Mario Dion’s August 14th report convicts Justin Trudeau under Canada’s Conflict of Interest Act for pressuring Jody Wilson-Raybould to quash SNC-Lavalin’s bribery charges, including $20M+ paid to Gaddafi’s family and corrupt hospital deals. His fifth violation—after the Aga Khan scandal—undermines judicial independence, yet media like CBC downplay it as "rule-breaking," not criminal. Former AGs demand RCMP action, but systemic obstruction persists. Trudeau’s Teflon may be cracking, but his party clings to progressive urban strongholds while ignoring accountability, leaving Canada’s rule of law at risk amid global authoritarian threats like China’s Hong Kong crackdown. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey folks, today I'm going to do a little bit of reading for you.
I'm going to read from the text of the Dion report.
That's Mario Dion, the new ethics commissioner.
I'm going to take you through it.
It's about some of the crooked conduct of Justin Trudeau in the SNC Lavalan scandal.
There's so much in there.
You know, I only touched the surface, but I'll read a few minutes of it to you.
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Tonight, huge news.
News that in a healthy democracy would result in a resignation.
Justin Trudeau has been convicted of breaking the law in the SNC Lavalan scandal.
It's August 14th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
The only thing I have to say is government about why I publish them is because it's my bloody right to do so.
Justin Trudeau has broken the law again.
It's what, his fifth violation now?
That's a problem in itself because it's becoming normalized.
We're turning into a place where it doesn't much matter if we have a lawbreaker as our chief lawmaker.
Other than legalizing drugs, I don't think Trudeau really has any other legacy, don't you?
It's awful.
Here's the news.
He's being convicted of violating the Conflict of Interest Act by interfering with Jody Wilson Raybould, who was then the Attorney General, by trying to get her to drop criminal charges against a corrupt Quebec engineering company called SNC Lavalan.
The report today was released by the Conflict of Interest and the Ethics Commissioner.
His name is Mario Dion.
I tell you that because this is the second conflict of interest and ethics commissioner who has convicted Trudeau.
You can see the cover of his book, The Conviction Findings.
It's called Trudeau II report.
You see that?
That's because there is already a Trudeau report number one by the earlier ethics commissioner.
It was a finding by the previous commissioner when Trudeau illegally took a bribe worth about $200,000 in the form of a free family vacation to Billionaire's Island, a private island in the Bahamas owned by the Aga Khan, a billionaire who just happens to have a lot of business with the Canadian government.
And by business, I mean we give him big cash grants for his projects.
So it's pretty easy to see how that would be illegal.
The Aga Khan gives Trudeau's family free vacations and Trudeau's government gives the Aga Khan millions of dollars in taxpayers' money.
That's called corruption.
It's why it's against the law for politicians to take gifts.
It's why, for example, it's illegal for Trudeau to take free flights from any donor.
And in fact, he took a private flight from the Aga Khan to get to Billionaire Island.
It's a bribe.
Trudeau isn't so stupid not to know that.
That's why he covered it up.
Kept it a secret, did not disclose it, then tried to cover it up.
Again, Gerald Butts was up to his eyeballs on that one, too.
Butts was the janitor, the cleanup man for Trudeau's mess.
It didn't work, or maybe it did.
I mean, other than a bit of news, nothing really happened, did it?
No criminal charges.
The media still deeply loved Trudeau after Billionaire Island.
But this second report, it's a doozy.
I'm going to quote from it today.
I think you already know the basics.
As you know, SNC Lavaland is a corrupt company that, as part of its business model, pays tens of millions of dollars in bribes to public officials around the world to get them to give big contracts to SNC Lavalan.
But they're not only corrupt themselves, they corrupt public institutions.
They're stealing from citizens who have to overpay for projects.
They're stealing from other honest engineering firms.
But worse than the theft of money is the destruction of public ethics.
They pay tens of millions of dollars in bribes to Muammar Gaddafi's family to get fat contracts in Libya.
The company even bought prostitutes and drugs in Canada for Gaddafi's son.
SNC Lavalan is basically a criminal organization.
I'm not saying everyone who works there was.
Obviously, it's full of honest engineers who do honest work, but the executives, the salesmen, the people going around to drum up the business, they're criminals.
Now, this is not a baseless allegation.
It's an admission by the company.
Oh, and it's not just overseas.
They do this in Canada, which really bugs me.
It's one thing to steal from Libyans, but I'm not really a Libyan.
I don't care much.
But they're stealing from Canadians, corrupting Canadians.
They're stealing from hospital budgets in Canada.
Who does that?
What low-life criminals steal from the sick?
Well, SNC Lavaland, that's who.
So that's against the law, if you didn't know.
And so the government was prosecuting them, which is correct.
