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Alleged PMO obstruction in SNC Lavalin case

Until the rules change, all MP's are "part" of government.  Never say never, but political memories can be long when future bosses consider such political defiers/courageous stand takers.

Actually, I don't believe that all MPs ARE part of government.

Government comprises the Governor in Council, in other words the PM, the cabinet and the Privy Council (for whom Michael Wernick is the clerk (scribe, note-taker, secretary, personal assistant).

The Civil Service works for the government.

The government, largely sits in Parliament, but Parliament is not the government.  Parliament, and its members, exist to restrain, constrain, contain and otherwise govern the government.  And that goes for MPs that are elected to support the government as well.

 
JesseWZ said:
I think the Honourable Member for Vancouver-Granville is a crack in the dam of silence which may embolden others to come forward and share their stories.

One fellow BC Liberal MP has come forward to insinuate that her father was "pulling the strings" and that her perception of political interference was simply a lack of experience and that she couldn't handle the stress.  He has since apologized for his misogynistic comments relating to her father.  I expect more MPs will come forth to attack her in the coming days. 
 
Haggis said:
One fellow BC Liberal MP has come forward to insinuate that her father was "pulling the strings" and that her perception of political interference was simply a lack of experience and that she couldn't handle the stress.  He has since apologized for his misogynistic comments relating to her father.  I expect more MPs will come forth to attack her in the coming days.

Even though the PM apologized for his tardiness in addressing the first round of ad hominem attacks on Wilson-Raybould, I too expect more rounds of such attacks, but of course in no way directed by the PM, anyone in PMO, the PCO, etc. 
 
And in a startling development, according to this story in the National Post reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act, much of the Quebec punditry has turned on Trudeau:

How Quebec is reacting to Jody Wilson-Raybould’s bombshell: ‘Nobody is a friend of Trudeau’
Wrote one columnist, if Quebecers continue supporting Trudeau, in spite of this attack on judicial independence, 'we are imbeciles'

Marie-Danielle Smith
February 28, 2019
1:41 PM EST

OTTAWA — After weeks of sympathizing with his plight to save SNC-Lavalin from the potential penalties of criminal prosecution, Quebec’s pundit classes have now concluded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau crossed the line in his dealings with former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.

In the hours after Wilson-Raybould’s scathing testimony at a Commons justice committee Wednesday evening, commentary emanating from the home province of the embattled engineering firm, which is being prosecuted for corruption, took on a harsher tone. Chantal Hébert, a Montreal-based columnist for the Toronto Star and L’actualité, put it this way on a Radio-Canada morning radio show Thursday: After a review of the newspapers, she said in French, “nobody is a friend of Trudeau this morning.”

Quebecers could think that Wilson-Raybould had made an error in judgment by deciding not to pursue a deferred prosecution agreement for SNC-Lavalin, in light of thousands of jobs that could be put at risk if a conviction resulted in a ban on bidding for public contracts. But they could at the same time agree that it was deeply inappropriate for the prime minister to spend four months trying to twist her arm after a decision had been made, Hébert argued.

The committee testimony was front page news for the likes of Le Devoir and the Journal de Montreal. But at midday you had to scroll down to find stories about Wilson-Raybould on the websites of most Quebec-based media outlets.

The top story on La Presse was about home retailers Lowe’s and Rona. The Journal focused on a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Television station TVA Nouvelles featured a story about immigration, public broadcaster Radio-Canada one about Australian F-18 fighter jets and the English-language Montreal Gazette an interview with a mountain climber about icy Montreal sidewalks.

On TVA, Mario Dumont, a TV personality and former leader of provincial party Action démocratique du Québec, took note Thursday morning of how Wilson-Raybould’s testimony was dominating English-language media, and how some national columnists were questioning Trudeau’s moral authority to govern. “Excuse me, I will re-ask the same question as last week, and the week before,” he said in French. “Our friends at the Globe and Mail and the National Post — would they be as severe and intransigent if we were talking about a firm whose headquarters was in Toronto?”

Still, Dumont declared there is “no doubt” now that there was mismanagement from the top. And a review of French-language media made it clear that the scandal was resonating with some Quebec commentators in a new way. After all, Trudeau explicitly used Quebec’s provincial election and his own federal seat in Montreal as reasons why Wilson-Raybould should change her mind, according to her testimony.

SNC-Lavalin had not been a topic in debates around the Quebec provincial election last fall. The company had “no link” to the election, argued Pierre Jury for Le Droit, a Gatineau newspaper. But, he hypothesized, mentioning the election could’ve been Trudeau’s way to raise the prospect of SNC-Lavalin moving its headquarters from Quebec while still trying to “walk on eggshells” and avoid spelling out the federal political consequences in earnest.

For La Presse, Paul Journet wrote that questions should still be asked about why Wilson-Raybould closed the door so quickly to a remediation agreement, since perhaps a minister from British Columbia wouldn’t understand how important SNC-Lavalin was to Quebec’s public interest. But the Trudeau government’s “clumsy and dubious manoeuvres” now risked making a solution for the company politically untenable.

At Le Devoir, Michel David acknowledged it was normal for the prime minister to note SNC-Lavalin’s importance to the Quebec economy. But it was now very difficult to believe that Wilson-Raybould lost her position as attorney general for any other reason than that she refused to bend to the prime minister’s will. It would be likewise hard to imagine the new justice minister, David Lametti, reversing her decision after Wilson-Raybould so clearly raised concerns about whether the independence of the office would stay intact after her departure.

The Journal’s Richard Martineau, with a headline “The real Justin Trudeau,” dug in the deepest. For all his feminism and openness and humanism and generosity and altruism, etcetera, how could Trudeau fling the justice system out the window so easily? And was it because of empathy for workers that Trudeau wanted to save SNC-Lavalin, Martineau asked? “No. Because Justin needs votes in Quebec to win his next election,” he wrote, and Quebecers will protect their own even if they build prisons for dictators and pay for their sons’ prostitutes to get contracts.

“Imagine if Stephen Harper acted that way. The Red Cross would have to send doctors to Radio-Canada to treat journalist victims of apoplexy,” the columnist wrote. If Quebecers continue supporting Trudeau now, in spite of this attack on the independence of the justice system, “we are imbeciles.”

- mod edit to add link -
 
Chris Pook said:
Actually, I don't believe that all MPs ARE part of government.
Maybe not part of the executive branch of government, but not not a part, either according to these guys ...
... Three branches work together to govern Canada: the executive, legislative and judicial branches. The executive branch (also called the Government) is the decision-making branch, made up of the Monarch (represented by the Governor General), the Prime Minister, and the Cabinet. The legislative branch is the law-making branch, made up of the appointed Senate and the elected House of Commons. The judicial branch is a series of independent courts that interpret the laws passed by the other two branches ...
 
Actually, Brihard, there is no such thing in Canada as a "elected majority government".

First in the history of Canada we have elected exactly ZERO "governments". Our government is a monarchy run hereditarily by the Queen. She appoints a Prime Minister who then selects his/her cabinet. There are no obligation whatsoever that the member of the Cabinet come from  Parliament. The only requirement is that the P.M. have and retain the confidence of the elected members of Parliament.

The job of the elected members of Parliament is to actually act as the People's representative to control government - particularly spending by the government - through legislation. Since only the P.M. and the Ministers (and I guess ministers of state and Parliamentary secretaries) form the Government, and none of the backbenchers are part of the government regardless of their political affiliation, there is no such thing as voters deciding on confidence in the P.M. and his government. The matter belongs exclusively to the elected members of Parliament, even today.

This is the very basis of Responsible Government, Westminster style, we Canadians have been gifted with as a result of Lord Durham's work. Unfortunately, the "Government" has fought back to get back apparently unlimited power, by eviscerating the powers of Parliament over the decades, particularly since the 1960's and with major gutting since the 1990's. The result is that the PMO's now believes itself unrestricted in all it does and runs roughshod over the other Ministers and Parliament as if they were mere mouthpieces.

