Sam Cooper

Wilson-Raybould asked by RCMP: ‘Did you advise Mr. BUTTS at one point that all this interference could amount at one point to an unlawful act?”

Despite controversial redactions that, according to a transparency advocate, may be inappropriately shielding Justin Trudeau’s inner circle from obstruction of justice accusations, newly released Royal Canadian Mounted Police transcripts provide unprecedented insight into the intense pressure campaign aimed at Jody Wilson-Raybould’s office to obstruct the prosecution of a major Quebec corporation closely tied to Trudeau’s government, his Montreal riding, and the Liberal Party’s re-election hopes.

These newly revealed RCMP interview records, though more than four years old, cast a fresh spotlight on Trudeau’s senior aides—several of whom, including Trudeau’s close friend Gerald Butts, have reportedly thrown their weight behind Mark Carney, the Liberal leadership frontrunner who appears poised to succeed Trudeau.

In a stunning revelation, RCMP records indicate that Wilson-Raybould warned Trudeau’s then-Principal Secretary, Gerald Butts, about her concerns regarding the unlawful nature of the pressure campaign.

As previously reported by The Bureau, Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch—which obtained the records—commented:

Documents obtained through access-to-information requests from Democracy Watch detail how Jessica Prince, Chief of Staff to then-Attorney General Wilson-Raybould, faced repeated, coordinated, and escalating demands from senior Trudeau officials to persuade Wilson-Raybould to override her prosecutors’ decision and cut SNC-Lavalin a deal.

What began as a single call from Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s office in August 2018 spiraled into months of pressure, involving some of the most powerful figures in Trudeau’s inner circle, including:

• Ben Chin, Chief of Staff to Finance Minister Bill Morneau
• Elder Marques & Mathieu Bouchard, Senior Advisors in the Prime Minister’s Office
• Gerald Butts, Trudeau’s Principal Secretary
• Katie Telford, Trudeau’s Chief of Staff
• Michael Wernick, Clerk of the Privy Council

SNC-Lavalin, one of Quebec’s largest engineering and construction firms, was charged in 2015 with fraud and corruption over alleged bribes to Libyan officials. In 2018, the Director of Public Prosecutions refused to offer SNC-Lavalin a Deferred Prosecution Agreement, prompting intense lobbying efforts by senior Trudeau officials.

Prince was first approached by Ben Chin in mid-August 2018.

“The case wasn’t on my radar at all,” Prince told an RCMP investigator. “The Public Prosecution Service is independent and handles tons of cases. We weren’t on top of all of them because the Department of Justice has about 45,000 pieces of litigation of its own. This was not high on my list of priorities.”

She recalled the abruptness of Chin’s outreach.

“He had clearly been speaking—I don’t know to whom—but to somebody at SNC-Lavalin, presumably someone quite high up, and was asking questions about the status of their prosecution.”

Prince described Chin as relentless, continuing to press her even as she tried to deflect.

“Francois was acting as Chief of Staff in my absence, so whenever people were trying to get a hold of me, I’d push them off to Francois. But Ben wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was like, ‘No, I really need to speak to you; I can’t speak to Francois.’”

Despite Prince’s repeated explanations about prosecutorial independence, Chin kept pushing. At one point, he insisted there had to be “a middle ground”—a compromise that would spare SNC-Lavalin from a criminal conviction.

Prince stood firm:

“There is no middle ground on prosecutorial independence, Ben. Like, you can’t. There’s not. It’s independent, you can’t, you can’t touch it.”

The next day, Bill Morneau’s office followed up, this time through Deputy Chief of Staff Justin To, whom Prince described as “Ben’s number two” and a former Prime Minister’s Office staffer.

One of the most explosive allegations from Jessica Prince’s RCMP interview involves her accusations of interference to Mathieu Bouchard, a Senior Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office.

In October 2018, Prince received a call from Bouchard regarding a note prepared by the Deputy Attorney General. The note examined the relationship between the Attorney General and the Public Prosecution Service of Canada and included a controversial option: obtaining an external legal opinion on whether the Director of Public Prosecutions’ decision to deny SNC-Lavalin a Deferred Prosecution Agreement was appropriate.

Prince described Bouchard as persistent, pressing for ways to circumvent the Director of Public Prosecutions’ decision.

During the call, Prince accused Bouchard of interference:

“Look, Mathieu, this is… this is interference, right? Like this is, uh, to say we’re getting an external legal opinion, like, to what end, right? Like, if we think that the Director is exercising her discretion appropriately, why are we getting an external legal opinion, right?”

She pushed back on the implications of his request. Bouchard responded by tying the decision to the political stakes in Quebec, warning that SNC-Lavalin could pull its headquarters from the province.

“He said, ‘You know, Jess, we could have the best policy in the world, but if we… we have to get re-elected, right?’”

According to Prince, the intensity of pressure culminated in a meeting with Katie Telford and Gerry Butts on December 17, 2018. Prince emphasized how extraordinary the meeting was, saying, ‘It was incredibly rare that I would even have a phone call with Gerry or Katie, let alone be summoned to their office. So, I knew it wasn’t good.’ She noted how ‘the Chief of Staff of the Prime Minister is like, effectively the boss to all the chiefs of staff of the ministers’ offices.’

Katie Telford

After the meeting, Prince took detailed handwritten notes and sent a text to the Minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, informing her of everything that had happened.

In her own subsequent interview with RCMP, according to the records, Wilson-Raybould was asked: “We’re in December now, so there’s quite a bit of meetings that took place before that. Did you advise Mr. Butts at one point that all this interference could amount at one point to an unlawful act?”

“I met Gerry at the Chateau,” the former Attorney General answered, “[and] we talk about a bunch of things, and there was a list of things that I wanted to bring up at the end which, is what I did and reflecting to him the nature of the number of discussions that I’ve had and it’s simply inappropriate.”

Meanwhile, the documents say around the time of that meeting, Prince learned that Michael Wernick, the Clerk of the Privy Council, was also involved in the pressure campaign. According to Prince, Wernick spoke to Wilson-Raybould and made it clear that the Prime Minister was growing increasingly agitated over her refusal to intervene. Prince recounted that Wernick said, ‘I don’t want the Attorney General and the Prime Minister to be at loggerheads on this… he’s in a real mood.’

The rest of Prince’s interview reads like the dénouement of a play, as she describes both herself and the Attorney General refusing to be shuffled to other posts, with both believing their functions had been interfered with from the highest levels, to benefit Trudeau’s re-election chances. After hearing Prince’s chronological narrative, the RCMP investigator pressed her on Ben Chin’s relationship with SNC-Lavalin.

“At one point… did Mr. Chin really indicate exactly what he meant by keeping that relationship positive with SNC-LAVALIN?”

Prince responded:

“I had the impression that he had been talking with somebody pretty senior at the company… he was clearly speaking to people high up in the company.”

The scandal broke in early 2019 when Wilson-Raybould resigned from Cabinet, followed by Treasury Board President Jane Philpott. Trudeau weathered the political storm but suffered the loss of a majority government in the October 2019 federal election.