One thing is now clear. The Public Prosecutions Office was being subjected to political pressure. That's now how things work. Alan Freeman writes:
Of course, that’s not what Parliament had in mind back in 2006 when it established the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. Saving jobs or protecting big companies is not part of its legislative mandate. In fact, the service is supposed to be above politics and economics. What ‘s essential is its independence to make prosecutorial decisions.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has the power to make binding and final decisions to prosecute offences under federal jurisdiction,” according to the service’s website. If the Attorney-General wants to step in with a specific directive on a case, it must be put in writing and published in the Canada Gazette.
In the dozen years since the law was passed, this has never been done. And my assumption is that Jody Wilson-Raybould didn’t want be the attorney-general to overrule the director, Kathleen Roussel, who had decided that a deferred prosecution agreement wasn’t appropriate in the case of SNC-Lavalin.
By the time Roussel was named to her job in 2017, the fix was clearly in to let SNC-Lavalin get a deferred prosecution agreement, whether she thought it appropriate or not. The company had been hit for years by an avalanche of bad publicity and financial hits as the scope of allegations of bribery and corruption implicating the company and its employees around the globe became evident.
It has become a familiar problem. We now accept that some entities are too big to fail, because the collateral damage from that failure would be wide ranging. Put simply, in the new global order, David doesn't stand a chance against Goliath.
Image: Read Ed Reid
8 comments:
Yesterday. Michael Werneck expressed his fear that Canadians are losing faith in our institutions, Owen. I say he and Trudeau should look to their own house as one of the reasons for this sad decline.
It's not just public prosecutions that are pressured. Every ministry suffers intensive lobbying. It happens in all our governments right down to municipalities and school boards. This stuff is non-stop standard operations in the neo-liberal age.
I agree, Lorne. It's not the institutions that are at fault. It's the people behind them.
I agree, Toby. It's the way that "business is done."
How about a massive tax on lobbying activities? Then we could consider dealing with the advocacy whores and some of the many other now commonplace parasitic business practices that are draining the world of its wealth and welfare. We might eventually get right down to the level of cold calls from idle real estate agents and duct cleaners.
Meanwhile, don't participate in any "three-to-five minute" surveys without being compensated. There's a shitload of money changing hands in this business and there'd be a lot less if we'd all stop giving them our time free of charge.
That's an interesting suggestion, John. If you stopped paying lobbyists -- or at least took away their profits --you'd put an end to a lot of lobbying.
The Liberal true believers are in a funk. Hard to blame them. The Dauphin never does too well when he's dragged out into the sunlight. As I've stated repeatedly I don't have much time for Jody either.
What angers me is the leg up this has given Scheer. That is inexcusable.
If Trudeau has grievously, perhaps mortally wounded the LPC, it's best to get the whole thing out in the open and resign. Clear the deck for someone suitable to lead the Liberals into the fall election. I don't know if they've got anybody suitable - i.e. someone younger than Goodale and free of the baggage (and there's plenty of it) of Justin's reign. The whole "Caesar's wife" thing.
The Liberals were damned fools to indulge their appetite for another celebrity leader when they had just learned how that can backfire with Ignatieff. There is one - just one - even I would support. Louise Arbour. She would eviscerate Scheer just as Pierre Trudeau might were he still around and she might resuscitate the sullied Liberal brand. Christ, the Tories and a good many Liberal hangers-on would be quaking in their boots.
That's a really interesting suggestion, Mound. Ms. Arbour would be -- as they say in Quebec -- "formidable."
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