National Post (National Edition)
TRUDEAU HAS NO GRASP OF PROSECUTORIAL INDEPENDENCE.
Too much has been tarnished by this scandal
Amonth to the day that the scandal first broke, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has managed the improbable — both confirming key details of the deposed attorney general Jody Wilson-raybould’s testimony (i.e., she was telling the truth) and revealing his own shallow grasp of what constitutes improper interference with the justice system and its highest officers.
It is the latter that explains the ongoing interference from his office and the Privy Council Office in JWR’S decision not to cut SNCLavalin a deal — not, as the PM claimed, some internal spat or loss of trust among colleagues.
As Trudeau acknowledged Thursday in his first news conference about the SNCLavalin imbroglio, even after JWR told him and Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick on Sept. 17 of “her intention not to proceed with” a DPA, or deferred prosecution agreement, for SNC, he himself asked her to reassess the matter and told his staff to follow up.
He did also remind her, Trudeau agreed, that he was the member from Papineau, just as JWR had testified he did, and “stressed the importance of Canadian jobs.”
The global construction and engineering giant SNCLavalin is facing fraud and bribery charges in connection with alleged misconduct years ago in Libya, and first lobbied hard for DPAS to be brought to Canada and then, after Trudeau’s government obligingly brought in the necessary legislative changes last year, to ensure that the company was the first to reap the benefits.
Nor, for the record, is this the company’s first dance with corruption allegations.
It has signed reimbursement agreements, settlements and compliance agreements with organizations as diverse as the Quebec government, the African Development Bank Group and Elections Canada (for illegal contributions to the Liberal party) and has been debarred for 10 years from bidding on projects by the World Bank because of misconduct.
The DPA legislation is found in Section 715.3 of the Criminal Code of Canada and specifically prohibits — “must not consider” is the language — the prosecutor from taking into account “the national economic interest” or “the identity of the organization or individual involved.”
In other words, jobs, even jobs in Quebec, even allegedly 9,000 SNC jobs, are not to be part of a prosecutor’s decision.
This is not a complex legal document.
It doesn’t require legally trained eyes, least of all those of a former Supreme Court judge (getting a second opinion from “an eminent jurist” was the government’s code for getting someone to tell JWR her decision was wrong) to explain.
And it doesn’t matter if the former AG was wrong.
It doesn’t even matter if 9,000 SNC jobs were lost (there is, by the way, no evidence that a potential criminal conviction would cause such a thing beyond the company’s wailing as Trudeau said of the “potential dire impact”).
The justice system depends upon a criminal case — every criminal case, from sexual assault to burglary to home invasion to corporate wrongdoing — being decided by someone who takes into account only what is legally appropriate.
That’s what JWR’S director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, did, and it was for JWR alone to decide if she should interfere with that decision.
The PM’S insistence, in the face of this simple proposition, that what really mattered were the jobs of SNC workers, pensioners and suppliers shows his failure to grasp the meaning of prosecutorial independence and the proper separation of powers.
If prosecutors were not immune from interference, they would be badgered and swept away by every Tom, Dick and Harry and corporation in trouble and with friends in powerful places, and there would be no justice system.
It is clear now that this is just what happened with JWR and this government, just as she testified.
She made a decision, as was her duty (not to explain it or justify it, just to make it); the PM and PMO and PCO didn’t like the decision and hounded her to change it, and, when she refused, moved her from the Ag/justice portfolio.
For all the advance leaks about a “statement of contrition” coming from Trudeau, he wasn’t remotely contrite. He was apologizing for nothing about Snc-lavalin.
In answer to a direct question from that, he said he was making an apology to the Inuit later that day, but that “in regards to standing up for jobs, I maintain there was no inappropriate pressure.”
He said in the future, he’ll make sure there are measures in place to improve how his office “engages with ministers.”
But JWR was a minister like no other. She was the attorney general. In that role she was not to be pushed or bullied or leaned on. Other cabinet ministers can be badgered till the cows come home, not the AG.
So very much else has been tarnished by this scandal.
Why did SNC have such unprecedented access to the PMO and PCO? Why did Wernick accept a call from SNC board chairman Kevin Lynch, who used to be in the job Wernick now has? Why did Lynch think it was A-OK to call? Why on earth does Gerald Butts, and it appears Trudeau, imagine there are former Supreme Court justices out there who are so amenable to the Liberal cause they would obligingly cough up the second opinion the government so badly wanted?
It was so very rich, so galling, that to one of the very last questions Trudeau was asked Thursday — how did he think Jody Wilson-raybould had managed the SNC file? — he demurred with “the matter is currently before the courts so it would be inappropriate to comment.”
As if he’d know. As if he has a clue.
FOR ALL THE LEAKS ABOUT A ‘STATEMENT OF CONTRITION’ COMING FROM TRUDEAU, HE WASN’T REMOTELY CONTRITE.