And Jody Wilson-Raybold was the Attorney General overseeing the Department of Public Prosecutions, which was actually running the lawsuit against SSC Lavaland.
And Trudeau intervened again and again.
He did so personally, and he put his whole staff onto it.
And Gerald Butz was behind it all, just like he was behind the cover-up for the illegal vacation in the Bahamas.
Trudeau tried to get Jody Wilson-Raybold to drop the charges against his criminal friends.
Was Trudeau on the take, too?
Did he take bribes too, like the other liberals did in Montreal too, for the hospital, like the Gaddafis did in Libya?
We have no evidence that he did.
But if he was taking bribes from SNC Lavaland, I really don't see a single thing he would do differently than he has been doing.
He really has been as partisan and desperate and interfering on SNC Lavalan's behalf as the Gaddafis were in Libya, except they're here in Canada.
There are still some checks and balances.
He had to fire Jody Wilson-Raybold because she got in his way.
But the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner called him out today.
Now that's a paper tiger.
That's nothing.
He's not going to jail.
That's not a criminal conviction against Trudeau himself, but at least it's a warning to all of us.
I'd like to read a little bit from that warning now.
I'd like to read some extended excerpts from the findings today.
A conviction.
He was convicted of breaking the law.
Again, he was the first prime minister in history to be convicted of breaking a federal law while prime minister.
And this is, I think, his fifth conviction under the Conflict of Interest Act.
And remember, when this all broke in a bombshell front-page story by the Globe and Mail back in February, remember what Trudeau said?
He called it fake news.
The allegations in the Globe story this morning are false.
Neither the current nor the previous Attorney General was ever directed by me or by anyone in my office to take a decision in this matter.
The allegations reported in the story are false.
At no time did I or my office direct the current or previous Attorney General to make any particular decision in this matter.
Yeah, he's a liar.
I'm shocked, aren't you?
Maybe one day the RCM people actually decide to do their job.
I mean, I know the new RCMB commissioner is a feminist, just like Trudeau, and she was just appointed by Trudeau, and she owes her career to Trudeau, but maybe she still has a shred of public interest left in her deep down under all the liberal BS maybe.
So let me read to you from the ethics report today.
So I'm reading from Mario Dion's report.
This report, he says, represents the findings of my examination under the Conflict of Interest Act of the conduct of the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.
I sought to determine whether he used his position to seek to influence a decision of the Attorney General of Canada, the Honorable Jody Wilson-Raybold, relating to a criminal prosecution involving SNC Lavalin, contrary to Section 9 of the Act.
Section 9 prohibits public officeholders from using their position to seek to influence a decision of another person so as to further their own private interests or those of their relatives or friends, or to improperly further another person's private interests.
Pretty clear.
And that private interest is a key point, because Trudeau keeps saying jobs, jobs, jobs, but today Mario Dion found no, no, no.
He was actually fighting for SNC Lavalan's financial interests and his own political interests.
I'm going to keep going.
And I'm going to skip some unimportant sentences.
It's quite a long document.
I want to speed it up.
Let me read some more.
SNC Lavalan was charged in February 2015 with criminal offenses that allegedly took place between 2001 and 2011.
Under a remediation agreement, also called a deferred prosecution agreement, the criminal charges could be deferred or suspended.
At the time, Canada did not have a regime to allow remediation agreements.
In early 2016, SNC Lavaland began lobbying officials with the current government to adopt a remediation agreement regime.
Following public consultations, amendments to the Criminal Code allowing for such a regime were adopted as part of the 2018 federal budget.
On September 4th, 2018, the Director of Public Prosecutions informed the Officer of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General that she would not invite SNC Lavaland to negotiate a possible remediation agreement.
The Prime Minister's office and the Minister of Finance's office were then informed of this decision by Ms. Wilson-Raybold's office.
Mr. Trudeau then directed his staff to find a solution that would safeguard SNC Lavaland's business interests in Canada.
The first step in my analysis was to determine whether Mr. Trudeau sought to influence the decision of the Attorney General as to whether she would intervene in a criminal prosecution involving SNC Lavalin following the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The evidence showed there were many ways in which Mr. Trudeau, either directly or through the actions of those under his direction, sought to influence the Attorney General.
There were many ways.
Not once, not an accident, but part of an ongoing plan.
If this were a gang, if this were the mafia, it would be called the criminal conspiracy.
To tamper with a criminal trial.
Here, let me read some more.
Having reviewed several possible means of intervening in the matter, Ms. Wilson-Raybold made it known in September that she would not intervene in the Director of Public Prosecutions' decision.
Mr. Trudeau met with Ms. Wilson-Raybold on September 17, at which time she reiterated her decision not to intervene in the Director of Public Prosecutions' decision to not invite SNC Lavaland to enter into a remediation agreement.