That, BTW, is how we got where we are in this very matter. And don't believe for one moment that  threatening demotion of Ministers or of sending ordinary M.P.s of one's own political party out of valuable Committees of Parliament is NOT in the PMO's arsenal to keep everyone in line.

And Milnews, I believe that the site from the Parliament of Canada you cite, is wrong: Political parties are private organizations that have no actual existence under our constitution. The Queen, and her representative, can select anyone at all in Canada, elected or not, to form a government (BTW, it happened twice to Christie Clark in B.-C.). She is not limited in any way in who she choses to form a government. It is by tradition only that she usually (as indicated before) choses the elected leader of the party with the most seats in Parliament - simply because there is a presumption that such leader starts by having the confidence of those elected members of his/her party. It doesn't have to last: see all the changes of leaders in London, Canberra or Auckland originating in caucus. 
 
milnews.ca said:
Maybe not part of the executive branch of government, but not not a part, either according to these guys ...

GOVERNMENT:
Executive (the Monarch/Governor General, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet)
Federal departments (such as National Defence, Justice and Finance)

What I said.....


Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Members of Parliament.
 
Chris Pook said:
What I said.....


Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?  Members of Parliament.
Then you're both right & they have to clean up their wording (or clarify the capital G thing) :)
 
Oldgateboatdriver said:
.... The Queen, and her representative, can select anyone at all in Canada, elected or not, to form a government (BTW, it happened twice to Christie Clark in B.-C.). She is not limited in any way in who she choses to form a government. It is by tradition only that she usually (as indicated before) choses the elected leader of the party with the most seats in Parliament - simply because there is a presumption that such leader starts by having the confidence of those elected members of his/her party. It doesn't have to last: see all the changes of leaders in London, Canberra or Auckland originating in caucus.

Interesting thought experiment.

Parliament originally formed around people with armies resolving disputes. The prospect of those armies tended to keep the Monarchs in line.  Then it was discovered that gold was mightier than the sword and the Monarch was constrained by Parliament controlling the supply of gold.  Armies were dispensed with. And then we moved on to people organizing virtual armies of voters, or parties.

What happens though, if the virtual armies fail to appear?  What happens if no Party can secure a large enough following in the House?  Or worse the House itself falls into disrepute and nobody turns out to support anybody?

If the turnout drops below 50% at the next election could the Governor General be justified in appointing her own cabinet to the Privy Council? 40%? 30%? 5 %?

I note that in the US Congress job approval is somewhere around 10 to 20%.  At what point can the be ignored?

2lslk2-kwuurw4n-sfjgag.png


In Canada Parliament does a bit better at something like 40%, comparable to that of the Brits and the Aussies.

soc_Trust_ch1-2012.png


 
milnews.ca said:
Then you're both right & they have to clean up their wording (or clarify the capital G thing) :)
Well hang on now. As Admiral Scheer put it last night, "... It seems clear that Justin Trudeau doesn't seem to know where the Liberal Party ends and the government begins".  Butter or margerine, they may taste the same...
 
Cloud Cover said:
Well hang on now. As Admiral Scheer put it last night, "... It seems clear that Justin Trudeau doesn't seem to know where the Liberal Party ends and the government begins".  Butter or margerine, they may taste the same...

Who is Admiral Scheer?
 
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/02/28/news/bill-morneau-denies-wrongdoing-snc-lavalin

Bill Morneau denies wrongdoing on SNC-Lavalin

By Fatima Syed & Alastair Sharp in News, Politics | February 28th 2019

Finance Minister Bill Morneau says his staff acted "absolutely appropriately" on the SNC-Lavalin file, denying any wrongdoing in presenting the economic case for helping the engineering company avoid a criminal trial.

Morneau defended the behaviour of officials including his chief of staff, Ben Chin, to reporters in Toronto Thursday, less than 24 hours after the former justice minister and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, gave damning testimony in front of the House of Commons justice committee accusing him of applying "extraordinary pressure" on her.

