, repeating his denial that he "directed" her on the SNC-Lavalin file would seem to be a safe bet, since she apparently specifically asked him whether this was the case. However, where the story falters and whose spin may give those prone to vertigo some problems is that he said, as shown in the first clip, that she did not express any concerns to him.

The two stories obviously can't both be true, unless we are to believe the question was asked and answered so casually that both went away whistling a happy tune. But for those of us who care to think and are not in the thrall of misplaced party loyalty, common sense dictates that the exchange must have been fuller, with her providing a context for the question (i.e., pressure from the PMO).

So the ostensibly corrupt machinations of the old Liberals continue apace. Somehow, I wonder whether this particular manifestation of diseased morality will ever be fully exposed to the light of day.

Just Who Was The DPA Enacted To Help?

If you watch the following interview with law professor Jennifer Quaid, you will find her take on the Omnibus Bill provision for the DPA (deferred prosecution agreement) that SNC-Lavalin salivates over very, very disturbing. Start at about the 1:40 mark. The big 'reveal' is at the 4-minute mark, when Quaid discusses what she claims is an open secret:



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.

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.”

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.