RCMP never tried to interview Justin Trudeau as part of SNC-Lavalin scandal probe, committee told
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‘I have never heard of any investigation where there wasn’t any attempt to interview the person of interest,’ said Conservative MP Larry Brock
Published Feb 27, 2024 • Last updated 1 hour ago • 4 minute read
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walks to the National Press Theatre in Ottawa to speak about the SNC Lavalin scandal on March 7, 2019. Photo by Justin Tang/Canadian Press/FileArticle content
OTTAWA — The RCMP did not interview Prime Minister Justin Trudeau before concluding that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate a criminal offence in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, top officials confirmed in a House of Commons committee hearing on Tuesday.
In fact, the federal police interviewed only four individuals, one of whom was former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, and they did not even attempt to get Trudeau’s testimony.
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The revelation raised eyebrows among Conservatives at the ethics committee who wondered why the RCMP did not get to the heart of the allegations of political interference from the Prime Minister’s Office against Wilson-Raybould that shocked the country five years ago.
“In my over 30 years of experience as a defence counsel and a Crown attorney, I have never heard of any investigation where there wasn’t any attempt — whether they agree to interview or not — to interview the person of interest,” said Conservative MP Larry Brock.
RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme and Sergeant Frédéric Pincince, who oversaw the investigation into SNC-Lavalin, were supposed to testify last October but the Liberals shut down the meeting because, they claimed, their appearance was confirmed at the last minute.
When the SNC-Lavalin affair erupted in 2019, the RCMP investigated whether Trudeau had breached any criminal laws in pressuring Wilson-Raybould to let the Montreal construction firm benefit from a deferred prosecution agreement to avoid a criminal prosecution.
The offences the RCMP was looking into were obstruction of justice and the intimidation of a justice system participant.
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Records made public last fall by Democracy Watch show the RCMP mostly relied on public claims made by the actors involved in the SNC-Lavalin affair to come to their conclusions and did not even apply to obtain a search warrant to access confidential cabinet documents.
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Duheme said in his testimony that the RCMP reviewed media reports and relevant testimonies before the House committee on justice, as well as publicly available documents such as the reports from former minister Anne McLellan and the ethics commissioner on the subject.
He said that the police force then proceeded with interviews with “key witnesses” to obtain further information on the offences, including Wilson-Raybould and members of her office.
Duheme also said the RCMP had not been able to “acquire or obtain enough information or evidence” that would warrant a production order for confidential cabinet documents, but maintained that he was still comfortable with the decision not to pursue criminal charges.
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“We did everything we could to gain as much information or access as much information as possible within the confines of the regulations,” he said.
NDP MP Matthew Green also expressed concern about the two-year span between the time the decision was made to not pursue criminal charges and when it was shared with the main people involved, calling it “highly problematic given the timing of the politics at that time.”
An assessment report prepared by Pincince in February 2021 reads that the conclusion reached in the document “does not translate to the absence of a criminal offence.”
“Instead, given the current legislative framework, the overall assessment of the evidence, and the evidence threshold required for a criminal conviction, it is believed that there is insufficient evidence to support further investigative actions or a criminal prosecution,” reads the report.
In March 2021, RCMP superintendent Mike MacLean sent an email to Pincince asking him to confirm that “we pushed as hard as possible and explored every avenue to meet and speak to any/all witnesses” and “that we have exhausted all avenues to get evidence.”
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It was two years later, in January 2023, that the assessment report was submitted to Wilson-Raybould and the file was reviewed for conclusion in May 2023.
RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme and Sergeant Frédéric Pincince appear before the House of Commons ethics committee to speak about the SNC-Lavalin scandal, February 27, 2024. Photo by parlvu.parl.gc.ca
Duheme said the delay was due to “a change of resources within the organization” and that measures have been put in place since to ensure that reports like these do not sink into oblivion.
“With these allegations floating out there about the prime minister, the kind of lack of trust and cynicism that hyper partisanship would bring in this environment, it warrants more than a response of an inadvertent change in command,” said Green.
Liberal MP Anthony Housefather noted that the RCMP will usually not disclose whether they are working on an investigation unless they are proceeding with charges, so sharing the state of its work on the SNC-Lavalin file was outside of its normal practices.
Democracy Watch’s co-founder, Duff Conacher, criticized Duheme and Pincince’s testimony, saying that their failure to provide answers to many key questions shows “that the RCMP is a lapdog that rolled over” for Trudeau “by doing a very weak investigation” into SNC-Lavalin.
Conacher also said that the federal police did not really try to get access to secret cabinet documents “that likely show what actually happened.”
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