Juno News - The True North Report： Andrew Lawton and Leo Knight discuss the latest on the PMO and SNC-Lavalin

00:00:00.000 welcome everyone to another true north talk my name is andrew lawton a fellow with true north

00:00:11.800 joined by another fellow with the true north who i've not yet had the opportunity to do one of

00:00:17.060 these and that is leo knight who i know was introduced to you watching by candace malcolm

00:00:21.700 a few days ago and also is tremendously well known and well respected in canada for his work

00:00:27.280 on security issues former vancouver police officer former rcmp officer and joins me now leo good to

00:00:34.000 talk to you thanks very much for coming on today you're most welcome andrew we need to talk about

00:00:39.200 the law enforcement implications of the controversy that's been unfolding with the prime minister's

00:00:44.780 office and snc lavalin and just for a little bit of backstory to people here snc lavalin is not a

00:00:52.600 company that has never had brushes with corruption and scandal before in fact it's hard pressing

00:00:58.980 to come up with a canadian company that has had as many not just allegations but convictions on these

00:01:05.900 grounds as snc lavalin from illegal campaign donations to bribes to more bribes to more bribery

00:01:12.420 and ideally with companies like these we should be looking at lawmakers that are not going to be

00:01:18.320 accepting any influence and that's where it comes to really the significance of looking at both sides

00:01:24.320 of the equation here but when we look at the report from the globe and mail this week which the prime

00:01:29.260 minister's office has denied trudeau or trudeau's agents in his office allegedly tried to pressure

00:01:35.820 the former attorney general jody wilson raybold to intervene in a prosecution of snc lavalin over its

00:01:45.180 connections to bribes in libya and let me ask you leo i mean when you see this story is this a

00:01:51.400 political scandal or is this something that could have the potential for criminal wrongdoing with

00:01:56.360 what's come out so far well i think it's both actually uh the political side of things i think

00:02:02.420 are pretty obvious when you have the prime minister's office uh trying to pressure an attorney

00:02:07.660 general uh to to do something or to back off a prosecution i think that's uh that's a political

00:02:13.680 scandal that uh that certainly will come home to roost uh but there's a criminal side to it too

00:02:19.580 uh section 139 uh subsection 2 of the criminal code seems pretty clear on this where uh it says let

00:02:26.400 me just quote to you directly uh everyone who willfully attempts in any manner other than the

00:02:31.060 manner described in subsection 1 which refers to sureties to obstruct pervert or defeat the course

00:02:36.220 of justice is guilty of an indictable offense and libel 10 years that doesn't seem vague at all

00:02:43.840 if uh the prime minister's office didn't in fact quote pressure uh i noticed that uh the uh he had a

00:02:52.680 denial or a non-denial whatever it was instruct oh i believe the globe story said pressure

00:03:00.080 and i think we need to uh to make sure we understand the difference

00:03:03.860 um but if they did in fact try to pressure to back off a prosecution of snc lavalin

00:03:10.740 uh then it may well fall directly under that section of the criminal code and and to which

00:03:15.900 i would say the rcmp should be investigating i think that's a very important point you raise

00:03:21.200 and the question that i would ask is would the rcmp ever self-initiate an investigation like this

00:03:27.500 or would this be something where there'd have to be a complaint or a whistleblower or someone

00:03:32.280 connected to the case going to the rcmp the rcmp self-initiates uh investigations all the time

00:03:39.080 whether they be in corruption or organized crime or uh or just uh they have a dude uh you know whether

00:03:48.300 you're talking to you know multiple ends of the spectrum they will self-initiate um it would

00:03:53.660 perhaps be better if in this particular case maybe the speaker of the house or the chairman

00:03:58.900 of the judicial committee perhaps uh made a reference but the rcmp can certainly self-initiate

00:04:04.780 and one of the interesting things that's come out as well in the follow-up to this story is the

00:04:10.660 former attorney general jody wilson raybold saying she can't reveal anything because of attorney

00:04:16.540 client privilege and this i think is very odd because when you are the attorney for a country

00:04:22.340 you'd think that your client is really the people is is the idea of accountability to the public

