‘VEILED THREATS’
Wilson-Raybould testifies
OTTAWA • In a stunning appearance before the House of Commons justice committee Wednesday, former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould accused the entire senior ranks of the federal government of making ‘veiled threats’ against her while attempting to interfere politically in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. Sitting alone at a table in a packed basement room in Parliament’s West Block, Wilson-Raybould told the committee’s MPs that over a fourmonth period in late 2018 she was pressured by Finance Minister Bill Morneau and his staff, clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, senior aides in the Prime Minister’s Office including former principal secretary Gerald Butts and chief of staff Katie Telford, and even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself — all of whom were eager for her to direct federal prosecutors to defer the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on corruption and fraud charges and negotiate a remediation agreement instead. “For a period of approximately four months between September and December of 2018 I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people in the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” Wilson-Raybould said. Wilson-Raybould said partisan concerns were repeatedly raised in connection with the SNCLavalin case, including by Trudeau, who she claims pointed out to her in a September conversation that he was himself a Quebec MP and raised the political consequences of prosecuting a large Montreal-based company during the then-ongoing Quebec election.
A corruption conviction for SNC-Lavalin, a massive Montreal-based engineering company, would mean the company is barred from bidding on federal procurement contracts for ten years. Remediation agreements see a company admit wrongdoing, pay a fine, and obey other compliance conditions, but avoid a guilty conviction in court.
She said the conversations were “clearly inappropriate” and included the suggestion that “a collision with the prime minister on these matters should be avoided.” She said one conversation with Wernick on Dec. 19, 2018, had her thinking of the Saturday Night Massacre, a reference to U.S. president Richard Nixon’s firing of the independent prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal. Indeed, in a cabinet shuffle the following month, Trudeau moved Wilson-Raybould from her role as attorney general and justice minister to Veterans Affairs, a move she thought may have resulted from her refusal to comply with the prime minister’s wishes on the SNC-Lavalin case. However, she said, the PMO denied that this was the reason she was moved to a different cabinet portfolio. Wilson-Raybould said it was not wrong for senior officials to raise concerns about job losses in the “early stages” of the decision, but once the decision was made, they crossed the line. “Leaving aside job losses … where they became very clearly inappropriate was when political issues came up like the election in Quebec, like losing the election if SNC were to move their headquarters, conversations like that,” Wilson-Raybould said.
“Conversations like the one I had with the clerk of the Privy Council who invoked the prime minister’s name throughout the entirety of the conversation, spoke to me about the prime minister being dug in, spoke to me about his concerns as to what would happen. In my mind those were veiled threats and I took them as such. That is entirely inappropriate.”
WHERE CLEARLY THEY INAPPROPRIATE BECAME VERY WAS
WHEN POLITICAL ISSUES CAME
UP... LIKE LOSING THE ELECTION
IF SNC WERE TO MOVE ...