National
Liberal MPs stop police commissioner from testifying about SNC-Lavalin scandal
From LifeSiteNews
RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme was set to testify about whether Justin Trudeau blocked police from obtaining cabinet documents in the SNC-Lavalin affair when MPs on the ethics committee voted 7-3 to adopt a Liberal motion to abruptly adjourn the meeting
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 charges 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 along with Trudeau’s plan, which would have allegedly appeared to 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 relating to corruption and bribery charges connected to SNC’s government contracts 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.
From the Fraser Institute
By Jake Fuss and Tegan Hill
If Honda, Volkswagen and Stellantis are unwilling to build their EV battery plants in Ontario without corporate welfare, that sends a strong signal that those projects make little economic sense.
On Thursday, the Trudeau and Ford governments announced they will dole out an estimated $5 billion in corporate welfare to Honda so the auto giant can build an electric vehicle (EV) battery plant and manufacture EVs in Ontario. This is the third such deal in Ontario, following similar corporate welfare handouts to Volkswagen ($13.2 billion) and Stellantis ($15.0 billion). Like the previous two deals, the Honda deal comes at a significant cost to taxpayers and will almost certainly fail to create widespread economic benefits for Ontarians.
The Trudeau and Ford governments finalized the Honda deal after more than a year of negotiations, with both governments promising direct incentives and tax credits. Of course, this isn’t free money. Taxpayers in Ontario and the rest of Canada will pay for this corporate welfare through their taxes.
Unfortunately, corporate welfare is nothing new. Governments in Canada have a long history of picking their favoured firms or industries and using a wide range of subsidies and other incentives to benefit those firms or industries selected for preferential treatment.
According to a recent study, the federal government spent $84.6 billion (adjusted for inflation) on business subsidies from 2007 to 2019 (the last pre-COVID year). Over the same period, provincial and local governments spent another $302.9 billion on business subsidies for their favoured firms and industries. (Notably, the study excludes other forms of government support such as loan guarantees, direct investments and regulatory privileges, so the total cost of corporate welfare during this period is actually much higher.)
Of course, when announcing the Honda deal, the Trudeau and Ford governments attempted to sell this latest example of corporate welfare as a way to create jobs. In reality, however, there’s little to no empirical evidence that corporate welfare creates jobs (on net) or produces widespread economic benefits.
Instead, these governments are simply picking winners and losers, shifting jobs and investment away from other firms and industries and circumventing the preferences of consumers and investors. If Honda, Volkswagen and Stellantis are unwilling to build their EV battery plants in Ontario without corporate welfare, that sends a strong signal that those projects make little economic sense.
Unfortunately, the Trudeau and Ford governments believe they know better than investors and entrepreneurs, so they’re using taxpayer money to allocate scarce resources—including labour—to their favoured projects and industries. Again, corporate welfare actually hinders economic growth, which Ontario and Canada desperately need, and often fails to produce jobs that would not otherwise have been created, while also requiring financial support from taxpayers.
It’s only a matter of time before other automakers ask for similar handouts from Ontario and the federal government. Indeed, after Volkswagen secured billions in federal subsidies, Stellantis stopped construction of an EV battery plant in Windsor until it received similar subsidies from the Trudeau government. Call it copycat corporate welfare.
Government handouts to corporations do not pave the path to economic success in Canada. To help foster widespread prosperity, governments should help create an environment where all businesses can succeed, rather than picking winners and losers on the backs of taxpayers.
Authors:
From LifeSiteNews
Conservative MP Corey Tochor argued the term “corrupt” is an accurate description of Trudeau and his government.
“If you ask the Ethics Commissioner about all of the infractions that the Prime Minister has been charged and convicted with on corruption, you will find the truth to be that this is a corrupt government and Prime Minister”
Liberals are pushing for the word “corrupt” to be banned in Parliament amid ongoing ethics scandals within the Trudeau government.
On April 19, Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Mark Gerretsen moved to prohibit MPs from referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his government as “corrupt,” arguing it is disrespectful towards the Liberal government.
“My point is that, today, during question period, the member for Regina—Wascana referred to the Prime Minister as ‘corrupt’ and to the government as ‘corrupt,’” he told the House of Commons.
“Although he did it today, it has been done a number of times in the House,” he continued. “I would say that terminology specifically goes against Standing Order 18.”
The House of Commons’ Standing Order 18 regulates speech within the House to ensure that MPs do not use disrespectful or offensive language.
“No member shall speak disrespectfully of the Sovereign, nor of any of the royal family, nor of the Governor General or the person administering the Government of Canada; nor use offensive words against either House, or against any member thereof,” it states. “No member may reflect upon any vote of the House, except for the purpose of moving that such vote be rescinded.”
“I would encourage the Chair, during this time of reflection over that week that he indicated he was going to do that, to consider my comment on this and to weigh into whether or not this is actually,” Gerretsen added before being interrupted by Conservative MPs calling for a debate.
However, Gerretsen refused to debate his suggestion, instead pushing for Conservatives to be censored. Gerretsen’s recommendation was supported by Bloc Quebecois MP Martin Champoux.
“I would like to build on what my colleague just said,” Champoux said. “I actually raised a point of order about this yesterday with the Speaker, who was in the chair at the time, to ask him to once again set out strict rules and clear guidelines for members to follow.”
“That would help us to better understand how far we can go,” he argued. “Right now and for the past few months, there has been a lack of consistency in the way freedom of expression is interpreted in the House and in the way measures are applied when members cross the line or do not follow the guidelines, which, again, are not exactly clear.”
However, Conservative MP Corey Tochor argued the term “corrupt” is an accurate description of Trudeau and his government.
“If you ask the Ethics Commissioner about all of the infractions that the Prime Minister has been charged and convicted with on corruption, you will find the truth to be that this is a corrupt government and Prime Minister,” he declared.
Indeed, between the ArriveCAN app scandal, alleged Chinese election meddling and the SNC-Lavalin affair, Canadian MPs seem well within their rights to call, or at least remain concerned, that Trudeau and his government are “corrupt.”
So, why are Liberals moving to have the term banned?
It appears Trudeau and his government prefer Canadians remain unaware of past and ongoing corruption scandals, preferring to silence those who remain unconvinced by Liberal Party propaganda.
In the last few years of Trudeau’s near-decade reign, the prime minister and his Liberals have become increasingly intolerant of opposing views, infamously labelling their critics during the COVID-era as “right-winged extremists” and a “small fringe minority.”
Unfortunately, it seems this trend is only going to continue.
As LifeSiteNews recently reported, law professor Dr. Michael Geist warned that the Trudeau government is “ready” to “gaslight” opponents of Bill C-63, a proposed law that could lead to jail time for vaguely defined online “hate speech” infractions.
While the banning of the word “corrupt” in Parliament may not yet be implemented, who is to say that if Bill C-63 is passed that the Trudeau government won’t decide to consider such accusations of corruption as meeting the definition of online “hate speech.”
Indeed, perhaps the Liberals’ move to ban the word “corrupt” should be considered a sign that they know they’ve lost the public’s trust and are acutely aware silencing opposition is their only option.
In fact, it would appear that Trudeau’s only response to dismal polling figures with respect to his scandal-plagued government’s popularity is to double down on censorship, rather than consider why citizens feel the way they do.
As the late U.S. President Harry S. Truman warned: “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
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