Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Did SNC-Lavalin Try to Shake Down the Trudeau Government?
From what I've read in the funny papers, the Trudeau government, with an election just months away, twisted ex-justice minister Jody's arm after the prime minister's arm was twisted by SNC-Lavalin.
The coercion allegedly came in the form of a threat by the company to leave Montreal if it didn't get taken off the hook. The powers that be feared that such a move would cost the Liberals big time in the October elections and so they pressured J W-R to make their problems go away by somehow intervening with the Director of Public Prosecutions to go easy on SNC-Lavalin.
If that's the case it seems that SNC-Lavalin tried to 1) obstruct justice by 2) extorting the Liberal government and top Liberals then 3) attempted to pervert justice by trying to derail the criminal prosecution of a company too strategically important to Liberal electoral fortunes to resist.
Did that happen? I don't know but, given what's appeared in the papers, it does seem plausible.
If there is anything to this rumour then this scandal is about far more than justice minister Jody's demotion.
What churns my stomach is the idea of a not-ready-for-prime-time prime minister handing this on a platter to the endlessly creepy "Chuckles" Scheer. That would be unforgivable.
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7 comments:
Funny thing is, SNC argued that they deserved a deferred prosecution because they didn’t do that whole corruption, influence and arm twisting thing anymore,
Cross their hearts and hope to die.
Exactly. Unforgiveable.
The country is broken. Can't trust the Liberals, and JT is anti-Venezuela because of Canadian mining companies twisting his arm about dem dere people who actually own that country spoiling their plans, not for some high-minded reason. Dictator? Illegitimate elections? - only in Junior's warped neoliberal mind; all he has to do is read some context but that would spoil the carefully-plotted scheme to install a CIA frat boy as fake prez and humanitarian, so his ears are closed.
When some interviewer of Chomsky protested he had never been directed to censor himself by upper management and follow a line of managerial argument, Chomsky replied: “I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” Kind of like Trudeau and big business - Trudeau believes himself flawless, but it's that certainty of knowing how the upper crust thinks that got him his job in the first place.
So as Canadian serfs, we can add in with the Liberals as untrustworthy, the harper-retread Cons, currently trying to pretend they're boy scouts on ethics and morals, while clueless clod Scheer poses more than once with right-wing white supremacists, twice in big Sem-Eye truck cabs, and you have to wonder, what the fuck is this country good for? Shameless pig-troughery by the ruling classes, and that's about it. Nobody gives a rat's ass about the citizenry - us. We're just milked to foot the bill for the big boys running things who enjoy coining money hand over foot while kicking environmental concerns into outer space. And apparently thinking they're justified in doing so.
Then for provincial intellectual leading lights, you've got Notley and Kenney in Alberta, the two dopes pretending to be premiers in the Prairies, Doug Fraud fucking up Ontario, some shoulder-shrugger pretending something or other in Quebec, and an Irving office boy running New Brunswick, the only feudal state in the Western world. Winners- every goddamn one of them, eh? Good people through and through.
Pretty damn sad situation, I must say.
BM
Couple of things to consider; SNC is gonna face trial fee sure (around election time?), very likely gonna be found guilty, will be barred from bidding on government contracts etc. for some years, gonna shed a raft of employees who might very well leave Montreal. The rest of us, we get Scheer and his climate ‘plan’, (I.e. more pipelines, Energy East, etc.), natives (Raybould) get basically the old Harper playbook, etc. Ho boy. Perhaps someone can put this into Wikipedia as a classic example of a *clusterfuck*! Mac
There’s nothing new here. It’s just politics. The only surprise is that Trudeau allowed J W-R to speak openly about it.
UU
Well, UU, you're a lone voice contending that there's nothing new here, just politics. Justin's acolytes may want to put on a brave face but this has traction.
When you say the only surprise was that JT allowed ex-justmin Jody to testify, does that mean that you find what appears to be his attempt to meddle in the independence of the AG par for the course? Do you think that was wrong? Perhaps not.
BM, vote Green. It's time.
It is a sad situation, BM, and not just in Canada. I've written three essays over the past two weeks on the general decline in governance across the West.
Perhaps this is the pendulum nearing the end of its swing and ready to swing back hard but I doubt it. I suspect we're watching the inevitable result of the neoliberal order.
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