Western Standard - February 28, 2024


Trudeau Accused of Political Interference and Obstruction in SNC-Lavalin Affair

Mentioned
Chair Jody Wilson-Raybould Cooper
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Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

145.27

Word count

900

Sentence count

73

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, the Commissioner of Public Safety and Ethics, Mr. Mike Duffy, answers questions submitted by the public regarding the investigation into whether the Prime Minister committed obstruction of justice in relation to the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to the witnesses.
00:00:03.120 Part of the RCMP's examination to determine whether the Prime Minister
00:00:07.960 violated Section 139, Sub-2 of Criminal Code by committing obstruction of justice, correct?
00:00:17.900 That was part of the RCMP's examination.
00:00:21.660 That's correct, Mr. Chair.
00:00:22.960 And paragraph 19 of the RCMP investigation report states that the strongest theory towards
00:00:31.780 an offense of obstruction of justice was that the Prime Minister shuffled Jody Wilson-Raybould
00:00:36.980 out of the position of Attorney General so that a new Attorney General would make a different
00:00:42.040 decision regarding the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, correct?
00:00:46.920 That's correct, Mr. Chair.
00:00:48.160 And it's fair to say that the RCMP did not have access to all material evidence surrounding
00:00:55.820 Ms. Wilson-Raybould being shuffled out as Attorney General, correct? 0.93
00:01:00.680 That's correct, Mr. Chair.
00:01:02.840 And so, just to clarify then or emphasize, the RCMP did not have access to all material evidence
00:01:09.780 on the strongest theory surrounding the Prime Minister's potential criminality involving
00:01:16.360 obstruction of justice, correct?
00:01:18.160 That's correct, Mr. Chair.
00:01:21.380 And the reason the RCMP did not have access to that material evidence on what was central
00:01:29.200 to determining whether the Prime Minister broke the law was because of the parameters of the
00:01:35.140 scope of the Order of Council with respect to the waiver of Cabinet confidentiality, correct?
00:01:42.620 That's correct, Mr. Chair.
00:01:43.780 The parameters did not allow us to fully look into this one.
00:01:46.920 However, I should just add…
00:01:48.700 Thank you for that.
00:01:50.140 You answered it.
00:01:50.700 The parameters did not allow you to get that evidence.
00:01:55.700 Now, there is one person who had the authority to expand the parameters of that Order in Council,
00:02:04.020 and that is the Prime Minister himself, correct?
00:02:08.040 I would have to say, Mr. Chair, I'm not exactly sure of the exact process of where the Prime Minister would be involved in such a decision.
00:02:14.880 However, I do believe the decision has to be made within the…
00:02:18.800 Somewhere within the government.
00:02:21.900 I would submit the decision would have to be made by the Prime Minister, but the RCMP went and requested an expansion of the scope to obtain that evidence, to follow that evidence, correct?
00:02:33.460 Before we proceeded with the assessment, yes, we did make a request for an expansion to the parameters.
00:02:40.640 I would just add, Mr. Cooper, it was not to follow the evidence, it's to glean additional information.
00:02:45.340 That could be evidence.
00:02:46.840 Correct.
00:02:47.620 And that request was turned down on August 30th, 2019.
00:02:54.020 I would have to say, Mr. Chair, that the request for the expansion was not allowed.
00:03:01.820 It was turned down, and it was turned down by the PCO, the Prime Minister's Department, correct?
00:03:09.840 Mr. Chair, we did receive a letter from the Department of Justice.
00:03:13.700 I could not remember exactly, specifically, if this came from the…
00:03:18.020 Well, it was from the PCO, and that's in the RCMP's investigation report.
00:03:24.660 And would it be fair to say that the refusal by the Prime Minister's personal department, the PCO, to expand the scope of the order in council significantly impeded the full investigation into the Prime Minister's potential obstruction of justice?
00:03:43.960 It limited our capability of pursuing a full investigation.
00:03:51.200 And it would have limited it in a fairly significant way.
00:03:54.820 Because, after all, we're talking about going to the heart of the matter of obstruction.
00:04:01.640 And, again, I don't know what additional…
00:04:03.900 Not knowing what additional information is out there, it's hard for me to speculate that there's a Pandora box out there which is full of information.
00:04:09.740 So it's hard for us without speculating.
00:04:11.500 Well, let the record show that the Prime Minister's Department, the PCO, obstructed the RCMP investigation into the Prime Minister's potential obstruction of justice.
00:04:24.700 Are you aware of any other Canadian who can single-handedly block the RCMP from investigating his own criminality in such an effective way as the Prime Minister?
00:04:37.220 Good question.
00:04:38.460 Fantastic.
00:04:38.980 I wouldn't use the term, Mr. President, I wouldn't use the term block.
00:04:44.420 The RCMP is, when it runs an investigation, it operates within the parameters and the regulations that we're allowed to.
00:04:50.300 And we see international security investigation as well with some information that we don't have access to, we can't use into an investigation.
00:04:56.060 I think the answer to that question is there is no one who has such powers.
00:05:07.140 And was any explanation provided by the Prime Minister's personal department why there was this refusal to expand the scope of the Order and Council?
00:05:14.820 Again, Mr. Chair, as far as for response on this one, of course, it was indicated, of course, the importance, of course, of these privileges that do exist.
00:05:29.240 They are there for a reason.
00:05:31.000 And again, as the Commissioner mentioned, we do have to operate within these parameters.
00:05:35.680 It would seem to me to be part of a pattern of a cover-up.
00:05:39.180 That's right.
00:05:39.860 That's what it would seem to me to be.
00:05:42.700 How can the Prime Minister be subject to the rule of law, like every other Canadian, if his personal department can shield him from an RCMP criminal investigation?
00:05:53.740 Absolutely.
00:05:54.160 Mr. Chair, I'll let individuals draw their own conclusion.
00:05:59.000 What I come back to is we operate within a set of regulations and parameters that, unfortunately, we made the effort to go and get additional information, and it was refused.
00:06:08.240 Thank you, Commissioner.
00:06:09.240 A two-tier system of justice, I would say.
00:06:10.940 Thank you, Mr. Cooper.