Trudeau threatening me with libel lawsuit: Scheer
Canadian opposition leader Andrew Scheer received the letter from PM Trudeau’s lawyer Julian Porter on 31 March
OTTAWA: The leader of Canada’s opposition Conservative Party has accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of threatening to sue him for libel over comments made about the ongoing SNC-Lavalin scandal.
“Justin Trudeau is threatening to sue me,” said Andrew Scheer. “But I won’t back down.”
“Canadians want this scandal to be investigated where Liberals can’t pull the strings and shut things down, like they did at the Justice and Ethics Committees.”
Scheer accused Trudeau of trying to intimidate him, adding, “This is what Trudeau does when you stand up to him. He threatens you.” Scheer received the letter from Trudeau’s lawyer Julian Porter on 31 March.
The letter took issue with comments made by Scheer on March 29 in response to new documents tabled in the Justice Committee of House of Commons by former Attorney General Jody WilsonRaybould.
Scheer’s March 29 statement accused the prime minister of political interference, of lying to Canadians and of corrupt conduct.
“The statement contained highly defamatory comments about Prime Minister Trudeau,” Porter said in the letter.
Porter said that it is “entirely false” to say Trudeau interfered in the SNC prosecution, which has not been halted, or that he personally directed Wilson-Raybould to “break the law” and “fired” her when she refused.
He said it is also entirely false to suggest Trudeau was aware of Wilson-Raybould’s concern that he was politically interfering in the SNC case but lied to Canadians about it.
Scheer challenged Trudeau to follow through on the threat to sue him over his assertion that the prime minister politically interfered with the criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau has been under fire for the last two months over allegations that his office pressured on Wilson-Raybould to interfere in criminal proceedings against SNC-Lavalin.
In an appearance before the justice committee, she said top government officials asked her to help ensure the company received a remediation agreement.
She later provided emails, a written statement and a taped recording to the committee.
Wilson-Raybould maintains she was inappropriately pressured last fall by the prime minister’s office to stop criminal proceedings against SNC-Lavalin on bribery charges related to contracts in Libya.
She was moved to the Veterans Affairs portfolio in a mid-January cabinet shuffle, a move she claims was punishment for refusing to ovver
She believes she was moved to Veterans Affairs in a mid-January cabinet shuffle as punishment for refusing to override the director of public prosecutions, who had decided not to negotiate a remediation agreement. She resigned from cabinet a month later.
Last week, Trudeau expelled both Wilson-Raybould and fellow former cabinet minister Jane Philpott from the Liberal caucus. Philpott resigned from cabinet in early March, citing a loss of confidence in the government’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin case.