Some Habits Die Hard

In some ways, it is hard to believe that the old Liberal propensity for corrupt coziness with corporate chums has reasserted itself so quickly, barely three years into Mr. Trudeau's tenure. In other ways, it is not hard to believe at all. After all, old habits die hard.

Th latest allegation is that Trudeau tried to influence former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to help SNC-Lavalin avoid a criminal prosecution for bribery of Libyan officials in order to secure business contracts. It is an allegation the Prime Minister stoutly denies, but the fact is that Wilson-Raybould was recently demoted to Veterans Affairs.

Cause and effect? The smell of a smoking gun is in the air.

First, there is what has been described as Trudeau's legalistic denial in response to reporters' and House of Commons' questions:

“The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false,” Trudeau told reporters Thursday in Vaughan. “Neither the current nor the previous attorney-general was directed by me or anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.”

The new justice minister, David Lametti, repeated Trudeau's words in answering the charge of interference in the House.

So, are we simply jumping to judgement, based on little or no evidence? The Toronto Star doesn't think so.

And what communications, if any, did members of Trudeau’s office have with Wilson-Raybould and her office on this issue? These are questions that can’t simply be waved away with a carefully worded blanket denial. The Globe reported that the company lobbied federal officials more than 50 times since 2017 on “justice” and “law enforcement” issues, including 14 times with Trudeau’s closest advisers in the PMO.

What exactly did they discuss? Did it include the possibility of SNC-Lavalin benefitting from a so-called remediation agreement that would allow the company to avoid a criminal trial on serious fraud and corruption charges (and therefore remain eligible for lucrative government contracts)?

And what communications, if any, did members of Trudeau’s office have with Wilson-Raybould and her office on this issue?

These are questions that can’t simply be waved away with a carefully worded blanket denial.

Susan Delacourt finds Wilson-Raybould's silence on the matter quite telling:

... she didn’t have a thing to say in the wake of the Globe and Mail’s explosive story of how the former justice minister reportedly stood in the way of a deal to let SNC-Lavalin detour around prosecutions that could have blocked it from receiving government contracts for years to come.

“That is between me and the government as the government’s previous lawyer,” Wilson-Raybould was quoted as saying in the Globe’s scoop, as well as a cryptic, “I don’t have a comment on that,” in reply to more pointed questions about how she handled the SNC-Lavalin case.

Pro tip: “No comment” only works as a clever misdirection in fictionalized political journalism. In real life, it is often regarded as confirmation.

Did she speak truth to power?

Delacourt attended a Robbie Burns dinner last week in which Liberal MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes took jabs at her own government:

One of those jabs was aimed squarely at the ouster of Wilson-Raybould from the justice job, and a joke about how an Indigenous woman lost her post for doing it well and unsettling the “white man.”

None of which 'proves' these allegations. However, it is worth noting that SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec company, has had a long relationship with the Liberal Party of Canada, even when it was out of power:

SNC-Lavalin, many were reminding us on Thursday, was the same firm that was detouring around election laws for much of that decade to put roughly $110,000 in the party’s pocket in those lean years.

And so, an old pattern re-emerges. Coupled with Trudeau's stout defence and dismissal of allegations regarding his good friend and fundraiser Stephen Bronfman over what was revealed about offshore accounts in the Panama Papers, as well as the CRA foot-dragging in going after the big corporate cheats who operate such accounts, one can justifiably wonder whose interests the Prime Minister really is protecting.

This may rankle those who believe a Liberal government should never be criticized, given the poor alternatives, but to take such a position is to be willfully and woefully ignorant.

Lord knows we have enough of that already today.

Corporate Extortion

Two noteworthy revelations in the SNC-Lavalin scandal have come to light. The first deals with impropriety, and the second with what can only be called corporate extortion.

First, The Star reports the following:

As former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould debated whether to intervene in the corruption prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, she received legal advice from her department that underscored what an unprecedented move that would be.

The legal advice prepared by the department set out her possible options on the SNC-Lavalin prosecution, including the ability to seek outside legal advice, but it stressed that no chief prosecutor has ever intervened in a specific case, and that any decision to intervene must be “hers alone.”

“Any decisions by the Attorney General of Canada are hers to make, independent of political considerations or processes, and in the public eye,” the document states.

Compounding the impropriety of the Trudeau government putting pressure on Wilson-Raybould to direct the Public Prosecutor to enter into a Deferred
Prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavlin is the revelation in documents obtained by The Canadian Press of the extortionate measures by the company to get what it wanted:

The documents... describe something called “Plan B” — what Montreal-based SNC might have to do if it can’t convince the government to grant a so-called remediation agreement to avoid criminal proceedings in a fraud and corruption case related to projects in Libya.

