Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was plunged back into the biggest scandal of his term just two months before elections, after the nation’s ethics watchdog ruled he inappropriately interfered in a judicial matter.
In a report released on Wednesday, Canadian Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion said Trudeau sought to pressure his former attorney general last year to help SNC-Lavalin Group settle corruption charges out of court, partly for political reasons.
Since the Montreal-based engineering firm would have benefited financially from Trudeau’s efforts, the prime minister’s actions contravened conflict of interest laws, the watchdog concluded.
“The authority of the prime minister and his office was used to circumvent, undermine and ultimately attempt to discredit” the attorney general’s authority, Dion said.
The reprimand is a blow to Trudeau, just 10 weeks ahead of an October election.
The ruling effectively undermines Trudeau’s argument that he did nothing wrong and was only seeking to stave off job losses, chalking up the disagreement with his attorney general to the normal operations of government.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Trudeau accepted responsibility “for everything that happened,” even though he said he disagreed with some of the conclusions.
“My job as a prime minister is to stand up for Canadians and defend their interests, and yes, it is essential we do that in a way that defends our institutions, that upholds prosecutorial independence, but we need to be able to talk about the impacts on Canadians right across the country of decisions being made,” Trudeau said.
He said he would implement new measures to reinforce the independence of the attorney general’s office.
The controversy centers around conversations Trudeau and aides had with then-Canadian minister of justice Jody Wilson-Raybould and her staff over whether to help SNC-Lavalin settle a fraud and corruption case dating back to its work in Libya during then-leader Muammar Qaddafi’s rule.
However, the ethics watchdog found the pressure on Wilson-Raybould “troubling,” and said the evidence showed on at least four separate occasions that political interests to back SNC were put before the attorney general, directly or indirectly.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS