Former Attorney General told Liberal cabinet SNC-Lavalin pressure was "improper"

Jody Wilson-Raybould, the former Attorney General told federal cabinet ministers on Tuesday, that she believed it, "was improper for officials in the Prime Minister’s Office to press her" to help SNC-Lavalin, according to an article in the Globe and Mail by Robert Fife.

This most recent report follows the now nationwide famous SNC scandal in which the Globe and Mail alleged the PMO put pressure on Ms. Wilson-Raybould to reach a negotiated settlement with SNC-Lavalin on the criminal charges the company currently faces.

This saga began in 2015 just a few months after the Trudeau government was first elected, when federal prosecutors charged SNC-Lavalin with, "offering Libyan government officials $48 million in bribes and defrauding Libyan organizations of another $130 million."

The company is also facing a criminal probe connected to work on Montreal’s Jacques Cartier Bridge, and also has been connected to bribes in the construction of a major hospital in Montreal. The Montreal case has been described as, "the greatest corruption fraud in Canadian history," by the Financial Post.

A guilty charge in the Libya case alone would cost SNC-Lavalin company all their government contracts for roughly ten years and could lead to a foreign takeover or relocationof the business to the UK.

While extremely worrying for the more than 8,000 highly paid Canadian employees (3,400 of which are in Quebec) employed by SNC-Lavalin, the case has shined a light into the very depths of the relationship between big-business and politics in Canada.

According to the Prime Minister, the government repeatedly took job losses into account when pushing for the SNC-Lavalin deal.

“As a government, we take very seriously our responsibility of standing up for jobs, of protecting jobs, of growing the economy, of making sure there are good jobs right across the country -- as there are with SNC-Lavalin,” Trudeau said at a press conference Friday in Ottawa. “But as we do that, we always need to make sure we’re standing up for the rule of law and protecting the independence of our justice system.” Justin Trudeau

There could be a problem with that, according to the Globe and Mail, "under Canada’s new deferred-prosecution agreement law, prosecutors are not allowed to consider national economic interests when deciding whether to settle with a company."

On top of the lack of economic interests, according to Solomon Friedman, a part-time law professor, and criminal defence attorney, SNC-Lavalin may not qualify for a remediation agreement at all, due to the intense severity as well as longevity of their crimes.

For now, we will have to wait until Jody Wilson-Raybould, the Former Attorney General can openly speak about what occurred between her the PMO, and the Prime Minister.

Currently, she is bound by solicitor-client privilege, something the PM has not renounced. Jody Wilson-Raybould has retained former Supreme Court Judge Thomas Cromwell as her legal counsel to see exactly what she can openly say to Canadians, while still restrained by privilege.

Interestingly, the current AG appointed by the Trudeau government has not spoken to the former AG, but sees no reason for an investigation.

What do you think about the SNC-Lavalin Scandal? Will this seriously harm the Trudeau government?

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