Under that plan, SNC would move its Montreal headquarters and corporate offices in Ontario and Quebec to the U.S. within a year, cutting its workforce to just 3,500 from 8,717, before eventually winding up its Canadian operations.

“The government of Canada needs to weigh the public interest impact of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,“ the presentation reads.

The company’s board and senior management were prepared to quickly bundle parts of the business that had no role in the Libya case into a new entity, putting the “trio of possibly convicted entities” into another organization that would operate “on a reduced business level in Canada or heading into eventual wind-up,” they read.

The details appear to contradict public statements by chief executive officer Neil Bruce, who has denied both that the company threatened to move its headquarters, and that the company cited its some 9,000 Canadian jobs as a reason the construction giant should be granted a remediation agreement.

The company walked back the comments days later in a statement, saying a remediation deal was the best path to protect its Canadian workforce.

A recent news report, which I am not currently able to find online, cited the commitment that SNC-Lavalin made to stay in Quebec after receiving a huge loan/grant from the Quebec government, so clearly, this threat was a thuggish bluff. As well, as I outlined in a recent post, there is plenty of current work federally for the company, even if it is barred for 10 years from bidding on federal contracts, and nothing in a conviction would prevent it from getting provincial contracts, of which it also currently has many.

Trudeau enthusiasts will continue to see his pressure on Raybould-Wilson as a noble expression of economic nationalism. More critical thinkers may draw the conclusion that the Liberal government was simply being cowed by the thuggish tactics of a corporate extortion artist.

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.

UPDATED: Where Is The Public Good In All Of This?

H/t Greg Perry

His fulminations about the need for a public inquiry notwithstanding, it should surprise no one that Conservative leader Andrew Scheer met with officials of SNC-Lavalin to discuss the criminal charges they were facing. But to simply accuse him of his obvious hypocrisy and dismiss the controversy of Justin Trudeau's alleged attempt to interfere with the pursuit of justice is surely to ignore the increasingly fetid odour emanating from his office.

Consider, for example, what Canada's top prosecutor has to say about political and corporate interference in prosecutorial decisions:

In Federal Court documents obtained by the Star, [Kathleen] Roussel responds to SNC-Lavalin, saying that it has no legal right or entitlement to any deal; that prosecutors are independent with broad discretion on how to proceed with charges; and that under the Constitution, prosecutors are free from political or judicial interference.

She says the law passed last year allowing for what is called “deferred prosecution agreements” (a new regime that was stuffed into an omnibus budget bill) [the very kind of bill the Liberals railed against while in opposition - funny how the perch of power changes one's perspective, eh?] is explicit about what factors prosecutors must not consider in corruption cases:

“The prosecutor must not consider the national economic interest, the potential effect on relations with a state other than Canada or the identity of the organization or individual involved” where an organization is charged under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, as in SNC-Lavalin’s case.

In other words, the the director of public prosecutions is arguing that, while the law sets out other criteria Roussel could consider when weighing the public interest, she’s not allowed by law to consider whether a company is too big to fail.

Implicit is that the administration of justice should be the guiding principle behind the pursuit of cases, neither corporate nor political considerations being part of the formula.

The written brief also takes a strong stand against any political interference in prosecutorial decisions, saying it “could erode the integrity of our system of prosecution.”

And it is integrity that should be our uppermost consideration. We have, in this country, the likely accurate perception that there are two kinds of justice: one for the powerful and entitled, and another for the rest of us. To willfully and cravenly defer prosecution on the basis of who the accused is would further erode public confidence in our institutions at a time when there are many forces, both within and without, committed to sowing division and disunity.

More cynicism is the last thing we need today. It is time for the Trudeau government to pull in its neoliberal horns, respect the independence of the federal prosecutor's office, and allow the corporate chips to fall where they may.

UPDATE: An interesting new development:

The federal ethics commissioner has launched an investigation into allegations that former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould was pressured by the prime minister’s office to seek mediation instead of pursuing criminal charges against Quebec construction giant, SNC-Lavalin.

Mario Dion, the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, confirmed in a letter to two NDP MPs that he would probe allegations that became public last week.

In his letter, Dion says that based on the complaint by the two MPs, media reports and other information, he has “reason to believe” that a possible contravention of section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act has occurred.

That section prohibits a public office holder from seeking to influence a decision of another person to improperly further another person’s private interests.

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?)

