To the crowd that defends celebrities and politicians accused of sexual harassment and assault by using talking points such as any of the following: “innocent until proven guilty”, “he denied it”, or “they’re only allegations,” please feel free to take a collective breath about the SNC-Lavalin scandal before any gaskets get needlessly blown.
For anyone who’s been living on the dark side of the moon isolated from any human transmissions, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has been struggling to regain composure and credibility following revelations the top rank and file among his administration attempted to protect from prosecution a global engineering company accused of corruption in Libya during Gadhafi’s reign.
According to the mainstream narrative making the rounds, former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould was pressured to play ball on behalf of SNC-Lavalin, and upon failing to comply was promptly shuffled out of her position and replaced.
Much ado has been made about the attorney general’s recent testimony, which to be clear unquestionably and disconcertingly raised legitimate concerns about the PMO’s actions.
Yet what has mostly been buried under the hyperbolic partisan rhetoric is that even she testified no laws were broken.
But of course, Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer predictably wasted no time playing political theatrics and grandstanding with his calls for Trudeau to immediately resign — undoubtedly a nod to the Yellow Vests who have long wanted the Prime Minister tried for treason under ill-defined reasons. Then, he anted up by demanding the RCMP launch an investigation into a situation that the attorney general herself testified did not infringe any laws.
Shady ethics and questionable tactics, sure. Embarrassing right before a major election that will essentially serve as a referendum on Liberal leadership, certainly.
But what are federal politics, if not dubious backroom deals that stack the odds in the favour of global multinationals whose lobbyists tirelessly endeavour to sway lawmakers, leaving the average citizen with the short end of the stick?
And do we really want to pompously pretend that any other party running the federal government would have acted much differently in protecting a major corporation that represents many thousands of Canadian jobs and many millions of dollars' worth of global contracts?
In a form of capitalism that has arguably devolved into a kleptocratic oligarchy, which party is not being relentlessly pulled by lobbyists’ strings? Which party truly represents the best interests of the average citizen rather than the special interests that buy legislative influence for breakfast?
Frankly, I would be interested to know how Scheer would have personally decided to handle the whole scandal were he and his party in charge. Faced with the prospect of pushing through charges against a global behemoth that could potentially have cost Canadian jobs, the same kinds of good jobs his party supposedly wants to create, I'm not convinced it would have been that much different.
Regardless, the election is mere months away. Canadians should just decide the prime minister’s fate at the polls.
Yet calls for Trudeau to resign resonate with impatient voters who in some cases demand bulletproof evidence to back claims against an accused while in other instances accept testimonial characterizations as unsubstitutable truth.
And although one might assume a self-proclaimed fiscal conservative such as Scheer, who allegedly stresses over how every dollar is spent, would be more concerned about wasting money investigating a matter the attorney general said broke no laws, one would be wrong.
Because hey, modern politics is apparently no longer about presenting policy proposals but rather shamelessly pandering to a party’s base emotions to rally support.
- Simon Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up, a Great West newspaper