Asked repeatedly whether he had directed his chief of staff Ben Chin to contact @Puglaas' staff with message that a deferral for SNC-Lavalin had to happen, @Bill_Morneau finally answered: "No, I did not."

In the short press conference, Morneau responded unequivocally that neither he, nor his staff, did anything wrong.

"I want to be clear. I never raised this issue with Ms. Jody Wilson-Raybould," said Morneau, who also acknowledged that, as per her testimony, the former attorney general approached him about the issue on Sept. 19.

"She approached me (in the House of Commons) to tell me that my staff was approaching her staff, which I think is entirely appropriate," he said, adding that he could not recall more details about that interaction in the House.

In her testimony, Wilson-Raybould said she spoke with Morneau in the Commons, where “he again stressed the need to save jobs, and I told him that engagements from his office to mine on SNC had to stop - that they were inappropriate.”

Wilson-Raybould detailed two other meetings with Morneau's chief of staff Ben Chin in her testimony, noting that he had urged her office to "find a solution" to help save jobs in the context of the Quebec Oct. 1 general election.

"My staff, appropriately, would make her staff aware of the economic consequences of decisions, about the importance of thinking about jobs," Morneau said Thursday.

<snip>

Morneau's comments came hours after Trudeau told reporters, again, that Wilson-Raybould's continued membership in the Liberal caucus was under consideration.
(She has stated that "I was elected by the constituents of Vancouver-Granville to represent them as a Liberal Member of Parliament" and has no intention of leaving her party, and does not expect to be expelled; expulsion would, in my view, weaken Trudeau even further - Loachman)

Speaking to reporters after an event at the Canadian Space Agency in Quebec, Trudeau said he has "taken knowledge of her testimony and there are still reflections to have on next steps."

<snip>

When asked about this Thursday, Trudeau deflected by saying, again, that "had [former treasury board president] Scott Brison not stepped down, Jody Wilson-Raybould would still be minister of justice and attorney general of Canada." He also repeated that both him and his office were appropriate in all their dealings with Wilson-Raybould and her office, and that he disagreed with her version of events.

The following article was originally linked by Milnews. I have included a little more from the article:

https://globalnews.ca/news/5007305/analysis-trudeau-brand-jody-wilson-raybould-testimony/

February 28, 2019 6:00 am

ANALYSIS: The Trudeau brand takes a hit after Jody Wilson-Raybould testimony

By David Akin

<snip>

Well, here’s some news for Bouchard and everyone else in the Trudeau PMO: you know what’s worse than SNC-Lavalin moving out of Montreal six months before an election? The testimony Wilson-Raybould gave Wednesday afternoon at a House of Commons committee. It was bad. Real bad.

Wilson-Raybould’s careful, measured testimony - based on copious notes she took after each and every one of the 10 instances last fall in which she or her staff were bullied to intervene in SNC-Lavalin’s court case - was one jaw-dropping revelation after another of misbehaviour in the most senior offices in the land.

Steve Saideman, a political science professor at Carleton University who keeps a keen eye on Canadian politics, turned to Twitter to neatly sum up the afternoon’s revelations: “Liberals ditched an Indigenous woman who was first to have such a visible and important post to pander to a corrupt company to avoid losing votes in Quebec, right?”

That’s pretty much it, professor. A prime minister who built a nice little international brand as a feminist, who preached reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples as his top priority fired a female, Indigenous justice minister because she wouldn’t help the team win some votes in Quebec.

Wilson-Raybould described herself as a descendant of Kwakwaka’wakw matriarchs who are “truth-tellers,” and after a long afternoon of fulfilling that destiny, Trudeau called reporters for a quick early evening press conference in Montreal to essentially say there was no truth to what she had told. Oddly, he conceded that he had not watched all of her testimony but was nonetheless able to “strongly disagree” with the testimony he did not see. He suggested she had got it all wrong without offering a single specific instance of a fact Wilson-Raybould presented that was false. Well, if she was so wrong, Mr. Prime Minister, why is she no longer the country’s justice minister?

