Ethics investigator is Liberal cabinet minister's sister-in-law
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
172.84326
Summary
Jody Wilson-Raybould has accused the Prime Minister of pressuring her attorney general to take a particular decision in the SNC-Lavalin prosecution. And now, the Ethics Commissioner is taking a leave of absence for reasons that have yet to be explained or articulated to Canadians.
Transcript
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Justin Trudeau is once again under investigation by Canada's Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.
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It's not the first time, and well, let's face it, it may not be the last time either that Trudeau has faced such an investigation,
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but this one in particular I'd say is the highest profile of all of them.
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It involves the allegations put forth by Jody Wilson-Raybould that Justin Trudeau and the Prime Minister's office
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has put pressure on her as the Attorney General to take a particular decision in the SNC-Lavalin prosecution.
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The problem is that as much as Trudeau likes to stand up and say he's cooperating fully with the office
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and that Canadians can have faith in this institution,
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there's a reason for all of us in this country to be very skeptical of what's going to happen.
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You see, when this story exploded onto the scene in the first place and we knew that there was going to be an investigation,
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not long after news came that the Ethics Commissioner was taking a prolonged leave of absence
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for reasons that have still not been particularly explained or articulated to Canadians.
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The Acting Director of Investigations right now is a woman by the name of Martine Richard.
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Now, I don't know Martine Richard. I've never met her as far as I understand
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and know nothing about her except one key detail that gives cause to question,
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and that is that she is the sister-in-law of a Member of Parliament.
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She is the sister-in-law of Dominic LeBlanc, not just an MP, but a Liberal MP.
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Not just a Liberal MP, but a Liberal Cabinet Minister.
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Yes, she's the sister-in-law of one of the hand-picked representatives of Justin Trudeau's government, Dominic LeBlanc.
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Dominic LeBlanc's wife is named Jolaine Richard.
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Her sister is Martine Richard, the Acting Director of Investigations for the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's office.
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Now, this story was initially broken by Democracy Watch,
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and there were a few things in their initial reporting that gave me cause to question.
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For example, they made a couple of factual errors.
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And also, they couldn't completely prove that the two Richard women were actually related.
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Well, the office in question has now confirmed this relationship to Blacklock's reporter,
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And this proves that there is a familial connection between the woman investigating the Liberal government
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and a high-profile representative of that very government.
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Now, how the office is going to avoid this conflict being an issue, I have no idea.
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One suggestion that was proposed by Democracy Watch
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is that the investigation is handed off to a provincial ethics commissioner
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and thus is a little bit further from the degrees of separation
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So, my question to anyone in the Liberal government right now
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is how can Canadians have trust in an investigation being done
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by a relative of someone who's effectively part of the government being investigated?
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This is not trying to drag things that are very disparate and disconnected in nature
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This is a very easy and fundamental distinction
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that the government, it seems like, was hoping that no one would notice.