Justin Trudeau is involved in a corruption scandal

If the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, thought that a boiling political scandal could be contained silently, this hope must have disappeared after testimony of his former Minister of Justice before a parliamentary committee.

"I do not think I've ever seen a cabinet member bomb his own government like this"said Andrew MacDougall, a spokesman for Stephen Harper, the Conservative Prime Minister who was ousted by Trudeau in 2015. "This only increases the perception among the population that all politicians are wrong."

On Wednesday, February 27, during almost four hours of testimony before the justice committee of the House of Commons of Canada, the former minister Jody Wilson-Raybould repeatedly contradicted Trudeau's claim that neither he nor his staff acted improperly in an attempt to ensure that the prosecution reached a settlement at the same time. amicably with SNC-Lavalin., a multinational construction and engineering company based in Montreal.

Wilson-Raybould describes in detail Ten meetings, ten conversations and a series of e-mails he had with senior officials on the case against SNC-Lavalin. At one point, Wilson-Raybould, also a former Attorney General, testified that he asked Trudeau directly: "Do you intervene politically with my role, my decision in the lawsuit? I do not really recommend it."

The day after their statements, social networks and the media in Canada continued to give free rein to what was said. Andrew Scheer, Opposition Leader of the Conservative Party in Parliament, asks Trudeau to resign and open an investigation for obstruction of justice.

Trudeau wishes to be reelected at the end of the year. he must now respond to the call for resignation and the request for an independent public inquiry. The House of Commons debated the issue on Thursday night and the parliamentary ethics commissioner is already reviewing the charges.

The Prime Minister acknowledged that He and other members of his government discussed with Wilson-Raybould the possibility of reaching an agreement in the SNC-Lavalin case, accused of paying millions of dollars in bribes to Libyan officials when the country was ruled by dictator Muammar Gaddafi. However, Trudeau denied that he acted inappropriately.

The agreement with the prosecution reportedly resulted in the payment of a fine and allowed the company to avoid a criminal conviction; this involves the ban on making the government work for a decade. The company may have relocated its operations to Canada or eliminated thousands of jobs, particularly in Quebec.

Trudeau rejected Wilson-Raybould's badertion that, in their conversations with officials, they had "committed" political interference "through" veiled threats ".

"Canadians expect their government to look for ways to protect jobs and grow the economy, and that's exactly what we've done every step of the way," Trudeau said. to the press on February 28th. "But we have also done it in a manner that respects the law and the independence of the judiciary."

Trudeau predicted that this would also be the opinion of the parliamentary justice commission, controlled by the pro-government Liberal party, as well as the ethics commissioner, whose role only allows him to monitor conflicts in the country. 39, possible interests.

However, the badysts consulted commented that Trudeau will have trouble avoiding an independent investigation.

"Although the government does not want to be the subject of several weeks of intense surveillance, do not let it look very bad," said Emmet Macfarlane, badociate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo, Ontario.

"If this continues, how can you avoid a process that could potentially lead to the conclusion that this kind of obscure thing is happening all the time in camera in government?" Added Macfarlane.

John Duffy, a former advisor to another Liberal Party government, said that although Wilson-Raybould accused Trudeau and his advisers of acting inappropriately, she acknowledged in her own testimony that no one who had tried to pressure her in the SNC-Lavalin case had done so in violation of the laws and that she had sought to make clear to the population that the judicial system was not partisan.

"I do not want to make it seem like it's a clbadic example of how things should be going"said Duffy, adding that Wilson-Raybould had not reached an out-of-court settlement with SNC-Lavalin and that the court process was continuing. "But that's the style of governance," Duffy said.

However, opponents do not share this view. have presented the case as a case in which Several men wanted to put pressure on a woman who wanted to maintain her judicial independence.

Norman Spector, former chief of staff of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, said most people certainly viewed the story as "a simplistic plot of liberals who helped their business friend from Quebec."

"They suspect the system has been rigged" added Spector, who recently served as an advisor to the Green Party in British Columbia.

Spector said he believed Trudeau would resist an investigation, although the prime minister already seems to have withdrawn from the controversial position.

For example, the Liberal majority of the justice commission had left Wilson-Raybould off the list of witnesses called at the hearings, before adding it.

Gerald Butts, good friend of Trudeau who resigned from his post Counsel on February 18 because of the controversy, he asked the commission to call him as a witness.

In January, Wilson-Raybould was transferred from the Department of Justice Canada to the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is now considered a punishment for his refusal to file the SNC-Lavalin case. In February, he completely resigned from the cabinet without giving reasons.

Trudeau said on February 28 that he was reviewing the status of the former prosecutor in the Liberal caucus in Parliament; Wilson-Raybould remains a legislator in a district of Vancouver.

Several Liberals have privately declared that bloc members want him out, but they fear that the action will be politicized and turned into a political martyr.

"If I advised the Prime Minister, I would be very reluctant to recommend that he take this step to expel him," said Macfarlane, a professor in Waterloo.

* Copyright: 2019 The New York Times Press Office