OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — Canadian Liberal MPs on the ethics committee voted to stop the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) commissioner from testifying about a bribery scandal involving the large Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin and the federal Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme was set to testify about the bribery scandal to speak about whether Trudeau blocked the police from obtaining certain cabinet documents, which might have implicated him regarding his obstruction of justice charges that stemmed from the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Liberal, New Democrat (NDP), and Bloc Québécois MPs on the ethics committee voted 7-3 to adopt a Liberal motion to abruptly adjourn the meeting with Duheme only minutes after it began.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett called the abrupt meeting cancellation “unacceptable.”
“Witnesses were to give testimony and now we have government members looking to shut down a hearing on a very serious matter with respect to a criminal investigation into the Prime Minister and we have the Commissioner of the RCMP at this table,” Barrett said.
Liberal MP Mona Fortier, who serves as the ethics committee vice chair, claimed the SNC-Lavalin scandal had not been “discussed whatsoever by the committee.”
“I think the committee should at least have had the opportunity to debate the motion presented in due form. I don’t think this is necessarily the best way to go forward, having committees unable to make their decisions. So based on this reasoning, I would like to adjourn the meeting,” she said.
In June, LifeSiteNews reported on how the RCMP denied it was looking into whether Trudeau and his cabinet committed obstruction of justice concerning the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal.
SNC-Lavalin was faced with changes of corruption and fraud concerning about $48 million in payments made to officials with the Libyan government between 2001 and 2011. The company had hoped to be spared both a trial and prosecution deferred prosecution agreement.
However, then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould did not go alone with Trudeau’s plan, which would have allegedly appeared help SNC-Lavalin. Back in 2019, she contended that both Trudeau and his top Liberal officials had inappropriately applied pressure to her for four months to directly intervene in the criminal prosecution of Montreal-based global engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, relating to its scandal involving corruption and bribery charges connected to government contracts it once had in Libya.
Wilson-Raybould testified in early 2019 to Canada’s justice committee that she believed she was moved from her then-justice cabinet posting to veterans’ affairs due to the fact she did not grant a request from SNC-Lavalin for a deferred prosecution agreement rather than a criminal trial.
Of note is that a criminal conviction would have banned the company from getting any government contracts for 10 years.
Trudeau flat-out denied it was being investigated by the RCMP.
A little less than four years ago, Trudeau was found to have broken the federal ethics laws, or Section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act, for his role in pressuring Wilson-Raybould.
MPs were hoping Duheme’s testimony would clear up many questions
Conservative MPs were hoping that Duheme’s testimony would have cleared up more questions about the SNC-Lavalin scandal after the group Democracy Watch on October 16 revealed a host of records regarding it.
These records show that the RCMP was stopped by Trudeau’s top cabinet members via a restricted disclosure order. This order stated that authorization to waive solicitor-client privilege would not be allowed in regard to information concerning communications between Wilson-Raybould and the director of public prosecutions regarding SNC-Lavalin.
The records released by Democracy Watch involve about 1,815 pages of records from 19 documents that the RCMP recently disclosed after an Access to Information Act (ATIA) request.
In July 2022, the group filed an Access to Information Act (ATIA) request with the RCMP about the SNC-Lavalin affair and Trudeau.
As for SNC-Lavalin, which now goes by the name “AtkinsRéalis,” in 2019 it pleaded guilty to committing fraud in a Québec Provincial Court and was hit with a $280 million fine. Company executives also admitted that they had paid some $47.7 million in bribes to get contracts in Libya.
After Duheme was blocked from testifying, Conservative MPs Barrett and Larry Brock said in a press release that Trudeau had “refused to hand over documents or let individuals who were involved in the affair testify” after it was discovered he broke Canada’s ethics laws.
“Justin Trudeau was found guilty of breaking Canada’s ethics laws through his efforts to protect a corrupt, politically connected company by firing his first indigenous Attorney General, who would not bend to the Prime Minister’s orchestrated campaign of political pressure,” the MPs said.
“Last week, Canadians discovered that the RCMP were unable to pursue a criminal investigation because the Prime Minister refused to provide them the information they needed,” the MPs continued. “The RCMP asked the Prime Minister to be transparent, but the prime minister refused to hand over documents or let individuals who were involved in the affair testify.”
The MPs said the former Ethics Commissioner’s “Trudeau II Report” indicated that many “witnesses said they had relevant evidence to offer but were constrained by limitations put in place by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”
“The exact same tactics blocked the RCMP from probing the possibility of criminal charges relating to Trudeau’s orchestrated and systematic campaign to pressure Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to over-rule the independent Public Prosecution Service and offer SNC a deferred prosecution agreement,” the MPs said.
The MPs then said “common-sense Conservatives” will continue to hold the “Liberal-NDP government and their Bloc allies accountable. Canadians deserve transparency and have a right to know if the Prime Minister broke the law.”
On February 12, 2019, Wilson-Raybould resigned from her veterans’ affairs posting and Treasury Board president Jane Philpott quit in March 2019. They both cited a lack of confidence in the Liberal government’s handling of the scandal.
Then, in April 2019, Trudeau turfed Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from his caucus, meaning they were no longer part of the Liberal Party.
The SNC-Lavalin scandal is only one of many involving the Trudeau Liberals.
Earlier this week, LifeSiteNews reported on how a former national security aide to Trudeau claimed he did not see a warning stating that agents of the Communist Chinese regime were directly targeting a Conservative MP.