Juno News - Documents reveal SNC-Lavalin probe blocked by Trudeau cabinet

00:00:00.000 you're tuned in to the andrew lawton show

00:00:05.920 nevertheless remember snc lavalin big scandal a few years back the media cared about it for all

00:00:13.660 of five minutes and then the rcmp decided it would investigate but didn't really get anywhere

00:00:20.700 didn't result in any charges now we've got for the first time some information about exactly why

00:00:27.280 they didn't push that probe further documents obtained by democracy watch show that it was

00:00:33.380 actually the government that blocked a lot of very key documents from the rcmp hiding it under the veil

00:00:39.460 of cabinet confidence uh joining me now is the co-founder of democracy watch duff conacher duff

00:00:46.500 good to talk to you thanks for coming on today my pleasure so let's start first off with what these

00:00:52.940 documents really reveal i know you have to contend as anyone who has experience with atips does with

00:00:58.120 a litany of redactions but there was actually a fair bit of information in these yes and what the

00:01:05.000 documents reveal is from my opinion the rcmp rolled over like a lapdog did a very superficial investigation

00:01:13.780 only interviewed three people uh relied a lot on the ethics commissioner's report that found

00:01:20.900 trudeau guilty of violating the federal ethics law didn't really try to get the uh cabinet

00:01:28.840 communications internal and secret that the cabinet refused to give them could have gone to court

00:01:33.760 to get a court order a warrant for that but decided not to for i think unjustifiable reasons

00:01:41.000 and uh then there was a two-year delay by the top officers after they received the initial assessment

00:01:47.320 report which really was an investigation the rcmp just didn't want to call this an investigation

00:01:52.100 publicly but it was an investigation and they should have announced that they were investigating

00:01:56.740 way back in 2020 and the top officers essentially didn't make a decision on that assessment report for

00:02:04.980 almost two years and then rolled over and let everyone off without even uh allowing an open

00:02:11.300 court to to make that decision instead made it behind closed doors very secret and unjustifiable

00:02:16.780 you touch on a number of important aspects of this the one i think it's just the lack of curiosity i

00:02:23.640 mean i would hope that if the rcmp were investigating a murder or a fraud of some kind and they they run up

00:02:30.100 against a bit of a roadblock someone doesn't want to hand over information they they wouldn't just say

00:02:34.160 oh okay well thanks anyway we tried and move on but that's really what they did here i mean they

00:02:39.040 they had tools available it wasn't just that they were up against this impenetrable force it's that

00:02:43.760 they didn't even really try from start to finish there's lots of questions about this uh especially

00:02:50.560 when you compare it to for example um the rcmp's investigation of jason kenney's leadership race and

00:02:57.840 allegations about wrongdoing in that in alberta they announced that it was an investigation they've been

00:03:02.560 given regular updates uh doug ford and the greenbelt scandal in ontario rcmp after having it referred

00:03:10.160 to them by the opp just a couple months later announced an investigation presumably they're going

00:03:15.840 to and are in alberta and are going to an ontario use subpoenas try and get search warrants because

00:03:22.080 you have to check all the communications on every device for everyone involved in these decisions to

00:03:27.520 determine whether it crosses the line and if you don't do it it's essentially a cover-up and then

00:03:34.640 a two-year delay on the assessment report they accepted all the cabinet's claims that everything

00:03:40.160 they were doing was for good reasons not for wrong reasons reasons i mean it just raises a lot of

00:03:46.960 questions about whether the rcmp is independent enough to actually investigate political wrongdoing

00:03:53.920 in canada especially at the federal level we saw just to bring another story into this for a moment

00:04:00.640 during the public order emergency commission the government hide behind solicitor client privilege

00:04:05.760 which is sacrosanct in in the legal system as it should be but there was really no mechanism to

00:04:11.840 challenge that they kind of just assert it and that's that and and we see cabinet confidence

00:04:16.320 increasingly used in the same way where like there's not really a powerful arbiter of whether cabinet

00:04:23.120 confidence is being appropriately invoked in a way that is is kind of keeping with transparency as

00:04:28.720 suppose as what's supposed to be i think the basis of a democracy it's the most abused loophole in the

00:04:35.680 the so-called freedom of information laws across the country they really should be called the guide to

00:04:41.440 hiding information from the public that the public has a right to know acts because that's what they are

00:04:46.880 and uh we are still chasing after the documents more than half of the documents that the rcmp determined

00:04:54.400 are covered by our request by democracy watch more than 4 000 pages more than half of them have not