An Attack On The National Soul

It grieves me to resign from a portfolio where I was at work to deliver an important mandate. I must abide by my core values, my ethical responsibilities, constitutional obligations. There can be a cost to acting on one’s principles, but there is a bigger cost to abandoning them.

- Excerpt from the resignation letter of Trudeau cabinet member Jane Philpott

Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. Canadians like to believe that ours is a nation that embraces fairness, opportunity and, perhaps most importantly, justice.

Unfortunately, given the tact that the Trudeau government is taking to defend itself against the ructions caused by the SNC Lavalin scandal and subsequent departure of two key cabinet members, one can only conclude that Canada's ethos is under attack.

Consider the evolution of Mr. Trudeau's 'explanation' which began after The Globe and Mail released a story alleging that Judy Wilson-Raybould was removed from her position as Justice Minister and Attorney General for refusing to grant a Deferred Prosecution Agreement to SNC-Lavalin. Initially, Trudeau averred that the decision not to prosecute was hers alone, and that she still sat in his cabinet as Verterans Affairs Minister attested to her ongoing contentment. It was at this point she resigned.

Over the last few weeks, the Prime Minister has attempted to change the focus, saying that his government would always stand up for jobs AND the rule of law. Now, the message seems to revolve almost exclusively around jobs and growing the economy. Consider the words of Steven MacKinnon, parliamentary secretary to the minister of Public Services and Procurement yesterday on Power and Politics.

.@stevenmackinnon says "our belief is that this company is one that is, like its competitors around the world, entitled to a deferred prosecution arrangement like they would be able to have access to in the U.K., in France, throughout Europe, in the United States…" #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/dSIur2SY9N

— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) March 4, 2019

"The government's adopted approach on this is one that has favoured jobs, it's one that has favoured pensioners, supply chains and a major Canadian company - all innocent victims of some corrupt management maybe a decade ago."

"We do have a disagreement here. We absolutely have a disagreement here and I think the current attorney general has said that, look you have to keep assessing the facts as these cases move along," he said. "But the fact is that we have 10,000 Canadians and their families and pensioners and suppliers and others who are not entitled to the same kind relief they would get if they were to work for an SNC-Lavalin competitor in the United States or in the United Kingdom ...

"The disagreement goes to how you see how Canada ought to approach major economic questions like the SNC-Lavalin issue. Do we do it like our OECD partners, do with these deferred prosecution arrangements, that have been widely discussed? Or do we do it with a ... perhaps more rigid approach?

That more rigid approach, of course, is not to engage in political interference, pressure, and honour the rule of law.

If you go to the whole interview, (start at the 1:28 mark) you will see that MacKinnon sharply implies that neither Wilson Raybould nor Philpott are concerned about "people" and "real jobs."

In his campaign to win office, Mr. Trudeau stoked the hopes of all Canadian that things could be better, and that politics would be done in a new way. Once stoked, such hopes demand action. Now that the Prime Minister has clearly been hoist upon the petard of his own lofty rhetoric, he can expect massive anger and massive resistance to this unprecedented attack on the national soul and the not-too-subtle message being sent that principle, integrity and honour must give way to economic imperatives.

The Hysteria Surrounding Alleged SNC-Lavalin Job Losses

I was watching The National ((aka The Whore of Babylon among those who reflexively defend all things Liberal) last evening, and was surprised to learn that there seems to be no basis for the claim that 9,000 jobs could be lost should SNC-Lavalin register a criminal conviction that would bar it from bidding on federal contracts for 10 years. As you will see in the following report, the company is currently involved in a number of such projects worth billions that will take years to complete, and there is nothing in a criminal conviction that would prevent them from bidding on provincial contacts, many of which they are currently involved in.

Which leaves one to draw a tentative conclusion: that the alleged interventions to get Wilson-Raybould to grant SNC-Lavalin a DPA was prompted, not by economic, but rather political, concerns. Being a Quebec-based international company, like that perennial basket case Bombardier, the feds felt they had to run interference to maintain their support in La Belle Province.

Go to the 28-minute mark of the following to see the full story:

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.

The Dark Underside Of Sunny Ways

Her testimony was riveting, her aura of integrity palpable. One could only come away from the testimony of Jody Wilson-Raybould into the SNC-Lavalin scandal drawing at least two conclusions: politics really is a dirty game, and it is one that a person of principle cannot easily navigate while holding on to her integrity. It was also stunning to see someone who really believes that politics should and must be conducted in a principled way.

Wilson-Raybould's moral compass stands in sharp contrast to the players who fought tirelessly to try to change her mind. Here is but a taste of her testimony:



While the above is damning enough, the pressure didn't stop there.

