Democracy Watch is filing a court application for approval to launch a private prosecution over the SNC-Lavalin scandal, alleging the RCMP did not properly investigate potential obstruction of justice and breach of trust by the prime minister and those around him.
The group said its calling for approval from the Ontario Court of Justice to proceed with a private prosecution of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for pressuring, and directing others to pressure, then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to stop the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin in 2018.
The application is being filed with the court on Feb. 19, Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher said in a press conference in Ottawa on the same day.
Democracy Watch has obtained over 3,600 pages of RCMP records through the access-to-information regime. Conacher said the documents show the investigation was “weak” and “incomplete.”
“The RCMP essentially characterized everything [said by those] who were involved in pressuring the attorney general, from the Prime Minister on down, in a favourable way, while doubting the claims and constantly, essentially tilting the investigation in favour of not prosecuting anyone,” said Conacher.
Conacher said the documents show the RCMP is withholding information it obtained from the interviews of key witnesses, including former minister Wilson-Raybould.
“We can have the best policy in the word but we need to get re-elected,” Wilson-Raybould said in quoting a PMO staffer.
Conacher also said the RCMP “changed the standard” to determine if obstruction of justice occurred using an “illegal and incorrect legal standard for making that assessment.”
The RCMP was contacted for comment but didn’t respond by publication time.
Conacher said the process will involve a justice of the peace deciding whether the evidence presented by Democracy Watch requires a pre-enquete hearing. The hearing will determine whether a private prosecution can go forward, he said, and following that, the Attorney General of Ontario could decide to take over the prosecution.
Committee Testimony
The House of Commons ethics committee last year opened a study of the RCMP’s decision not to pursue a criminal investigation into Trudeau’s role in the case of the Quebec firm SNC-Lavalin, now rebranded AtkinsRéalis.RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme told the committee in February 2024 there had been no political pressure to close its investigation. He also said the government’s refusal to fully disclose its holdings on the affair had limited the force’s capability to pursue a full investigation.
Duheme and an RMCP lead investigator told the committee there was never any attempt made to interview Trudeau, the primary subject. The police force said they didn’t find enough evidence through open sources and interviews to obtain a search warrant and the investigation was abandoned.
“The Opposition is digging into the past to try and bring up things that were settled many years ago,” Trudeau said in the House of Commons on Feb. 28, 2024.
The ethics commissioner found Trudeau had breached the Conflict of Interest Act in a 2019 report, saying the “evidence showed there were many ways in which Mr. Trudeau, either directly or through the actions of those under his direction, sought to influence the Attorney General.”
After the release of the report, Trudeau said he took “responsibility for the mistakes that I made” but wouldn’t apologize for wanting to protect Canadian jobs.
“We recognize the way that this happened shouldn’t have happened,” he said in mid-April 2019.
