UPDATE: Since the publication of this report, the RCMP has released its own statement denying that any investigation into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his cabinet is ongoing.
OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have for the first time since 2019 confirmed it is investigating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet for potential obstruction of justice concerning a bribery scandal involving a large Canadian engineering firm.
In a press release sent out today, the non-profit advocacy group Democracy Watch said it got a response to an Access to Information Act (ATIA) request it filed with the RCMP on July 27, 2022, about the SNC-Lavalin affair and Trudeau.
According to Democracy Watch, the RCMP response letter, which is dated May 25, 2023, “confirms it is investigating the allegation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former Finance Minister Bill Morneau, some members of their staff, and former Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, obstructed justice by pressuring then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to stop the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin in 2018.”
The response letter is 96-pages long but contains 86-pages which are fully redacted, as the matter is “currently under investigation.”
The only visible portion is Democracy Watch’s 5-page February 2021 letter which it sent to the RCMP.
“This is the first public statement the RCMP has made about the situation since August 14, 2019 when it stated that it was examining the situation carefully,” said Democracy Watch.
Jody Wilson-Raybould was Trudeau’s former attorney general of Canada. 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 of Montreal-based global engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, relating to a scandal involving corruption and bribery charges connected to government contracts it once had 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’s 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.
On February 12, 2019, Wilson-Raybould resigned from veterans’ affairs, and Treasury Board president Jane Philpott quit in March of the same year. They both cited a lack of confidence in the Liberal government’s handling of the scandal.
Then, in April of 2019, Trudeau turfed both Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from his caucus, meaning they were no longer part of the Liberal Party.
A little less than four years ago, Trudeau was found to have broken the federal ethics laws for his role in pressuring Wilson-Raybould.
Democracy Watch: RCMP should have ‘confirmed long ago that it was investigating’ Trudeau
According to Democracy Watch, a September 2019 Globe and Mail report stated that the then-Clerk of the Privy Council “had refused to waive Cabinet confidence to allow government witnesses to provide full information to the RCMP, and that sources within the RCMP said it was putting its examination on hold through the fall 2019 federal election campaign period.”
“The next day former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould stated publicly that she had been interviewed by the RCMP about the actions of the Prime Minister and others,” said Democracy Watch.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, said in the press release that the RCMP “should have confirmed long ago that it was investigating the situation given the evidence.”
“And that more than four years have passed since the situation was made public, and almost four years since the Ethics Commissioner’s ruling finding that Prime Minister Trudeau violated the federal ethics law pressuring the Attorney General,” he added.
Conacher said that given the fact “four years have passed,” he noted “it is difficult to believe that the investigation has not been completed, and it raises many questions for the RCMP to answer.”
He then questioned whether the RCMP and prosecutors are “waiting for a third federal election to pass, or doing what often happens in Canada when powerful politicians and government officials are involved in alleged illegal activities – delaying with the hope that they can eventually bury the results of the investigation?”
Conacher then called upon the RCMP to answer six questions, writing:
- When did the examination end and the investigation begin?
- How many investigators have been investigating?
- How many hours in total have they spent investigating?
- Have there been negotiations with the PMO to disclose Cabinet confidences about the situation and, if not, why has the RCMP let almost four years pass without challenging the refusal to disclose in court?
- When does the RCMP expect that the investigation will conclude?
- Will the RCMP and Crown prosecutors issue a full public explanation of the investigation and its findings when it concludes?
In February of 2021, Democracy Watch said it had sent a letter to the RCMP which set out “the grounds for prosecuting for obstruction of justice, and calling on the RCMP and Crown prosecutors to issue the full, public explanation that the public has a right to about the state of the examination.”
“The RCMP did not respond,” said the group at the time.
On June 1, 2022, Democracy Watch sent a second letter to the “RCMP again setting out the grounds for prosecuting, and again calling for a full, public update, and also requesting disclosure of records under the ATIA.”
“DWatch filed the ATIA request because the RCMP had disclosed documents in spring 2022 under the ATIA explaining its decisions concerning its investigation into the Aga Khan’s trip gift to Trudeau and his family. After some communications with the RCMP clarifying the request, it was finalized on July 27, 2022.”
Since becoming prime minister in 2015, Trudeau and his Liberal party have been caught in scandal after scandal, such as the WE Charity corruption scandal, the above-mentioned SNC-Lavalin affair, and the sacking of high-profile female MPs.
Despite this fact, Trudeau’s Liberals won both the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, albeit with a minority seat count.
Correction: This article was updated on June 20 to clarify that the RCMP’s reported letter to Democracy Watch was dated May 25 and not March 25, as previously reported.