In a 38-minute opening statement and repeatedly in answers to questions, Wilson-Raybould pointed the finger directly at Trudeau, as well as his top officials in the PMO, the Privy Council office and the office of the minister of finance, citing phone calls and in-person meetings that she felt amounted to a “barrage of people hounding me and my staff.”

“Within these conversations, there were express statements regarding the necessity of interference in the SNC-Lavalin matter, the potential of consequences and veiled threats if a DPA was not made available to SNC,” she said.

Wilson-Raybould also detailed interactions with Ben Chin, the chief of staff to Finance Minister Bill Morneau; Trudeau aides Elder Marques and Mathieu Bouchard; Butts, the prime minister’s principal secretary; and Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff.

She said Telford and Butts summoned her chief of staff Jessica Prince to a meeting on Dec. 18, where Butts told Prince they had to find a solution to the SNC issue. Reading from a transcript of Prince’s debriefing afterwards with her minister, Wilson-Raybould told the committee that “Gerry said ‘Jess, there is no solution here that doesn’t involve some interference.’”

According to Wilson-Raybould, Prince told her, “Katie was like, ‘We don’t want to debate legalities anymore’ … They kept being, like, ‘We aren’t lawyers, but there has to be some solution here.’”

No doubt, Trudeau operatives and fanboys whose sense of morality depend on party affiliation will be contorting themselves almost beyond human endurance to suggest that Jody Wilson Raybould's testimony exonerated Justin and his functionaries.

The critical thinker, on the other hand, will be deeply disturbed by yesterday's revelations.

And for voters like me, it is further fodder for the deep disenchantment and anger we cannot help but feel over the squandering of potential. Justin Trudeau and his team came to office promising so much. But from the betrayal of his electoral reform vow through to the purchase of a pipeline that gives the lie to climate change mitigation promises to the conducting of politics in the usual, corrupt way, the dark underside of the Prime Minister's "sunny ways" is now exposed for all to see.

A Thousand Words ....

H/tTheoMoudakis

Because the political reactions from the right and the left are so tiresomely predictable, I thought I would offer a few examples from one of the so-called progressive groups that I monitor, thereby sparing those so inclined to label me for my refusal to bow before Trudeau and his sham liberalism. Out of respect for the privacy of those who post their comments within a closed forum, I leave out both source and identities. From a CBC story on Jane Philpott's reaction to the Ethic's Commissioner's report on the SNC-Lavalin scandal that I posted to the group come the following:

Another Schmeer campaign. I find it interesting that this reporting surfaces as Schmeer drops like a rock in Ontario.

Poor irrelevant Philpott.... lololol

a Pity she is still with the smear campaigners! !!

JP knows very well that JWR twisted her truth. JWR spoke to Campbell & that was the only former AG that JWR admitted to speaking to about the SNC case. Campbell did not see the info on the case, she went only by what JWR told her. Mulroney had something different than Campbell to say. The PM wanted JWR to bring an expert in to work on the case with JWR & to give advice & JWR refused to do that, so without another insight on the case, The PM did not feel that JWR's decision was the right way to go. JT did not interfere in any way, he just wanted JWR to fully do her job & use every tool that was available to her. Then there is the important information about the SNC case that JWR purposely with held from the PMO. Why is that not mentioned & the case files on JWR desk that had been sitting on her desks for months. The poor man who was in prison & finally found innocent & had to stay in prison for almost a year waiting for JWR to have him released. David the AG now had the man released with in 2 weeks after David took the AG position. There is much more & JP knows it all as well as JWR. Nope, if JWR had of been a man in the AG position, he would of been fired a lot sooner. JWR blew it her self, she let the power go to her head just like she is doing now. That alone will take her down again.

What about investigating Mr Andy Smear`s visit to Lavalin`s HQ ! What was the name of Harper`s man on the Lavalin Board of Directors!

Reacting to a story on the actual report by the Commissioner, some of the following illustrate the obdurate, uncritical support Trudeau commands from extreme partisans:

Enjoy PM Scheer.
Hillary's emails don't matter now anymore, do they?
I have sent this happen too many times with one single commissioner (who could be easily influenced by outside forces) bring down a government.

As much as it does suck, it is still better than the über-corrupt alternative, the Conservatives. Heck, in an interview on Canadaland (either Oppo or Commons) even Jodie Wilson Raybould was on the record saying she hopes Trudeau wins

In response, I wrote,

Rather than saying the Liberals are the best we've got, it is time for all Canadians to demand better government. Defending Trudeau as the least odious choice does nothing for the cause of good government.

This was followed by,

...voting for what is worse advances the cause of bad government.