And how would they know Wilson-Raybould was wrong? While Wilson-Raybould was at pains Monday to explain her prodigious note-taking, the Clerk of the Privy Council, Michael Wernick - one of Wilson-Raybould’s tormenters - proudly boasted to the same justice committee last week that he took no notes during the meeting with Wilson-Raybould in mid-December, during which he allegedly delivered what Wilson-Raybould described as “veiled threats” that she should come around and bail out SNC-Lavalin.

This is where I have to take issue with Wilson-Raybould’s use of the phrase “veiled threats.” They were not veiled at all. They were naked threats, vicious threats, threats that could not be missed. And, most damning of all, they were threats on which a vengeful prime minister made good on Jan. 7, telling Wilson-Raybould in person that she was no longer his justice minister and could instead serve Canada as veterans affairs minister. (She would resign, shortly afterwards, from cabinet completely, though she remains, as of Wednesday night, a member of the Liberal caucus.)

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-moral-catastrophe-of-justin-trudeau/

The moral catastrophe of Justin Trudeau

Paul Wells: What Jody Wilson-Raybould described today is a sickeningly smug protection racket and it should make us all question what we’re willing to tolerate

by Paul Wells Feb 27, 2019

The dangerous files are never the obscure ones. Scandals don’t happen in the weird little corners of government, in amateur sport or in crop science. They happen on the issues a prime minister cares most about, because everyone gets the message that the rules matter less than the result.

It’s a constant in politics. In 2016 I took one look at Bill Morneau’s first budget and wrote this: “The sponsorship scandal of the late Chrétien years was possible because it was obvious to every scoundrel with Liberal friends that spending on national unity would not receive close scrutiny from a government that was desperate to be seen doing something on the file. A government that considers the scale of its spending to be proof of its virtue is an easy mark for hucksters and worse.”

It wasn’t a perfect prediction. I kind of expected the hucksters and worse to be outside government. Unless the Trudeau Liberals can produce persuasive evidence that Jody Wilson-Raybould is an utter fabulist (and frankly, I now expect several to try), her testimony before the Commons Justice Committee establishes pretty clearly that the hucksters and worse were running the show. Led by the grinning legatee who taints the Prime Ministers’ office.

There will now be a period of stark partisanship. We’re in an election year. Loyal Liberals will tell themselves, and then everyone else, that the price of looking clearly at Justin Trudeau’s bully club (so many men; wonder how Katie Telford felt about that while she was signing off on every element of it) is ceding the field to Andrew Scheer. Who, they will tell themselves and then the country, is an actual Nazi.

I mean, after all, that’s pretty close to what they told one another, and then Jody Wilson-Raybould, last fall, isn’t it? There was an election in Quebec in the first week of October. And Ben Chin, a former journalist who did whatever Christy Clark needed done in B.C. before moving east to do whatever Bill Morneau and the PMO needed doing, used that thin reed of an excuse to try to sway Wilson-Raybould’s chief of staff, Jessica Prince. “If they don’t get a [deferred prosecution agreement], they will leave Montreal, and it’s the Quebec election right now, so we can’t have that happen,” Wilson-Raybould told the committee, paraphrasing Chin’s conversation with Prince.

I’ve never met a Liberal yet who doesn’t reliably confuse his electoral skin with the national interest. So much of what Trudeau and his minions have done in the last year stems from that instinct. Take the ludicrous half-billion-dollar bailout for people in my line of work, never explained, sprung out of nowhere in Morneau’s fall economic update - or as I now like to think of it, between Trudeau advisor Mathieu Bouchard’s meeting (yet another one) with Prince and Michael Wernick’s chat with Wilson-Raybould. (This is a serious statement from a journalist; I do not see any inclination from any journalist, so far, to defend Trudeau or his party, or cover anything up - Loachman) You can get a lot of op-eds written with that kind of dough. Take the cool billion the Canada Infrastructure Bank coughed up to pay for a politically popular and impeccably well-connected transit project around Montreal. That money appeared, from a brand-new bank that has not funded a single other project and did not then yet have a CEO [Update, Thursday: Wrong! It had had a CEO since last May – pw], on the day before Philippe Couillard launched the Quebec election campaign. It is now impossible to believe on faith that the Canada Infrastructure Bank is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ben Chin, Mathieu Bouchard, Katie Telford and Justin Trudeau.

