Trudeau must help us learn more about SNC-Lavalin case

Justin Trudeau is absolutely wrong if he thinks he has laid to rest allegations that his office pressured Canada’s justice minister to halt the criminal prosecution of one of Quebec’s most powerful corporations.

The prime minister repeatedly insisted late last week that this never happened.

Indeed, Trudeau was adamant that he and his office did not “direct” Jody Wilson-Raybould, when she was federal justice minister and attorney general, to spare SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. from a criminal trial on fraud and corruption charges.

But words can be blankets to conceal the truth.

If the Prime Minister’s Office did not “direct” Wilson-Raybould to intervene in this case, could it have nonetheless pressured her to do so? Canadians need to know the answer to this question. On it hinges the integrity of this government in a federal election year.

The allegations first made in a Globe and Mail story last Thursday are deeply disturbing but at this point have not been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. According to the Globe’s report, Wilson-Raybould would not bow to pressure from the PMO late last year to instruct the Public Prosecution Service of Canada to halt court proceedings against SNC-Lavalin and instead allow a negotiated settlement without trial.

Federal prosecutors have alleged the engineering and construction giant paid out millions of dollars in bribes to public officials in Libya between 2001 and 2011 in order to win lucrative government contracts. This is far from the only time SNC has landed in legal hot water.

Just two weeks ago, the company’s former chief executive, Pierre Duhaime, pleaded guilty to breach of trust for his role in a plan to pay out $22.5 million to officials to increase SNC’s chances of securing a $1.3 billion contract to build a new hospital in Quebec.

In its defence, the company blames any wrongdoing that might have happened on rogue individuals no longer working for it and says it has improved its operating standards. No wonder. A conviction on the charges related to SNC’s activities in Libya could have dire consequences that would include a 10-year ban on it being awarded federal contracts.

To be sure, SNC-Lavalin might have had an out from its Libyan woes. An amendment to the Criminal Code slipped into the 2018 federal budget allowed remediation agreements. These agreements can suspend criminal prosecution if the accused admits wrongdoing, pays a fine and co-operates with authorities. Some observers believe they were introduced especially to benefit SNC.

In the event, the director of the Public Prosecution Service of Canada did not offer SNC this option. As for Wilson-Raybould, whether or not she was pressured by the PMO, she was shuffled from minister of justice to minister of veterans affairs last month, a move widely seen as a humiliating demotion.

And this brings us back to the PMOs’s office.

If the allegations that the PMO pressured WilsonRaybould to spare SNC-Lavalin from criminal charges were true, it would ignite a scandal that could topple this government.

It would mean an official or officials at the highest level of the federal government had tried to interfere politically in a judicial matter. That would be unethical and possibly illegal. And if true, it would represent a dangerous and unacceptable attempt to undermine the rule of law in Canada.

Trudeau must help Canadians learn more about this matter.

Let’s get the facts from the principal players in the SNC-Lavalin case. And if it takes an investigation by the ethics commissioner or a special parliamentary committee to unearth this information, so be it.