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Police admit Canadian bribery scandal was nixed without talking to Trudeau, reviewing records

Published

4 months ago

6 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police believed there was political pressure to dismiss a government bribery case against engineering firm SNC-Lavalin in 2019 but claimed there was insufficient evidence to proceed.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) confirmed that it never talked with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or was able to view secret cabinet records before dismissing charges in a bribery scandal involving the large engineering firm SNC-Lavalin.

The RCMP’s admission came after intense questioning before the House of Commons ethics committee late last month.

As per Blacklock’s Reporter, RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme testified, “No one is above the law,” adding that there was “insufficient evidence to proceed” with the investigation.

In a 2021 memo titled RCMP Assessment Report: Obstruction of Justice SNC-Lavalin Affair obtained from Access to Information requests last October by Democracy Watch, the RCMP noted that it did not doubt there was indeed political pressure to stop criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

“However, for it to be an offence under the Criminal Code, there must be more than a technical violation,” the 2021 memo read.

During the House of Commons ethics committee meeting in February, Duheme said he had considered the SNC-Lavalin case routine, noting, “We approach every investigation in the same manner.”

Staff Sergeant Frédéric Pincince, who serves as a director of investigations, admitted that the RCMP never questioned Trudeau in the SNC-Lavalin case but gave no reason.

“He was not interviewed,” testified Pincince, to which Conservative MP Larry Brock asked, “Was there at least an attempt to interview Justin Trudeau?”

“No,” Pincince replied.

In October 2023, Canadian Liberal MPs on the ethics committee voted to stop the RCMP from testifying about the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal.

In June 2023, LifeSiteNews reported that 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 changes of corruption and fraud concerning about $48 million in payments made to Libyan government officials between 2001 and 2011. The company had hoped to be spared 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. In 2019, she contended that both Trudeau and his top Liberal officials had inappropriately applied pressure on her for four months to directly intervene in the criminal prosecution of Montreal-based global engineering firm SNC-Lavalin relating to its scandal involving corruption and bribery charges connected to government contracts it once had in Libya.

Commissioner mum on whether there was ‘reluctance’ to charge a sitting PM

During the ethics committee meeting, Brock asked Duheme if there was an “overall general reluctance in charging a sitting Prime Minister?”

“I would say to that, we follow the evidence and if the evidence warrants charges, we charge,” Duheme replied.

Brock then asked if the RCMP obtained “all relevant documents to further the investigation?”

Duheme admitted that “we were limited with the information that we had access to.”

Brock pressed him, asking, “Is that a yes or no, sir?” to which Duheme replied, “I don’t know,” adding, “We didn’t know.”

“We don’t know, we still don’t know to this day all the information that is out there,” Duheme responded.

Brock then pressed Duheme, asking why the RCMP did not “exercise its absolute statutory right under the Criminal Code to obtain a production order or search warrant from a justice to obtain those cabinet documents?”

Duheme said the RCMP were not “able to obtain enough information or evidence.”

As for the initial investigation concerning SNC-Lavalin, 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 landing any government contracts for 10 years.

Trudeau flat-out denied it was being investigated by the RCMP.

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.

On February 12, 2019, Wilson-Raybould resigned from her veterans’ affairs post and Treasury Board president Jane Philpott quit in March 2019. They both cited a lack of confidence in the Liberal government’s handling of the scandal.

Then, in April 2019, Trudeau turfed Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from his caucus, meaning they were no longer part of the Liberal Party.

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Estonia’s solution to Canada’s stagnating economic growth

Published on July 25, 2024

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Callum MacLeod and Jake Fuss

The only taxes corporations face are on profits they distribute to shareholders. This allows the profits of Estonian firms to be reinvested tax-free permitting higher returns for entrepreneurs.

A new study found that the current decline in living standards is one of the worst in Canada’s recent history. While the economy has grown, it hasn’t kept pace with Canada’s surging population, which means gross domestic product (GDP) per person is on a downward trajectory. Carolyn Rogers, senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, points to Canada’s productivity crisis as one of the primary reasons for this stagnation.

Productivity is a key economic indicator that measures how much output workers produce per hour of work. Rising productivity is associated with higher wages and greater standards of living, but growth in Canadian productivity has been sluggish: from 2002 to 2022 American productivity grew 160 per cent faster than Canadian productivity.

While Canada’s productivity issues are multifaceted, Rogers pointed to several sources of the problem in a recent speech. Primarily, she highlighted strong business investment as an imperative to productivity growth, and an area in which Canada has continually fallen short. There is no silver bullet to revive faltering investment, but tax reform would be a good start. Taxes can have a significant effect on business incentives and investment, but Canada’s tax system has largely stood in the way of economic progress.

With recent hikes in the capital gains tax rate and sky-high compliance costs, Canada’s taxes continue to hinder its growth. Canada’s primary competitor is the United States, which has considerably lower tax rates. Canada’s rates on personal income and businesses are similarly uncompetitive when compared to other advanced economies around the globe. Uncompetitive taxes in Canada prompt investment, businesses, and workers to relocate to jurisdictions with lower taxes.