But anyway, back to partisanship. Liberals and their many friends across the land will insist that all this behaviour must have no real-world repercussions because the other side cannot be permitted to gain the upper hand. And similarly, a lot of battle-hardened opponents of the Liberals will call for the jails to be opened up to welcome fresh Liberal meat. Fortunately, there is indeed an election coming up, and I’m content to let voters decide the partisan affiliation of the next government. I offer them no counsel.

But we get to draw our own conclusions as citizens. What the former attorney general described tonight is a sickeningly smug protection racket whose participants must have been astonished when she refused to play along. If a company can rewrite the Criminal Code to get out of a trial whose start date was set before the legislation was drafted, all because a doomed Quebec government has its appointment with the voter, then which excesses are not permitted, under the same justification? If a Clerk of the Privy Council can claim with a straight face that ten calls and meetings with the attorney general, during which massive job loss, an angry PM and a lost election are threatened, don’t constitute interference, then what on earth would interference look like? Tonight I talked with two former public servants whose records rival Michael Wernick’s. Both were flat astonished that he seems not to have pushed back against this deeply disturbing, and plainly widespread, behaviour.

There’ll be time to contemplate mechanisms in the days ahead. I don’t think the ethics commissioner has a broad enough mandate to investigate matters like that Canada Infrastructure Bank investment and other tendrils of this affair. But in the end, the moral collapse of Justin Trudeau’s government teaches each of us a lesson, if we will only listen: There had damned well better be a limit to what we’re willing to do or say, whatever the cause we claim to serve. The rules need to be rules - not for the people we despise, but for ourselves. For myself. For you. Or else we have no souls.

https://torontosun.com/news/national/the-sex-side-of-the-snc-scandal

The sex side of the SNC scandal

Brian Lilley Published: February 27, 2019

The SNC-Lavalin affair has had allegations of bribery, political intrigue and a major cover-up, all that was missing was sex.

Now we have the sex component!

A report by Montreal’s La Presse newspaper says that SNC-Lavalin allegedly paid for a sex-filled trip across Canada for the son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

“Naked dancers, porn movies and many, many, many prostitutes,” the story states.

Saadi Gaddafi was supposedly working on development issues, specifically making Libya a “new Hong Kong” in North Africa, instead it was all about sex.

Security firm Garda World was hired by SNC to escort Gaddafi across the country as he picked up escorts in city after city.

The total bill was more than $30,000 and one Vancouver escort agency charged as much as $10,000 for a single session.

Bills from other escort agencies ranged from $600 to $7,500 per session.

Previous stories about the relationship between SNC-Lavalin and the Gaddafi family noted the lavish trips the company had paid for and the placement of Saadi Gaddafi’s wife was on the company payroll during the Libyan civil war.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-wilson-rayboulds-convincing-testimony-may-cost-trudeau-his-job?video_autoplay=true

John Ivison: Wilson-Raybould's convincing testimony may cost Trudeau his job

If you were watching Wilson-Raybould’s appearance Wednesday afternoon, that cracking sound you heard was Liberal Party unity breaking up

February 27, 2019 10:39 PM EST

Jody Wilson-Raybould’s testimony was so much worse than the opposition could have hoped, or the government might have feared. Justin Trudeau has been hoist by his own petard, and it may cost him his job.

Trudeau appointed as justice minister someone who said she is a “truth-teller,” an Indigenous person who said she has witnessed the consequences of the rule of law not being respected.

He appointed her and then he tried to make her complicit in running roughshod over that law.

If she is to be believed - and her testimony was convincing enough that it is likely she had public opinion in her pocket very early on - when she refused to play along he applied, in her words, “inappropriate political pressure.” When she still failed to bend to his will, he removed her from her position as justice minister.