... but you don't have to vote for the tories, we don't live in a two party system.

And it goes on and on, including the usual dismissal of Trudeau criticism as coming from 'the haters.'

All of this is as utterly predictable as it is dispiriting. Funny, isn't it, how partisanship on either poles of the political spectrum seems to require the suspension of critical thinking skills that we need now more than ever, all of which leaves me with little hope that we will ever see any improvement in a political landscape currently populated by hacks, Pavlovian loyalties, and a paucity of any real cogitation.

Now where have I seen this before?

Warning Signs

 

I realize there are some who see the Liberal Party of Canada as our natural governing party, and hence are perhaps too forgiving when wrongdoing is detected. While I am certainly glad that it was Justin Trudeau who presided over the past two-year-plus of our pandemic (a Conservative administration during our crisis being unthinkable), I do not subscribe to the notion that one particular entity should be above criticism or accountability.

And there is much to criticize about the current incarnation of the Liberals who, the longer they are in power, steadily revert to their old ways. The SNC Lavalin scandal immediately comes to mind, plus the fact that they are far too close to the corporate sector. (On that note, for example I have little doubt that despite the problems at Rogers, their acquisition of Shaw will ultimately be approved.)

Heather Scoffield turns her attention to the matter of the Liberals and public trust, citing both the Rogers debacle and the accusations of political interference in the Nova Scotia mass shooting probe:

On Monday, in one corner, we had the contrite and apologetic corporate executives ready to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a problem to make it go away.

In the other corner, we had a federal minister talking tough, assuring the public he had let that company have it, in no uncertain terms, and it had better shape up — or else.

Tough words, but why so much secrecy around discussions?

Government officials, the CRTC and the company alike have already shown a proclivity to discussing solutions in secret on this file. Talks between Champagne and the telcos’ CEOs were in private. Undertakings by Rogers were widely redacted. And there’s been little to assure the public or parliamentarians they’ll get a full public airing of all of the details in the future, let alone a government that wants to tangle with telcos.

The past may be an indicator of future performance. 

While the Liberals’ record on regulating the internet and its players hasn’t led to the fireworks of its dealings with SNC-Lavalin, it does have a history. Rogers had a large outage of its wireless services in April 2021, with little regulatory followup.  

Too big to touch? 

As for the government's apparently too-close relationship with the RCMP, which is supposed to be free from political interference, Scoffield has this to say: 

And just across the street, we had a minister and the head of the RCMP protesting hard that neither they nor their surrogates had overstepped.

 The subtext of the hearing on the Nova Scotia shooting was whether the Liberals put their thumb on the scale of the legal system in an attempt to bend the outcome in favour of their political agenda  [i.e, their firearms legislation].

That the Liberals are trust-challenged is the final point the writer makes: 

The common thread is their collective challenge of maintaining the trust of the public in their ability to keep a reasonable eye on things when there’s trouble, and ensure the public interest is respected in the midst of turmoil and competing interests.

Ultimately, it is up to a vigilant public to hold the Liberal Party to a higher standard than they are used to. In that, we must not fail.

 

On Trudeau's Travails

The seeming public consensus is that the end times beckon for Justin Trudeau and his party. Althia Raj writes:

The Liberal party has the support of about just one in five Canadians, and more than eight out of 10 Canadians say it’s time for a change, according to Abacus Data. Polls suggest the Tories are headed for a massive majority government.

On doorsteps and in meetings across the country, Liberal MPs report a crescendo of dislike for the prime minister. “They disliked him in 2019, they hated him in 2021, and now they despise him,” one MP, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Star.

“I do not have a meeting or a conversation with a business, a constituent, a stakeholder, a non-profit where Justin Trudeau really supersedes the conversation,” said Wayne Long, the outgoing Liberal MP for Saint John—Rothesay. “When people are telling me consistently that, ‘You know, your party’s done some great work, Wayne, but the prime minister needs to move on.’ 

While I don't really understand the personal animus that so many express for Trudeau, I do understand their disaffection. It is one I have felt for some time, not because of the prime minister's style of leadership, but because he so quickly fell into perpetuating the party's tradition of arrogance. 

There was, as I have written before, his early betrayal of his promise of electoral reform. While the proposal itself was modest, a form of ranked ballot that was easy to understand and might have encouraged more voter participation, it became a step too far once the party had regained power under the FPTP system. Canada's 'natural governing party' had regained its rightful place, and all was once again well in the Liberal world.

