Juno News - August 15, 2019


Justin Trudeau blocked access to key information on SNC-Lavalin affair

Hosted by
Andrew Lawton
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Jody Wilson-Raybould Mario Dion
Help us cover the election! Trudeau’s excuses for #Lavscam keeps changing

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

157.23

Word count

878

Sentence count

44


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A new report from the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner casts new light on a key part of the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal, and casts new doubt on the Prime Minister's initial denial that the allegations were false.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Canada's Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has issued a formal report
00:00:13.600 really cementing what most Canadians concluded months ago about Justin Trudeau,
00:00:18.300 that he erred and violated federal law when he tried to force and coerce, through himself and his office,
00:00:26.680 Jody Wilson-Raybould, at the time Canada's Attorney General, to interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin
00:00:33.160 to try to give the company a sweetheart deal rather than holding it accountable on the allegations of bribery
00:00:39.040 for which the prosecution is still ongoing.
00:00:42.040 Now this report, however, does cast new light on the story.
00:00:46.780 It's not just about this misunderstanding that Justin Trudeau was claiming before,
00:00:50.960 and remember when that initial Globe and Mail report came out, he said that the allegations were false.
00:00:55.600 He categorically denied them.
00:00:57.820 I and my staff always acted appropriately and professionally.
00:01:03.800 I therefore completely disagree with the former Attorney General's characterization of events.
00:01:11.480 Well now the report says that there were numerous avenues, numerous attempts to interfere,
00:01:17.140 and more importantly, undue, improper, and yes, illegal pressure put on Jody Wilson-Raybould.
00:01:23.520 But even after this 63-page report was tabled, the Trudeau 2 report, because again, this isn't the first time he's been down this road,
00:01:32.500 Justin Trudeau is still not taking accountability for his actions, though he says he is.
00:01:38.000 Take a listen.
00:01:38.640 I fully accept this report and take responsibility for everything that happened.
00:01:45.280 Where I disagree with the commissioner, amongst others, is where he says and takes a strong perspective
00:01:52.480 that any contact with the AG, the Attorney General on this issue, was improper.
00:01:58.780 What we did over the past year wasn't good enough.
00:02:03.800 But at the same time, I can't apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs.
00:02:09.760 Yeah, so he says that he is taking responsibility and the buck stops with the Prime Minister,
00:02:14.900 but is also disputing that anything improper happened.
00:02:18.280 Well, if you're disputing the most central part of the report, what is it you're actually admitting to?
00:02:22.700 What is it you're fessing up to?
00:02:24.680 And moreover, if you were actually contrite and interested in finding the truth and actually righting wrongs,
00:02:31.320 wouldn't you be supporting the investigation?
00:02:34.340 No, Justin Trudeau did the opposite.
00:02:36.540 Take a look at this section from the report.
00:02:38.680 During this examination, nine witnesses informed our office that they had information they believed to be relevant,
00:02:46.880 but that could not be disclosed because, according to them,
00:02:50.100 this information would reveal a confidence of the Queen's Privy Council
00:02:53.380 and would fall outside the scope of Order in Council 2019-0105.
00:02:59.320 In order to gain access to as much relevant information as possible,
00:03:02.720 on March 29th, 2019, I instructed legal counsel in our office to engage with counterparts in the Privy Council office
00:03:10.360 to request that witnesses be enabled to provide all of their evidence to our office.
00:03:15.420 Despite several weeks of discussions, the offices remained at an impasse over access to cabinet confidences.
00:03:23.600 Dion continues to say that he raised the matter directly with Trudeau,
00:03:27.500 who lawyered up and said through legal counsel that he would have to talk to the Privy Council office
00:03:32.140 to see whether this Order in Council could be amended,
00:03:35.340 and at a certain point, the office just declined the request altogether.
00:03:40.380 Now, the Order in Council he's referring to is the directive that Justin Trudeau gave
00:03:44.860 allowing Jody Wilson-Raybould to testify before the Justice Committee
00:03:48.800 about a limited window of time where she did something that was covered under cabinet confidence
00:03:54.840 and she was allowed to speak out about it.
00:03:56.960 But as Jody Wilson-Raybould has said herself, that was a very narrow window
00:04:01.800 and it wasn't the totality of what it is that she had to say.
00:04:06.000 And in the course of Mario Dion's investigation, there were nine witnesses that had information
00:04:10.940 that fell outside of that order and Justin Trudeau would not expand it.
00:04:15.440 But beyond that, he pretended that he didn't know if he could.
00:04:18.540 Well, if he issued the initial order, he could just as easily issue a second one.
00:04:23.360 But he chose not to.
00:04:24.620 Now, I'm not suggesting there is criminal wrongdoing here.
00:04:28.540 I'll let the RCMP investigate that.
00:04:30.760 But what I am suggesting is that Justin Trudeau and his office obstructed this investigation
00:04:36.420 when there was very clearly evidence that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
00:04:41.320 thought was relevant and could not access.
00:04:44.820 Justin Trudeau blocked access to key documents and witnesses
00:04:50.100 for something that he says he did nothing wrong during.
00:04:54.520 That is not a decision made by a Prime Minister who has nothing to hide.
00:04:59.280 Canadians have allowed Trudeau and his government to violate Conflict of Interest and Ethics Law
00:05:03.560 now several times in just a four-year term in office.
00:05:08.060 Will he get another chance to do it?
00:05:10.180 Who knows?
00:05:10.800 But this is a lot bigger than the Bahamas' vacation.
00:05:14.240 True North is standing up for truth and honesty and fairness in reporting.
00:05:18.200 We can't do this alone, especially with the election nearing.
00:05:21.600 We've launched a crowdfunding campaign to cover our election coverage costs.
00:05:26.120 Please do chip in with a few dollars or even a few hundred dollars if you can.
00:05:29.800 There's a link in the description box or you can head on over to tnc.news.
00:05:33.620 For True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.