00:05:00.560 been disclosed because they are reviewing whether they are cabinet confidences and if they then send us

00:05:07.760 a bunch of redacted documents claiming cabinet confidence then we plan to go to court to challenge that

00:05:14.240 because i doubt that most of them are actually and uh the supreme court is reviewing this issue right

00:05:21.040 now uh and and reviewing the scope of that in a case that came out of ontario and request the ontario

00:05:28.240 government and uh it hopefully they will narrow the scope of that because most of the things that are

00:05:35.280 claimed as cabinet confidence really are not uh and advice to cabinet another very much abused

00:05:41.520 uh loophole in our so-called freedom of information laws across the country you've got the cabinet

00:05:48.480 confidence loophole and then you also have the rcmp which has historically been i think one of the worst

00:05:54.240 institutions in canada for for its own access to information obligations and i i'm wondering kind of

00:05:59.840 in your sense that you you had access to these documents yes but if this is what was unredacted i always

00:06:04.800 have to wonder well what's in the redacted stuff yes and as you had mentioned before uh a lot of the

00:06:11.040 documents really only seven documents had not been disclosed before out of the 19 they disclosed to

00:06:17.520 us and again we filed this request in july 2022 they responded in may saying there's only 96 pages 86

00:06:25.680 of them have to be redacted because the investigation is still ongoing turns out actually the investigation

00:06:31.120 had ended in january 2023 four and a half months before so it was just a false claim and also there

00:06:39.040 weren't just 96 pages we received a letter in july saying actually there's more than 4 000 pages and

00:06:43.760 now we're reviewing them now we have uh 1815 of those more than 4 000 the rest still being withheld

00:06:52.560 to be reviewed for cabinet confidence just to remind people documents are supposed to be disclosed

00:06:57.760 within 30 days and you can get it up to 60 day extension uh if you have a lot of documents to review

00:07:05.120 we're now we've filed this request in july 2022 we're now in october 2023 and still waiting for

00:07:10.960 more than half the documents and again under under this blanket loophole for cabinet confidence when

00:07:19.280 most of them probably are not cabinet confidences the other ones that were withheld and what they have

00:07:23.600 disclosed cited the solicitor client uh privilege loophole that you've cited before and this is not the

00:07:30.480 way these things should be done there should have been a special prosecutor 0.57

00:07:34.400 selected by all the party leaders not by the ruling party attorney general so you get someone

00:07:39.360 independent overseeing these investigations with a commitment to issue a public report at the end

00:07:44.000 explaining if no one's prosecuted why they were not prosecuted and the rcp just refuses to do things

00:07:50.640 that way even though in several provinces special prosecutors have been appointed

00:07:56.080 in these kind of situations in the past so just to put a fine point on that you think there needs

00:08:01.440 to be basically a public inquiry and i mean not the disclosure aspect but the core actions that are at

00:08:07.840 the core of this disclosure of you know why the rcmp seem to so easily abandon one might even say cover

00:08:14.320 up this abandonment of its investigation into the government yes needs to be a public inquiry uh also

00:08:22.240 going forward we need a dedicated anti-corruption police force that is far more independent from

00:08:29.760 the federal cabinet or any provincial cabinet than the rcmp is quebec has one came out of their

00:08:36.800 construction uh scandal a corruption in the construction industry scandal and uh the other

00:08:44.800 provinces need it and so does the federal level and the head of that police force and everyone's

00:08:50.560 staff there have to be appointed not by the ruling party but by all party leaders and in this case we

00:08:58.080 need a special inquiry a public inquiry with an inquiry commissioner selected by all party leaders in the

00:09:04.080 same way that the inquiry commissioner has been for the inquiry into foreign interference in our politics

00:09:11.360 that's how these appointments have to be made if someone hands you a job then you owe them and the

00:09:16.160 ruling party hands out the jobs for all the key watchdog positions at the federal level in several

00:09:22.160 provinces only a few provinces is it an all-party committee that makes these appointments and that's

00:09:26.640 the way it has to be done to have independent and effective enforcement of key democratic government

00:09:32.160 laws duff conacher co-founder of democracy watch thanks for coming on and for your work on this stuff

00:09:38.080 thank you i'll keep you updated as we continue to chase after those other more than two thousand

00:09:43.280 pages please do and it might be a couple of years before the the next release comes but we'll have

00:09:48.080 you back on then thanks very much thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the

00:09:52.480 program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - October 22, 2023

Documents reveal SNC-Lavalin probe blocked by Trudeau cabinet

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