Liberal ties explain why SNC-Lavalin never faces consequences
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Summary
SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal-based engineering firm that s been embroiled in a global and domestic scandal for the last several months, never has to face punishment for its misconduct. The latest example of this comes in an exclusive CBC report detailing the names of 18 SNC employees, executives, and some of their spouses that were illegally contributing to the Liberal Party of Canada between 2004 and 2009.
Transcript
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Somehow, SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal-based engineering firm that's been embroiled in
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global and domestic scandal for the last several months, never has to face punishment for its
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misconduct. The latest example of this comes in an exclusive CBC report detailing the names of
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the 18 SNC-Lavalin employees, executives, and some of their spouses that were illegally
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contributing to the Liberal Party of Canada predominantly between 2004 and 2009. The scheme
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has been known for quite some time. About $110,000 was illegally donated to Liberal
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Riding Associations, the Liberal Party, the Liberal Leadership Campaigns, and this money was reimbursed
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by SNC-Lavalin to get around the bans on corporate contributions. Well, up until this report from CBC,
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no one knew the names or identities of the people that were involved in the scheme. In fact,
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the Liberal Party, since 2016 when they got the list, has refused to share it with anyone. And
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the Conservative Party, for its part, had received about $8,000 in illegal contributions. It refunded
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the donations and provided the list of donors on request. But what's fascinating about this is that
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SNC-Lavalin avoided being charged for this illegal contribution scheme by signing a compliance
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agreement to Elections Canada saying, we won't break the law again. Sounds a lot like the deferred
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prosecution agreement they want for the Libyan bribery allegations. That basically, if they just sign
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something, all the troubles go away. And this is why it's important for, if we care about the rule of
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law, the country to say, no, we're not going to keep giving you a pass. There's a lot of problems here, but
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the Liberal Party does not have its hands clean. Beyond concealing this, even after it was made public,
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the Liberals are also foolish to have even entertained the possibility, let alone pressured
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Jody Wilson-Raybould into giving a deferred prosecution agreement, knowing how far back the
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ignorance of the law spans when it comes to SNC-Lavalin. So here we have 18 people that were
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legally contributing, a company that was facilitating it, and only one person in this entire mix faces
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charges, not the company itself, and not the illegal donors. Most of whom have denied any knowledge of
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wrongdoing, but some of them in the CBC article were explicitly candid. Yes, this was all organized by
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SNC-Lavalin. So Canadians need to ask why this country is at all even entertaining the idea of doing
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business with SNC-Lavalin. Why have they not been purged from the database of potential vendors and
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suppliers for the federal government? Why is the federal government still entertaining the possibility
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of entering into a deferred prosecution with them? And most importantly, why on earth has this gone on
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so far and so long without anyone holding feet to the fire on this? Well, I think when you look at the
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$110,000 donated to the liberals, it becomes very apparent why. And it wasn't just greasing the palms
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of the party that was in power. Remember that from 2006 to 2009, there was a conservative government.
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And even so, SNC-Lavalin was facilitating the illegal contributions of donations to the liberal party and
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the liberal leadership race. You cannot sever SNC from the liberals. And it's becoming true, painfully so,
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just how much that has meant an ignorance to the rule of law. For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.