National Post (National Edition)
SNC’s cosy ties to government,
OTTAWA • Over the past few months, the SNC-Lavalin affair has underscored the seemingly cosy relationship between high-level officials in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and a cadre of executives and lawyers who sought to win a deferred prosecution for the firm.
But this week’s report by Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion etched much clearer lines between that relatively small crowd, which includes Bank of Montreal board members, SNC-Lavalin executives, a number of high-level Liberal ministers, top public servants, and Supreme Court Justices.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said in a statement on Friday that “Trudeau and SNC-Lavalin were in this from the very beginning,” and called for an investigation.
What follows are five points from the Dion report that detail the interactions between this small group working in unison to help SNC-Lavalin avoid a criminal trial.
JAN. 23, 2018
Discussions between SNCLavalin and Finance officials began in earnest on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 23. SNC CEO Neil Bruce and Finance Minister Bill Morneau talked about the potential ramifications for SNC-Lavalin if it failed to secure a deferred prosecution agreement, or DPA, which would allow the firm to avoid criminal trial on corruption charges. If convicted the company would be barred from bidding on federal contracts for 10 years. SNC-Lavalin has been facing criminal charges since 2015, when it was alleged that the company and two of its subsidiaries paid nearly $48 million in bribes to Libyan officials between 2001 and 2011 in order to win government contracts.
FEB. 2, 2018
Just weeks after the Davos meeting, the finance minister’s director of policy, Justin To, met the head of the company. Bruce provided To with a “confidential discussion document” that again outlined the company’s arguments in favour of a DPA, and “the company’s request for a timely implementation of a (DPA) regime via the federal budget,” according to Dion’s report. Just 25 days later, Morneau tabled his budget, Bill C-74, which included amendments to the Criminal Code that allowed for DPAs. The government had released the results of its public consultations on DPAs just five days earlier.
LATE SEPTEMBEREARLY OCTOBER 2018
SNC-Lavalin then upped its efforts to secure a remediation agreement that autumn, after the firm was notified on Oct. 9 that the public prosecutor would not be accepting an application for a DPA, also known as a remediation agreement. Bruce again met with Finance officials in the ensuing weeks — this time with Morneau’s chief of staff and deputy minister of finance — where he provided a PowerPoint presentation that laid out the company’s argument for a deferred prosecution. Not only did those government officials hear the presentation, but they worked with the company and “suggested possible additional factors relevant to the public interest,” according to Dion’s report. The PowerPoint also laid out a “Plan B” that the company said it was mulling in the event it was not granted a DPA, which involved splitting the firm into two entities as a way to avoid losing out on potential federal contracts. SNC-Lavalin officials also met with then Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick over the same period.
OCT. 14, 2018
Around this time, then President of the Treasury Board Scott Brison was also brought into the fold on the SNC-Lavalin affair, according to the report. Brison had met with Kevin Lynch, the former clerk of the Privy Council and current chair of the board of SNC-Lavalin, and SNC lawyer Robert Prichard. Dion’s report suggests the discussion touched on a range of topics but eventually fell upon led SNC-Lavalin and deferred prosecution agreements, and the two SNC-Lavalin representatives again repeated worries over the decision by the public prosecutor. Brison later passed along their concerns to then Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould, the report said. Prichard also serves as chairman of the board at Bank of Montreal (BMO), while Lynch serves as vice-chair; exactly four months after their October discussion, on Feb 14, 2019, Brison was named vice-chair of investment and corporate banking at BMO.
MID-NOVEMBER 2018
Beginning in November, the report said, legal representatives for SNC-Lavalin had begun providing legal opinions directly to officials in the Prime Minister’s Office in a bid to secure a judicial review of the prosecutor’s decision, the report said. Sometime in November, Morneau and Brison met with SNC’s Lynch in Beijing, where they may have discussed the notion that a third-party expert could provide a legal opinion to the attorney general as a way to convince her to intervene on the company’s behalf. Repeated arguments in favour of a DPA were made by several high-level officials at Finance and the Prime Minister’s Office, including by Justin Trudeau’s former principal secretary Gerald Butts, over the ensuing weeks and months, before the story was made public in early February 2019.