Ethics report damning, but it still comes down to what you believe

In terms of content, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion’s report into the SNC-Lavalin affair is hardly a game changer.

It provides fascinating new details of the Liberal government’s obsession with the fate of the Quebec-based engineering firm.

Its conclusion — that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke the conflict-of-interest law by pressing then attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to offer SNC a plea bargain — is bound to hurt the Liberals politically.

But the essential facts of the case remain unchanged, as does the division over how to interpret these facts.

On the one hand are those who agree with Wilson-Raybould that the prime minister had no business questioning how she chose to prosecute SNC, which faces charges of bribery and fraud related to its dealings in Libya almost 20 years ago.

On the other are those who agree with Trudeau that, since jobs were potentially at stake, he had every right to make his views known.

With this report, Dion has come down firmly on WilsonRaybould’s side. But Trudeau remains unrepentant.

“I can’t apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs,” he said Wednesday.

Was the prime minister furthering private interests by championing SNC, as the ethics commissioner maintains? Or was he promoting the public weal? In Canada, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the two.

Ottawa’s massive bailout of Chrysler and General Motors in 2009 benefitted the two privately owned companies. But it also benefitted — briefly, at least — the workers and communities that depended on them.

Essentially, this was the argument that SNC made: If the company were convicted at trial and thus barred from seeking federal contracts for 10 years, some fat cats would be hurt. But so would many ordinary workers.

In 2016, SNC began lobbying the new Liberal government to change the law so prosecutors could offer so-called remediation agreements to companies charged with offences such as bribery.

Remediation agreements are allowed in Britain, France and Australia. Stephen Harper’s Conservative government hadn’t been keen on the idea, the ethics commissioner’s report says. But the new Trudeau regime thought it swell.

Over Wilson-Raybould’s objections (she argued that the government was moving too quickly), a new measure allowing remediation agreements was passed into law in the summer of 2018.

It’s probably worth noting that, in the Commons at least, none of the opposition parties raised objections to the idea of remediation agreements. The Conservatives did object to including the measure in an omnibus budget bill, arguing that it should have been separated out and judged on its own merits.

But it was no secret that the measure was designed with SNC specifically in mind. Which is why so many in the government were surprised by Wilson-Raybould’s decision a few months later to let the criminal case against SNC proceed rather than insist that prosecutors offer the remediation option — as she legally could have done.

Trudeau told the ethics commissioner he was puzzled by this since the new remediation regime had been designed precisely for companies like SNC. Finance Minister Bill Morneau told the commissioner he was “extremely surprised and shocked.”

From there, the sorry tale unwound, culminating in the expulsion from the Liberal caucus of Wilson-Raybould and her ally Jane Philpott.

SNC, incidentally, was never offered a remediation agreement.

Now it’s all back in the news. Thursday, Philpott and WilsonRaybould called on Trudeau to apologize. He said again that he won’t apologize for promoting jobs.

Is he a hero or a bum? The story continues.