00:04:27.560 not like she's representing snc lavalin or just some random person as an individual

00:04:32.480 well the theory that she's using is that as solicitor general her client is the government of canada

00:04:38.960 uh whether that would stand up uh to a court challenge i i certainly i'm not a lawyer and i i would

00:04:45.040 wouldn't uh presume to suggest that uh but that seems to be what she's saying what is also

00:04:50.720 interesting i'm not sure if you noticed it this morning but her dad posted a facebook message out

00:04:55.780 where he actually used the the the terms uh relative to his daughter how proud she was that

00:05:02.620 she stood firm and that led to her demotion and he specifically used the phrase demotion

00:05:08.840 yeah that was an interesting one and that gets more into the political side of this which

00:05:14.320 reinforces what you mentioned earlier that this is a case where we certainly have firing on both

00:05:19.720 sides to go back to the company itself for a moment you actually directed me to a story i hadn't seen

00:05:25.460 before from five and a half years ago or so when snc lavalin's corruption in the eyes of the world bank

00:05:32.560 was so significant that it put canada in a spot of occupying more space on the list of companies that

00:05:39.220 shouldn't be allowed to do business globally and this dovetails on something that charlie angus

00:05:45.620 the ndp mp said a couple of days ago that snc lavalin and this was before the story involving the pmo

00:05:51.660 that snc lavalin shouldn't be allowed to bid on federal contracts because of this and when you compare

00:05:57.440 that to the fact that this company has had massive access to many stakeholders in the government

00:06:03.740 including the prime minister's office through lobbying you have to wonder why a company like

00:06:08.540 this is even allowed to engage with its track record and why for optics or legal reasons the pmo has

00:06:15.180 been giving it an audience well the connections between snc lavalin and the liberal party of canada

00:06:21.320 go back uh decades uh the lobbying the funding the the government uh the corporate welfare the

00:06:29.140 government's given them over the years contributions uh there's just it's so deep um you know and and

00:06:38.380 bear in mind as well andrew that the the liberal party of canada is no stranger to corruption i mean i

00:06:43.580 can refer you back to the prime minister john crutchett government you know when they had uh schwinnigate

00:06:49.220 followed by uh what ad scam there was uh the billion dollar boondoggle there was uh you know shovelgate

00:06:56.340 there was so many scandals with that government uh and and a lot of it involved money flowing into

00:07:02.480 and out of quebec and quebec corporations uh this should be nothing new to anybody however having said

00:07:08.800 that it seems like uh in this particular case there may be a very specific breach of the criminal code of

00:07:15.700 canada if the rcmp is investigating or does investigate how long in your estimation would it take for that

00:07:23.660 to lead to charges to lead to anything in the way of a conviction are we talking about years or months

00:07:29.440 that's really difficult to say it's a little bit like asking how long is a piece of string

00:07:35.460 uh it depends how the pressure was was uh put it put if in fact there was pressure from the pmo

00:07:43.440 it also depends on who did it it depends on how many persons were in the loop uh it depends on how the

00:07:50.420 uh the attorney general perceived the the uh interference if you will uh there's there's a

00:07:57.820 number of of unanswered questions that we just don't know at this point in time

00:08:01.620 um but i'm merely suggesting that on the surface of things assuming the globe and mail

00:08:07.120 there seems to be a breach of the criminal code and this is one of those cases where that term

00:08:13.040 plausible deniability could come into play of who was in the loop who was out of the loop and who was

00:08:18.000 very deliberately and willfully out of the loop true and we also saw in the case of uh of mark

00:08:24.640 norman that's going on currently um that there seems to be a an effort within this prime minister's

00:08:30.320 office to uh uh get involved in discussions and make sure there's no notes or follow-up trail

00:08:36.440 uh so that could be a an issue in terms of any investigation that the rcmp might do into this

00:08:41.600 particular question true north fellow and former police officer leo knight leo thanks very much

00:08:47.200 you're very welcome andrew

00:08:48.780 you

Juno News - February 10, 2019

The True North Report： Andrew Lawton and Leo Knight discuss the latest on the PMO and SNC-Lavalin

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