Juno News - The SNC-Lavalin Debacle and Mark Norman Affair are beginning to converge

The SNC-Lavalin scandal and the Mark Norman scandal are starting to converge in very interesting ways. What is at stake ultimately at the SNC Lavalin affair is not whether or not Trudeau is a hypocrite when it comes to dealing with women, or the roots of crisis communications and changing your narratives, although those are part of the story. No, the bigger issue is that you can have the Prime Minister s office come in and say, allegedly, "Do not prosecute this one company." That's political interference in a justice case, basically obstruction of justice. And that brings Canada into line as being one of those shady countries that does this stuff more frequently.

00:00:00.000 An interesting thing is starting to happen right now in terms of Canadian political scandals.

00:00:09.420 That is the SNC-Lavalin saga and the Mark Norman Affair are starting to converge in very interesting

00:00:16.320 ways. Now the Norman Affair, it's been around before. It's the original one, but the SNC-Lavalin

00:00:21.640 story is the one that's dominated most of the scandal, the intrigue, and the headlines.

00:00:26.060 What is at stake ultimately at the SNC-Lavalin affair, and I've said this before, is not 0.88

00:00:31.040 whether or not this shows Trudeau is a hypocrite when it comes to dealing with women or the

00:00:36.160 roots of crisis communications and changing your narratives and so forth, although those 0.97

00:00:40.980 are all parts of the story. No, the bigger issue is that you can have the Prime Minister's

00:00:45.980 office come in and say, allegedly, perhaps is what the original news reports say, that

00:00:52.080 they come in and say, do not prosecute this one company, that you can have judicial partiality,

00:00:58.880 that you can have political interference in a justice case, basically obstruction of justice.

00:01:04.480 And some experts have said, yes, the criminal code has been violated before, violated right

00:01:09.880 here in this instance. And that's a big problem because this brings Canada, even just for the

00:01:14.860 shortest amount of time when Trudeau was having that conversation or someone from the PMO was

00:01:19.320 having that conversation with Jody Wilson-Raybould, that brings Canada into line as being one of

00:01:26.680 those shady countries that does this stuff more frequently. And if we let one thing pass,

00:01:31.620 well, then we get a feeding frenzy. We start to do it even more. It becomes a thing that can

00:01:35.940 happen. And Canada suddenly slips. We have democratic backsliding where we are no longer the

00:01:42.020 outstanding country that we have been for decades. So how does the Mark Norman trial fit into all of

00:01:47.200 this? Well, what his defense is going to be arguing is that this is also political interference and

00:01:52.860 that the entire charges that he faces are bogus charges. He's facing one count of breach of trust

00:02:00.000 for leaking cabinet confidences, basically a leak, telling the media or telling other people,

00:02:06.120 here's what happened. Now he's defending himself against all of this, but a lot of observers have

00:02:10.500 also pointed out, hold on a second, this happens all the time in Canada, hundreds of times a year,

00:02:16.100 thousands of times a year. People have scratched their heads going, well, to our knowledge,

00:02:20.200 no one has ever faced a criminal charge for this. So why a decorated former head of the Navy? Why would

00:02:27.520 he be a person who faces these charges? People say because the PMO wanted to see it that way. And that

00:02:34.160 is why his defense lawyer, Marie Hynden, is filing to subpoena a whole bunch of text messages and 0.59

00:02:38.800 other messages and correspondence between people in the PMO to prove just that. Well, wait a second,

00:02:45.300 what if that is true? Well, that means the PMO in this case said, charge this guy, go after this guy.

00:02:52.520 They instructed the justice system to do just that. Then we've got the allegations of SNC-Lavalin that

00:03:00.420 they got on the phone and said, don't prosecute this company. Then we've got the questions about

00:03:05.880 Huawei concerns about whether or not there would actually be political interference there,

00:03:10.300 even though it is the Attorney General's call as to whether or not all of that goes through.

00:03:15.320 Wait a second, this is not, not a good trend at all to see that the Prime Minister's office under

00:03:21.720 Justin Trudeau is actually being accused of interfering in the normal landscape of justice

00:03:27.820 multiple times. So what's going to happen next? Are they going to say, oh, I don't like this guy's

00:03:34.060 Facebook comments. So tell the Minister of Revenue, maybe this person made a problem on their tax

00:03:38.780 returns, didn't cross their T's and dot their I's. Next thing you know, they're coming after you.

00:03:43.340 This is why when you read the latest developments on these stories and the details of solicitor-client

00:03:48.080 privilege and all these things that might make people want to gloss their eyes over and say,

00:03:52.120 yeah, I got news fatigue. I'm not paying attention to this anymore. It matters because we have a

00:03:57.160 situation on our hands here. And thinking of the Mark Norman case makes one appreciate why Jody

00:04:02.460 Wilson-Raybould is so reticent to speak. Because all Mark Norman is accused of doing is speaking about

00:04:08.900 the wrong thing to the wrong people. He faces a criminal charge. This is why she's lawyering up and

00:04:14.560 looking very carefully at things, not just to be cagey, not just about bringing out maximum political

00:04:19.700 damage to Trudeau or minimum political damage to herself, but to see, hey, wait a second. If I say

00:04:26.060 something that the government doesn't like, could they Mark Norman me? Could I be criminally charged?

00:04:32.240 Could I face consequences? Maybe this is what she's thinking about. Quite frankly, it's sad that Canada's

00:04:39.420 become a country where people have to worry about this and political interference in the justice system

00:04:44.820 is something that we are seriously talking about as being a possibility.

Juno News - February 28, 2019

The SNC-Lavalin Debacle and Mark Norman Affair are beginning to converge

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