SNC-Lavalin claims must be taken seriously
RULE OF LAW IN CANADA? THE JURY’S OUT
HARD TO OVERSTATE HOW SERIOUS THE SNC-LAVALIN ALLEGATIONS ARE
Can it be? Can a large, politically sensitive corporation with a history of buying influence avoid prosecution in this country by the mere expedient of a phone call to the Prime Minister’s Office? Can the prime minister’s staff have charges against the corporation dropped by a quick call to the minister of justice? Is that the sort of country we live in?
After this week, we can guess how these questions would be answered in the Prime Minister’s Office, at least: yes, of course. Indeed, long before it was reported officials in Justin Trudeau’s office had pressured the former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to have prosecutors set aside criminal charges against SNC-Lavalin, the giant Quebec engineering and construction firm, the government had gone to some trouble to provide the company with a softer option.
Buried deep in the 2018 omnibus budget bill was a provision allowing corporations charged with certain offences to avoid prosecution by signing so-called “remediation agreements.” In place of convictions, fines and jail times, the company and its executives are obliged, in essence, to admit they did it, put back the money, and promise never to do it again. The amendment was inserted after a strenuous campaign of public advertising and private lobbying (14 meetings with officials in the Prime Minister’s Office alone) by — who? — why yes, SNC-Lavalin.
The issue was of more than academic concern to the company, which has since 2015 been facing charges of bribing public officials in Libya, in violation of federal anti-corruption legislation. But then, the company was no stranger to scandal, foreign and domestic, before that: from the Padma bridge project in Bangladesh to the Kerala hydroelectric dam in India to the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal to the 2016 compliance agreement with Elections Canada, in which it admitted funnelling tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign donations through its employees over several years, almost all of them to the Liberal Party of Canada.
You can imagine how attractive “remediation” would be in such cases, as an alternative to imprisonment. For managers, the risk of getting caught becomes no more than the cost of doing business: heads you get the contract, tails you (or rather shareholders) pay a fine. SNC-Lavalin says the executives responsible have left the company, that its corporate culture has changed. But while it may no longer be in the business of breaking laws, it certainly appears to be in the business of drafting them, with the help of high-priced lobbyists telling sob stories to compliant politicians of the dire economic impact in A Certain Province if the company were held to account for its actions.
Alas for SNC-Lavalin and the Liberals, even with the remediation provision in place, it remained up to the discretion of non-partisan prosecutors whether to make use of it. Last October, the director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, refused. Officials from the PMO then reportedly put Wilson-Raybould under “heavy pressure” to intervene with Roussel; she reportedly refused. A couple of months later she was busted down to Veterans Affairs.
The truth of these allegations is suggested not only by Wilson-Raybould’s repeated, on the record, non-denials (the solicitor-client privilege she has invoked may forbid her to confirm incriminating statements by her former clients in government, but not to deny them), but by the prime minister’s own repeated non-denial denials, carefully refuting allegations (he did not “direct” her to intervene) that had not been made.
There remain a number of unanswered questions, to be sure. If Wilson-Raybould was pressured to do something so obviously improper, why is she still in cabinet? On the one hand, why wouldn’t she resign in protest? On the other, why would the PM risk firing her, knowing what she knew? And why would she accept such treatment?
But the scandal here does not lie in its aftermath, but with the original alleged interference. It is hard to overstate how serious a matter this is. It would be bad enough for Wilson-Raybould to have instructed prosecutors on her own, at least without putting her reasons in writing and notifying the public, as the law requires. It would be many times worse for the prime minister or his staff to have pressured her to do so — for any reason, let alone on behalf of a firm whose illegal campaign donations their party had only recently had to return. Prosecutors are supposed to be insulated from political interference for a reason.
Put it this way: suppose instead of leaning on the minister to go easy on a friend, the prime minister’s people had wanted her to go after an enemy.
At the very least, for the PMO to have intervened in the way alleged would display appalling judgment; at the worst it may count as obstruction of justice. The former Liberal attorney general of Ontario, Michael Bryant, and former judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond are among those who believe a crime may have been committed. Certainly it calls into doubt the government’s protestations, in the controversy over the extradition of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, about its devotion to the “rule of law.” It also possibly sheds new light on the murky dealings surrounding the dismissal and prosecution of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman for allegedly leaking cabinet secrets.
The worst part is it is not clear what can be done even if the worst suspicions prove true. The RCMP, embarrassingly for an allegedly mature democracy, have a decidedly spotty record investigating allegations of wrongdoing by their political masters. Neither has Parliament proved particularly effective, in past scandals, at getting to the bottom of something the government of the day wishes to suppress. Those in power seem to have drawn the appropriate conclusions.
Will the pattern be repeated? We’re about to find out whether this really is a country governed by the rule of law at all.
IT IS NOT CLEAR WHAT CAN BE DONE EVEN IF THE WORST SUSPICIONS PROVE TRUE.