If he thought she would respond to the “veiled threats” levelled against her, he clearly misread this woman.

If you were watching Wilson-Raybould’s appearance Wednesday afternoon, that cracking sound you heard was Liberal Party unity breaking up. The former attorney general remains a member of the Liberal caucus, and a candidate at the next election. But it is a malignant fidelity. Her testimony has done more harm to her party’s chances of re-election than anything achieved by a hapless opposition. It seems hard to see how she can continue to sit as a Liberal member, far less run again.

<snip>

If she is to be believed - and it has to be noted she made for an extremely credible witness - even the dimmest of dunces would have been able to conclude this was a woman who was resolute and unyielding once her mind was made up.

<snip>

But if the former justice minister’s testimony is to be believed, the sustained nature of the campaign to make her change her mind - with the hint that there would be consequences if she didn’t - may have crossed the line from information to interference.

An independent arbiter - be it the ethics commissioner, or even a judge - needs to make that deliberation.

But voters will reach their own conclusions long before any judicial proceedings take place. The verdict is likely to be harsh.
 
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/speaker-grants-opposition-request-for-emergency-debate-on-snc-lavalin-scandal-1.4316805

Speaker grants opposition request for emergency debate on SNC-Lavalin scandal

Rachel Aiello, Ottawa News Bureau Online Producer

Published Thursday, February 28, 2019 12:41PM EST

OTTAWA - MPs will hold an emergency debate this evening in the aftermath of former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould's testimony before the House Justice Committee yesterday.

Wilson-Raybould said she faced high-level "veiled threats" and political interference in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

Conservative House Leader Candice Bergen raised the request for the “urgent” debate that she said is required as the result of what was heard yesterday.

"Mr. Speaker there were hours of very credible testimony given yesterday that begs this chamber discuss this issue. We are certainly at a crisis," Bergen said.

<snip>

"This has caused a crisis of confidence in the prime minister, and in his cabinet, certainly in the clerk of the privy council, in the minister of finance, and in the current attorney general," Bergen said in making her case for the emergency debate.

Bergen was backed up by NDP MP Charlie Angus.

<snip>

Trudeau was not in question period on Thursday, (Is the seriousness sinking in? It did not appear to be last night - Loachman) and it's rare for party leaders to attend question period on a Friday. That means the next time Trudeau could face a question directly on this scandal in the House of Commons may not be until March 18, when the House resumes, unless he decides to return to Ottawa for this emergency debate this evening.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/butts-wants-to-testify-after-wilson-raybould-alleged-consistent-pressure-on-snc-lavalin-case-1.4316581

Butts wants to testify after Wilson-Raybould alleged 'consistent' pressure on SNC-Lavalin case

Rachel Aiello, Ottawa News Bureau Online Producer

Published Thursday, February 28, 2019 10:35AM EST

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's former top adviser Gerald Butts has written to the House of Commons Justice Committee requesting to testify on the SNC-Lavalin scandal.

In his letter to the chair of the committee, Butts says that he watched Jody Wilson-Raybould's testimony - in which she alleged that she faced high-level "veiled threats" and political interference in the criminal prosecution of the Quebec construction and engineering company - and he believes that his evidence "will be of assistance" to the committee's "consideration of these matters. "

Butts says that he needs "a short period of time" to receive legal advice about producing his elements and relevant documents to the committee.

<snip>

After Wilson-Raybould's testimony wrapped up, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer called for Trudeau’s resignation and for the RCMP to "immediately" investigate what he called "numerous examples of obstruction of justice."

In a statement on Thursday, Scheer said that he has sent a letter to RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki asking for an investigation to be launched.

"According to the facts as have been revealed in media reports, Parliamentary testimony from Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, and most significantly the recent comments of the former Attorney General, Canadians rightly ought to be concerned that criminal law has been violated," Scheer wrote in the letter.

The RCMP have confirmed that they have received the letter and are "reviewing" it.

