RCMP probe of SNC-Lavalin affair faced hurdles but commissioner ‘comfortable’ with end result

The head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police says that while the Mounties’ investigation of the SNC-Lavalin affair was made more challenging by a lack of access to cabinet confidences, he’s “very comfortable” with the decision not to pursue criminal charges.

“I wouldn’t say justice didn’t play out,” Commissioner Mike Duheme told CBC News Monday. 

“But I would say that when you don’t have access to all the information, it’s sometimes challenging.” 

The commissioner and the lead investigator on the case, Staff Sgt. Frédéric Pincince, showed up Monday afternoon to testify before a parliamentary committee on why the RCMP did not lay charges in the aftermath of the political scandal that sent Parliament Hill into a frenzy four years ago. 

But the access to information, privacy and ethics committee was quickly adjourned before Duheme was able to make his opening remarks — leading the Conservative side of the room to accuse Liberal committee members of trying to censor the RCMP. The NDP and Bloc committee members voted alongside the Liberals to adjourn the meeting. 

The RCMP was assessing whether Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke the law when he tried to influence his then-justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to overrule a decision by the director of public prosecutions to not grant a deferred prosecution agreement to Quebec-based engineering firm SNC-Lavalin.

Wilson-Raybould was shuffled out of justice and eventually kicked out of the Liberal caucus.

A 2019 report by the ethics commissioner at the time, Mario Dion, found Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act.

Duheme and Pincince were invited to appear before the committee after advocacy group Democracy Watch published a trove of documents last week it said shows the Mounties’ review of the case was stymied by a lack of access to confidential cabinet materials.

The documents showed the force had requested special permission to talk to witnesses about events covered by cabinet confidence.

The Trudeau government issued a broad waiver to allow Wilson-Raybould to testify before a parliamentary committee about the SNC-Lavalin affair back in 2019. 

But that order-in-council did not extend to any communications between Wilson-Raybould and the director of public prosecutions on SNC-Lavalin while she was justice minister.

According to a February 2021 RCMP report, the force sought to expand that waiver as part of its investigation but was denied.

“We always prefer to have as much information as possible for us to make fulsome assessment of the situation,” said Pincince on Monday.

“So of course, without some additional information, sometimes we have to come to some conclusion based on the information that’s available to us. And this is exactly what happened in this situation.”

RCMP weighed Wilson-Raybould’s comments

Duheme, who was head of federal policing at the time of the scandal, said investigators also weighed Wilson-Raybould’s own words during an appearance before a parliamentary committee, when she characterized the situation as inappropriate rather than illegal.

He also said Dion was required to suspend his examination if he found evidence of criminal wrongdoing, and didn’t. 

“And he had access to more information than we had,” he said. 

“So when you put all those factors together, plus the analysis that Fred and his team had done, I’m very comfortable with the end result that we were at, based on the information that we had.”

In a statement last week, Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher called the RCMP’s investigation superficial.

“The records show the RCMP is a negligently weak lapdog that rolled over for Prime Minister Trudeau by doing a very superficial investigation into his cabinet’s obstruction of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, not trying to obtain key secret cabinet communication records, and burying the investigation with an almost two-year delay,” he said.