Ethics inquiry against Trudeau

Canada’s parliamentary ethics commissioner said that he would look into allegations that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau improperly pressured his former attorney general to call off a criminal case against a major engineering company based in Montreal.

Background 

Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II being the head of state. It is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. Its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. 

Canada is described as a “full democracy”, with a tradition of liberalism, and an egalitarian, moderate political ideology. An emphasis on social justice has been a distinguishing element of Canada’s political culture. Peace, order, and good government are founding principles of the Canadian government.

Justin Pierre James Trudeau is a Canadian politician serving as the 23rd prime minister of Canada since 2015 and leader of the Liberal Party since 2013. Trudeau is the second-youngest Canadian prime minister, after Joe Clark; he is also the first to be related to a previous holder of the post, as the eldest son of Pierre Trudeau.

Trudeau won the leadership of the Liberal Party in April 2013 and went on to lead his party to victory in the 2015 federal election, moving the third-placed Liberals from 36 seats to 184 seats, the largest-ever numerical increase by a party in a Canadian general election.

Analysis 

Canada goes to the polls this fall, and members of the opposition parties swiftly pounced on the reports as a sign that Mr. Trudeau’s government was unethical.

The announcement, made in a letter to two members of Parliament, followed several days of allegations that Mr. Trudeau, or members of his staff, improperly tried to force a settlement of charges that the company, SNC-Lavalin, paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Libya when the country was ruled by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The allegations of the push to drop the case first surfaced in the first week of February in local papers. The newspaper said that Mr. Trudeau’s office had pressed Jody Wilson-Raybould when she was his justice minister and attorney general to, in turn, pressure prosecutors to use a new law that would allow a “remediation agreement” with the company that would prevent a trial in exchange for paying a penalty. Whether or not such pressure was brought to bear, prosecutors, who are independent of the government in Canada, have continued to pursue the company in court.

Since the allegations were first reported, Mr. Trudeau has repeatedly denied trying to influence the case. “At no time did I or my office direct the current or previous attorney general to make any particular decision in this matter,” he said last week.

Andrew Scheer, the Conservative leader, has speculated several times that Ms. Wilson-Raybould was moved from heading Canada’s Department of Justice to Veterans Affairs, a less prestigious portfolio, in a cabinet shuffle last month as punishment for not calling off prosecutors. Mr. Scheer has provided no support for his claim.

Mr. Trudeau’s government does not deny that the company’s case was discussed at the cabinet level, but has said that such conversations about the problems of a company important to the Canadian economy were not unusual and that no directive to intervene was issued.

The fate of SNC-Lavalin has loomed particularly large in Quebec. If it is convicted of the corruption charges, it would not be able to work on Canadian government contracts for a decade, perhaps crippling the company, which has about 11,500 employees in North America and 23,000 elsewhere.

The possibility of a remediation agreement was made possible by a measure introduced by the last budget legislation from Mr. Trudeau’s government. Opposition members criticized the government for burying it within the budget rather than presenting it as separate legislation. Mario Dion, the ethics commissioner, said in his letter that he would investigate Mr. Trudeau’s actions under a section of the Conflict of Interest Act that prohibits federal politicians from using their influence to “improperly further another person’s private interests.”

This is the second investigation of Mr. Trudeau by the ethics commissioner’s office. In December 2017, the previous commissioner found that he broke the law by accepting a helicopter flight for his family to a private island owned by the Aga Khan, the billionaire philanthropist and spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims.

Assessment 

Our assessment is that an ethics investigation on Trudeau’s election campaign is a huge set back for the progressive PM’s nearly spot-less record so far. We believe that the investigation should proceed without any external influence or interference at any level.