<snip>

On her way out of the committee on Wednesday, Wilson-Raybould said she will continue to serve as the MP for Vancouver-Granville, and that she doesn't "anticipate being kicked out of caucus."

"I was elected by the constituents of Vancouver-Granville to represent them as a Liberal Member of Parliament," she said.

<snip>

During questioning before the House Justice Committee, Wilson-Raybould suggested that future testimony from the senior officials she had named in her opening statement would be important to the committee's work. Previous attempts from the opposition to call many of those she has named were voted down by the Liberal members on the committee.

Asked whether he'd let these people testify, Trudeau said he will respect the independence of the committee.

Throughout her testimony, she cautioned there were limitations in her ability to speak broadly about the case because of the specifics of the waiver of solicitor-client privilege and cabinet confidence that Trudeau had issued. She was not able to speak about any relevant matters that occurred after she was shuffled into veterans affairs. An NDP motion to call on Trudeau to expand the conditions of the waiver was defeated when the meeting concluded.

The opposition members on the committee were keen to hold more meetings soon, possibly next week even though the House isn’t sitting, even prior to Butts’ asking to appear. His request is likely to further bolster the desire to meet.

There is also a desire from the Conservative and NDP MPs to invite Wilson-Raybould back to add to her testimony, which she signalled openness to when she was before the committee.

The MPs on the committee are currently meeting behind closed doors to discuss “committee business,” which could include the next steps for the study, including future witnesses.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/02/27/trudeau-now-finds-himself-up-to-his-neck-in-the-snc-lavalin-scandal.html

Trudeau now finds himself up to his neck in the SNC-Lavalin scandal

By Chantal Hébert

Wed., Feb. 27, 2019

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was already up to his neck in the SNC-Lavalin mess. On Wednesday, former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould pushed his head down further. It will be harder for the Liberal government to dig itself out of the deep hole she dug before the next campaign.

<snip>
 
You're doing yeoman service Loachman, thanks.

This line from Paul Wells in Macleans......

...her testimony before the Commons Justice Committee establishes pretty clearly that the hucksters and worse were running the show. Led by the grinning legatee who taints the Prime Ministers’ office.

That line from that source on that platform.....
 
Haggis said:
Good notes have saved my bacon a few times in court.

I usually take copious point form notes during meetings leaving space below each to fill in the details later either during round table discussions or Q&As.

I am and always have been a horrible person when it comes to not taking notes. I went through an entire undergraduate degree and probably took less than 10 pages of notes. When the discussions about the CDS meeting with Butts and Telford came up and he never took notes, I actually never found it that unbelievable as I almost certainly would not have and if I wrote anything down it'd be on a napkin which would get washed out in my laundry. Admittedly I don't find myself saying "Damn, I forgot x detail, I wish I had written that down," but if someone were to ATI my notes on anything they'd probably think I deliberately burned them or forged fake meaningless scribbles assuming I could actually find anything I had written down over a month ago.

But when I come across diligent, organized note-takers like JWR or my peer who even writes down the most seemingly meaningless of all details (like the DTG of someone else's staff member's oil change... simply because it happens to be said out loud during the meeting for no apparent reason... and it ended up saving his neck), I find myself pretty envious of that quality. I think I'll go clean my room and my act up.
 
Ballz: voice notes on a smartphone. There are apps that will convert said notes to text. Cheers.
 
Personally, I wish the Liberal caucus members who are not part of the government (they are the majority, BTW, as only members who hold an appointment as either ministers, or in the larger sense as secretaries of state, are actually part of the government - not any backbenchers) would get the courage to actually do their job as our watchers of the government and actually oust him.

The leader of the party approves (controls) their nomination to run for Parliament. Unless a whole passel do so, and are successful, their career as a politician is over. If they are in first term, without re-election - no pension.
 
5 Former Attorney General ask RCMP to investigate:
https://www.thepostmillennial.com/5-former-attorney-generals-sign-letter-urging-rcmp-to-criminally-investigate-snc-lavalin-claims/
 
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