OTTAWA, March 22 — A minister who quit Canadian leader Justin Trudeau’s government in protest over allegations that it meddled in a prosecution said yesterday much of the scandal had been kept from the public.
Former budget minister Jane Philpott spoke out weeks after the emergence of explosive claims that Trudeau officials had pressured the attorney general to shield engineering giant SNC-Lavalin from trial.
The firestorm comes just months ahead a re-election bid that looks increasingly uncertain for Trudeau, the first term premier whose progressive, golden boy image had previously been unblemished.
“There’s much more to the story that should be told. And (Canadians) have understandably been concerned about why there’s been an attempt to shut down the story,” Philpott told Maclean’s magazine.
Philpott said earlier in March she had lost confidence in Trudeau and became the third senior official to quit in a scandal that has seen the opposition Tories overtake Trudeau’s Liberals in opinion polls.
Canada’s top bureaucrat, Privy Council Michael Wernick, followed them out the door on Monday after denying accusations of bullying.
“I felt that there was evidence of an attempt to politically interfere with the justice system in its work on the criminal trial that has been described by some as the most important and serious prosecution of corporate corruption in modern Canadian history,” Philpott told Maclean’s.
Montreal-based SNC-Lavalin was charged in 2015 with corruption over alleged bribes paid to secure contracts in Libya.
Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s first indigenous attorney general, refused to ask prosecutors to settle, and the trial is set to proceed.
But she later testified to lawmakers, after resigning, that she had received “veiled threats” over her stance.
‘Fake feminist’
Trudeau rose to power in 2015 championing feminism and indigenous rights.
The opposition, accusing him of being a “fake feminist,” forced a voting marathon on a new budget in parliament overnight to protest the Liberals’ shutting down a House of Commons justice committee probe into the affair.
Trudeau said Wilson-Raybould had been granted an “unprecedented” waiver from cabinet confidentiality and solicitor-client privilege to testify at the committee.
“It was extremely important that the former attorney general be allowed to share completely her perspectives, her experiences on this issue, and that is what she was able to do,” he said.
But the committee said Monday it had heard enough after five weeks of testimony and put it to Canadians to “judge for themselves the facts, perspectives and relevant legal principles.”
But Philpott countered: “I believe the former attorney general has further points to make. I believe that I have further issues of concern that I’m not free to share.”
Meanwhile, SNC-Lavalin chief Neil Bruce denied having argued for a settlement based on a potential 9,000 job losses — undermining the Liberals’ case that they got involved to safeguard jobs.
“We never threatened anybody with that. Never, ever,” he told the Globe and Mail.
He acknowledged telling officials however that staff could jump ship to European or US rivals if the company is convicted and banned from bidding on Canadian government contracts as part of its sentence. — AFP