The country of Estonia offers one of the best models for tax reform. The small Baltic state has a unique tax system that puts it at the top of the Tax Foundation’s tax competitiveness index. Estonia has lower effective tax rates than Canada—so it doesn’t discourage work the way Canada does—but more interestingly, its business tax model doesn’t punish investment the way Canada’s does.

Their business tax system is a distributed profits tax system, meaning that the only taxes corporations face are on profits they distribute to shareholders. This allows the profits of Estonian firms to be reinvested tax-free permitting higher returns for entrepreneurs.

The demand for investment is especially strong for capital-intensive companies such as information, communications, and technology (ICT) enterprises, which are some of the most productive in today’s economy. A Bank of Canada report highlighted the lack of ICT investment as a major contributor to Canada’s sluggish growth in the 21st century.

While investment is important, another ingredient to economic growth is entrepreneurship. Estonia’s tax system ensures entrepreneurs are rewarded for success and the result is that  Estonians start significantly more businesses than Canadians. In 2023, for every 1,000 people, Estonia had 17.8 business startups, while Canada had only 4.9. This trend is even worse for ICT companies, Estonians start 45 times more ICT businesses than Canadians on a per capita basis.

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s (GEM) 2023/24 report on entrepreneurship confirms that a large part of this difference comes from government policy and taxation. Canada ranked below Estonia on all 13 metrics of the Entrepreneurial Framework. Notably, Estonia scored above Canada when taxes, bureaucracy, burdens and regulation were measured.

While there’s no easy solution to Canada’s productivity crisis, a better tax regime wouldn’t penalize investment and entrepreneurship as much as our current system does. This would allow Canadians to be more productive, ultimately improving living standards. Estonia’s business tax system is a good example of how to promote economic growth. Examples of successful tax structures, such as Estonia’s, should prompt a conversation about how Canadian governments could improve economic outcomes for citizens.

Authors:

Callum MacLeod and Jake Fuss
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Economy

Trudeau’s bureaucrat hiring spree is out of control

Published on July 24, 2024

By

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Franco Terrazzano

Bureaucrats love to think of themselves as “public servants,” but who is really serving who around here?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added another 10,525 bureaucrats to the taxpayer payroll last year. Since becoming prime minister, Trudeau has added more than 108,000 new federal bureaucrats.

That’s a 42 per cent increase in the federal bureaucracy in less than a decade.

Ask yourself, are you getting 42 per cent better services from the federal government? Unless your paycheque comes from taxpayers, the answer is a big fat NO.

While Trudeau’s bureaucracy grew by 42 per cent, Canada’s population grew by 14 per cent.

That means there would be 72,491 fewer federal paper pushers had Trudeau kept growth in the bureaucracy in line with population growth.

It’s not just the size of the bureaucracy that’s ballooning – the cost is too.

The total cost of the federal payroll hit $67 billion last year, a record high. That’s a 68 per cent increase over 2016.

Trudeau gave federal bureaucrats more than one million pay raises in the last four years alone.

Since taking office, Trudeau also rubberstamped about $1.4 billion in taxpayer-funded bonuses to bureaucrats working in federal departments.

The bonuses were paid out despite the Parliamentary Budget Officer finding “less than 50 per cent of [performance] targets are consistently met.”

Then there’s the bonuses at failing Crown corporations.

CBC dished out $15 million in bonuses last year, while their President and CEO Catherine Tait whined about “chronic underfunding” and begged the government for more taxpayer cash. The CBC takes more than $1 billion from taxpayers every year.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation dished out $102 million in bonuses over the last four years, while Canadians couldn’t afford to buy a home. The bonuses rained down, despite the CMHC repeatedly claiming it’s “driven by one goal: housing affordability for all.”

The Bank of Canada dished out more than $60 million in bonuses over the last three years, even though it failed to do its one and only job: keep inflation low and around two per cent.

The average annual compensation for a full-time federal bureaucrat is $125,300, when pay, pension and perks are accounted for, according to the PBO.

There are now more than 110,000 federal bureaucrats taking home a six-figure base salary – an increase of 154 per cent since Trudeau took power.

Meanwhile, data from Statistics Canada suggests the average annual salary among all full-time workers in Canada was less than $70,000 in 2023.

Here’s why all this matters:

First, it’s an issue of fairness. The last few years have spelled hardship for Canadians who don’t work for the government, but do pay the bills.

Countless Canadians were sent to the ranks of the unemployed, lost their business and struggled to afford rising rents and costly grocery trips.

They’re paying higher taxes so more highly-paid bureaucrats can take bigger paycheques.

Second, more than half of the federal government’s day-to-day spending is consumed by the bureaucracy. That means any government that wants to fix the budget dumpster fire must shrink the bureaucracy.

Let’s recap:

Taxpayers paid for 108,000 new federal bureaucrats. Taxpayers paid for more than one million pay raises over the last four years. Taxpayers paid for more than $1 billion in bonuses.

And bureaucrats barely meet even half of their performance targets – targets they set for themselves.

It’s clear Trudeau’s bureaucratic bloat isn’t serving taxpayers. It’s time to find a pin and pop Ottawa’s ballooning bureaucracy.

This column was first published in the Western Standard on July 202, 2024.

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