Scandals ensued, too numerous to recount here, each chipping away at the "sunny ways" the earlier Trudeau had promised. Perhaps the biggest one was the SNC Lavalin debacle, which I wrote about in 2019. Here is an excerpt:

The latest allegation is that Trudeau tried to influence former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to help SNC-Lavalin avoid a criminal prosecution for bribery of Libyan officials in order to secure business contracts.

And so, an old pattern re-emerges. Coupled with Trudeau's stout defence and dismissal of allegations regarding his good friend and fundraiser Stephen Bronfman over what was revealed about offshore accounts in the Panama Papers, as well as the CRA foot-dragging in going after the big corporate cheats who operate such accounts, one can justifiably wonder whose interests the Prime Minister really is protecting.

But perhaps the biggest fault of this government I can cite is its absence of a coherent vision. I am aware that many may disagree with such an assessment, but saying that you want a more fair and equitable society is far easier than working steadily toward one. Some may counter with such nascent programs as dentalcare and pharmacare, but despite what Mr. Trudeau may assert, they were not Liberal initiatives as much as they were forced upon the party thanks to the leverage that Mr. Singh and the NDP exerted upon them. Parenthetically, that leverage has earned Mr. Singh no credit, the media narrative being it was a mistake to enter into the supply and confidence agreement, a view with which I heartily disagree.

The Liberals, were they who they claim to be, could have done much more, in a much more methodical fashion, had they possessed real vision as opposed to a propensity for expedience that achieved little.  One case in point would be the housing crisis that confronts us. Instead of empowering the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation to get back into the home-building business, as they did post-WW11, Trudeau was content to throw money at the provinces to give to private builders to achieve decidedly uneven results. However, as I have said before, Mr. Trudeau worships at the altar of private enterprise, the result being that many, many more people cannot ever hope to own a house.

I could go on, but allow me to end by noting that my dismay with the Liberals does not mean, as it does for so many others, a vote for that repository of bilious, belligerent rhetoric, PP. When voters go to the polls at the next election, they should ask themselves whether or not their perceived cure for their disaffection is worse than the disease itself.

 

Corporate Corruption

With corrupt corporate practices so much in the news these days, thanks to the Trudeau government's attempts at subverting justice for SNC Lavalin, I couldn't help but be struck by the naked greed so evident in the practices of a pharmaceutical called Insys Therapeutics. Several of the company's executives

... are currently on trial in Boston on charges of racketeering, fraud, and conspiracy, in connection to an alleged nationwide scheme to pay doctors bribes and kickbacks in exchange for prescribing the company’s fentanyl-based pain medication Subsys to patients who would not otherwise require the drug. The executives are also accused of conspiring to mislead and defraud insurance providers that were reasonably reluctant to cover costs for a medication designed for cancer patients when prescribed to patients without cancer.

To appreciate the depth of the company's greed and depravity, go to the 9:16 mark of the following news report, which includes a video extolling the virtues of something called titration, the practice of increasing the dose of a drug:



The 'rap' video excerpted in the above report (I will provide links to the full video at the end of this post) was created for and shown at Insys' 2015 national sales meeting. The message was clear: the more you 'push' the drug, the higher your sales commission will be.

According to former Senator Claire McCaskill, who helped investigate Insys last year,

"What they are saying to their sales representatives is, 'It's not enough that you get a doctor to prescribe it," said McCaskill, now an NBC News analyst. She said the company was telling its employees, "'We're going to pay you five times as much if you can get him to prescribe the strongest dose possible.'"

Interestingly, the company's response to these charges echoes the one heard from SNC Lavalin about the 'rogue employees' who acted without company authority in bribery of Libyan officials to the tune of $48 Million - (their petty cash reserves must be a marvel, eh?):

"The company in no way defends the misconduct of former employees and is fully cooperating with the government."

Nothing to see here, eh?

NEW: Here's the internal Insys video to the tune of A$AP Rocky's "F--kin' Problems" in which employees dance around former sales VP Alec Burlakoff, who is dressed as a life-size bottle of fentanyl spray. It was shown to a jury in Boston federal court today. pic.twitter.com/0SPIEDRpnX

— Aaron Leibowitz (@aaron_leib) February 13, 2019

Here's Part 2. They're singing about "titration," a reference to the process of doctors increasing the dosage for patients as they build tolerance. pic.twitter.com/J60hYQw0PA

— Aaron Leibowitz (@aaron_leib) February 13, 2019

The OECD Is Not Impressed

While many are trying to minimize the significance of allegations that the Trudeau government tried to subvert the course of justice in the SNC-Lavalin affair, there is one body that is taking them very seriously:

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development working group on bribery said in a statement Monday that it is "concerned" by accusations that Trudeau and staff in his office tried to get former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to let the Quebec engineering giant negotiate a remediation agreement rather than pursue the firm on criminal charges of bribery and fraud.

Canada is one of 44 nations that in 1999 signed the legally binding Anti-Bribery Convention, which established international standards to criminalize the bribery of foreign officials. The idea was that all signatories — including all 36 OECD nations as well as eight others such as Russia and Brazil — would punish their own citizens and companies for trying to undermine governments elsewhere.

The statement says Canada's commitment under the convention is to "prosecutorial independence in foreign bribery cases," and that political factors such as national economic interests and the identities of the company or individuals involved should have no influence on the prosecution.

Drago Kos, the chair of the OECD working group on bribery, elaborates:

“This is the point of our concern,” he told the Star in a telephone interview.

And Kos said the excuse used by Trudeau and others for their interventions — that they were concerned about jobs at SNC-Lavalin [a concern that seems less and less legitimate, by the way] — is not a legitimate justification.

Here is more on this development:

.@Lizacorn says OECD anti-bribery convention is at root of Canada’s anti foreign bribery law. Only way it could work is if all countries undertook obligation to not allow their companies to engage in bribery...enforcement has to be applied in way that ensures level playing field. pic.twitter.com/a1hyy1HTQe

— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) March 11, 2019

As in so much else, it appears Canada talks a good game on the international stage, just as it does on the domestic one. However, as a signatory to the legally-binding OECD pact, it has obligations that no amount of prime ministerial obfuscation and equivocation can lessen. And that is something even the most ardent of Mr. Trudeau's fans cannot deny.

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.

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.

UPDATED: Uh, Uh. Trudeau Enthusiasts Won't Like This

Start at the 1:40 mark to see what I mean. To whet your appetite, here are some viewer comments:

What an awesome way to drop that Saudi Arabia thing. Hasan's show just keeps getting better and better.

The look on his face after that question! He thought they were gonna joke about his cool socks!

Canada selling weapons of mass death to Saudi Arabia is them just following Americans lead.

Trudeau is the Canadian Obama. They both campaigned as progressives but as soon as they got in they turned into conservative establishment centrists who cater to the status quo and big oil.

This has got to be the worst condemnation of msm journalists today, they got upstaged by a comedian.




UPDATE: The Star's Venay Menon offers his take on the interview:

When I was a kid, this one time we were driving through Pennsylvania late at night when a fawn suddenly appeared in the headlights of our station wagon. Since my father maddeningly drove under the speed limit — and there was no traffic on the interstate — he was able to brake without incident. But that adorable creature just stood there for a good 30 seconds, motionless, unsure of what to do next.

It seemed so helpless and lost in the chaos.

I was reminded of it while watching Netflix’s Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj on Sunday. Trudeau might as well buy himself a pair of antlers and a bushy tail before Halloween. Just based on the moments of awkward silence and the reaction shots in which he looked absolutely paralyzed with fear, he was that fawn.

What Trudeau’s inner circle probably didn’t realize when it thought this interview — and global exposure via Netflix — was a great idea was that much of the really damning material would come from taped segments. In between clips of Minhaj’s sit-down with Trudeau, the comedian also blitzed his in-studio audience with facts, observations and timelines that portrayed Trudeau as a scandal-ridden leader who speaks out of both sides of his mouth. The show went after Trudeau over the SNC-Lavalin scandal. It raised the issue of ethics violations. It more or less called Trudeau a fraud on the environment. It condemned him over Canada’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Venon concludes that regarding the Trudeau cachet, the bloom is off the rose. I agree wholeheartedly.

Sounds Like Corporate Extortion To Me

Given all of the revelations about how the Liberals legislated Deferred Prosecutions with SNC-Lavalin expressly in mind, it is perhaps no surprise that Big Pharma is now attempting to flex its muscles to prevent legislation that would benefit all Canadians. Andy Blatchford reports the following:

Brand-name drug companies could put off introducing new medicine in Canada and scale back research here if the country makes a major shift to cheaper generic alternatives under a national pharmacare plan, according to an internal federal analysis.

The concerns were included last year in a briefing document for federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau that explored the feasibility and costs of a pharmacare program.

For those who pay obeisance to corporate power, the document was sobering:

... the briefing note to Morneau said national pharmacare could influence the revenues of drug companies in several ways. Among the possibilities, it said a shift in favour of more generic drugs, mass-produced after patent protections for new medications expire, could lower costs.

But that could come with a cost for patients.

“For example, brand-name pharmaceutical companies may respond to a broad shift to generic drugs by delaying the introduction of new drugs in the Canadian market or by reducing the R&D activities that they undertake in the country,” said the analysis, labelled “secret,” which was obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information law.

To use the old cliché, Big Pharma is threatening to hold Canadians hostage should legislation beneficial to them emerge:

“Innovative Medicines Canada, which represents pharmaceutical patent holders, has warned that a national pharmacare program focused on cost containment may result in reduced access to medicines for Canadians.”

Such a threat, if followed through, would be part of larger pattern of pharma's failure on behalf of Canadians.

The briefing to Morneau said research and development investments by pharma companies in Canada already “significantly lag” spending in other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 34 countries with advanced economies.

“Since 2003, industry investment in R&D has been less than 10 per cent of sales — the target that the pharmaceutical industry committed to in exchange for more favourable patent terms in Canada,” said the briefing to Morneau.

Like a predatory beast smelling blood, Big Pharma senses it has a Canadian government captured between its paws.

Time for us to show that we are not such easy pickings after all.

Dieselgate: The Stench Continues In Ottawa

Most people will remember the massive crime against humanity perpetrated by Volkswagen when it used software to hide the amount of noxious emissions its diesel engines were actually spewing out. If you are a little rusty on the details, I posted about it over a year ago. For those who want the Coles Notes version, suffice it to say that the company paid billions of dollars in penalties and had to take the offending vehicles off the road. Indeed, some executives are now behind bars because of their crime.

Not so in Canada, however.

It seems that after four years of discussion as well as intensive lobbying by Volkswagen of the government and the Prime Minister's Office, (lobbying directed toward the same cast of characters, shockingly, that tried to arrange for a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with SNC-Lavalin), it appears that Volkswagen will get off with only a fine, four years after much harsher justice was meted out in other countries.

I urge you to watch the following news report. It inflamed me, and reaffirmed, in my mind, the neoliberal bona fides of Justin Trudeau and his robber baron friends and colleagues. Please pay special attention to the response that Jagmeet Singh got from Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Naveep Bains when the former raised the issue in the House:

Friends In High Places Are Good (For Some)

Having friends in high places is certainly something the wealthy must savour as they continue to hide money in offshore tax havens. Yes, the very same havens the Trudeau government promised to crack down on. And the very same tax havens that, as I recently posted, seem to inspire timidity in our Canada Revenue Agency.

A new report by the CBC/Fifth Estate suggests that timidity is deepening:

The Canada Revenue Agency has once again made a secret out-of-court settlement with wealthy KPMG clients caught using what the CRA itself had alleged was a "grossly negligent" offshore "sham" set up to avoid detection by tax authorities, CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada's Enquête have learned.

This, despite the Liberal government's vow to crack down on high net-worth taxpayers who used the now-infamous Isle of Man scheme. The scheme orchestrated by accounting giant KPMG enabled clients to dodge tens of millions of dollars in taxes in Canada by making it look as if multimillionaires had given away their fortunes to anonymous overseas shell companies and get their investment income back as tax-free gifts.

Apparently, who you are and what you are worth entitles you to special privileges, including a totally sealed record of your settlement with the CRA:

... tax court documents obtained by CBC News/Radio-Canada show two members of the Cooper family in Victoria, as well as the estate of the late patriarch Peter Cooper, reached an out-of-court settlement on May 24 over their involvement in the scheme.

Details of the settlement and even minutes of the meetings discussing it are under wraps. A CBC News/Radio-Canada reporter who showed up to one such meeting this spring left after realizing it was closed to the public.

Quite understandably, many are outraged by this:

Toby Sanger, executive director of the advocacy group Canadians for Tax Fairness, says the CRA should never have agreed to settle the case.

"I think it's outrageous," he said. "We've had a lot of tough talk and promises from this minister [National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier] about how they will crack down on tax evasion by the wealthy and corporations, but unfortunately we've seen no evidence of this so far."

The Trudeau government's previous tough talk on the so-called KPMG sham had come after a document leaked to The Fifth Estate/Enquête showed the CRA itself had offered a secret "no penalties" amnesty in May 2015 to many of the other KPMG clients involved in the scheme.

The CRA offered to have them simply pay the back taxes owed — but with the condition they not tell the public about the offer.

Apologists for the Trudeau government will insist that the CRA was acting independently of the government, but that clearly flies in the face of reality, given Trudeau's promises in 2017 to do a "better job of getting tax avoiders and tax frauders."

Like their attempts to influence the course of justice in the SNC-Lavalin affair, this latest report is yet one more arrow indicating where the sympathies and loyalties of our federal government really lie.