She also expressed to Mr. Trudeau her concern of inappropriate attempts to interfere politically with the Attorney General in a criminal matter.
Following this meeting, senior officials under the direction of Mr. Trudeau continued to engage both with SNC Lavaland's legal counsel and separately with Ms. Wilson-Raybold and her ministerial staff to influence her decision even after SNC Lavalin had filed an application for a judicial review of the Director of Public Prosecutions decision.
These attempts also included encouraging her to re-examine the possibility of obtaining external advice from someone like a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Unbeknownst to the Attorney General at that time, legal opinions from two Supreme Court justices retained by SNC Lavaland had been reviewed by the Prime Minister's office and other ministerial offices.
Meanwhile, both SNC Lavalin and the Prime Minister's office had approached former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to participate in the matter.
The final attempt to influence Ms. Wilson-Raybold occurred during a conversation with a former clerk of the Privy Council on December 19th as an appeal on behalf of Mr. Trudeau to impress upon her that a solution was needed to prevent the economic consequences of SNC Lavalin not entering into negotiations for a remediation agreement.
Oh, there were a lot of things in there, weren't there?
Did you catch the part?
Where they tried to trick Jody Wilson-Raybold?
Remember, they told her, hey, maybe we could possibly ask someone really smart, like a former Supreme Court judge, what they think.
Would you be open to that?
I mean, that's bizarre and absurd and inappropriate.
That's not how we do things.
But you see, it was a trick.
They were already on side with SNC Lavaland.
They had been hired by SNC Lavalin.
SNC Lavaland paid for Frank Yakabucci, a former Supreme Court judge, to come up with an opinion.
They were actually going to show that.
There was another judge, too.
They had all these judges lined up.
They knew what they were going to say.
They were trying to trick Jody Wilson-Raybold.
It didn't work.
So they had to fire her.
Here's more.
Simply seeking to influence the decision of another person is insufficient for there to be a contravention of Section 9.
The second step of the analysis was to determine whether Mr. Trudeau, through his actions and those of his staff, sought to improperly further the interests of SNC Lavalan.
The evidence showed that SNC Lavalin had significant financial interests in deferring prosecution.
These interests would likely have been furthered had Mr. Trudeau successfully influenced the Attorney General to intervene in the direction of public prosecution's decision.
The actions that sought to further these interests were improper since they were contrary to the Shaw-Cross Doctrine and the principles of prosecutorial independence and the rule of law.
I'll just read a little bit more.
Here's the key part.
For these reasons, I found that Mr. Trudeau used his position of authority over Ms. Wilson-Raybold to seek to influence, both directly and indirectly, her decision on whether she should overrule the Director of Public Prosecutions' decision not to invite SNC Lavalin to enter into negotiations toward a remediation agreement.
Therefore, I find that Mr. Trudeau contravened Section 9 of the Act.
Requesting Access to Documents00:06:36
Boom.
He's a lawbreaker.
Your Prime Minister is a lawbreaker.
He broke the law.
But we all knew that.
But we didn't know some other details.
I didn't know that Trudeau was actively working with SNC Lavalan against the Attorney General.
While Jody Wilson-Raybold and the Director of Public Prosecutions were prosecuting, Trudeau was collaborating with SNC Lavalan.
That's incredible.
Now, we knew a lot of this before, but for some reason, we're all acting like everything's just fine.
Now, let me read you another interesting part of this report.
I won't read you too much more.
This ethics commissioner, Mario Dion, he started to investigate in February, right when the Globe story broke.
I think he started the next day, in fact.
Listen to how Trudeau tried to cover up the facts.
We saw him lying there.
Oh, the story is false.
Look at how he cover up the facts.
If he were a conservative, he would be compared to Richard Nixon hiding documents, deleting tapes.
Look at this.
Let me read this.
On February 8th, I wrote to Mr. Trudeau.
This is Mario Dion speaking.
I wrote to Mr. Trudeau to inform him that I was initiating an examination of his conduct.
I informed Mr. Trudeau that the purpose of my examination was to determine whether he used his position to seek to influence the decision of Ms. Wilson-Raybold in her capacity as Attorney General of Canada so as to improperly further the private interests of SNC Lavalin.
Requested that Mr. Trudeau produce all relevant documents in the possession, custody, or control of the Prime Minister's office.
Okay.
During this examination, nine witnesses, so this is nine staff of Trudeau, informed our office that they had information they believed to be relevant, but that could not be disclosed because, according to them, this information would reveal a confidence of the Queen's Privy Council and would fall outside the scope of order in Council 2019-105.
In order to gain access to as much relevant information as possible, on March 29th, I instructed legal counsel in our office to engage with counterparts in the Privy Council office to request that witnesses be enabled to provide all of their evidence to our office.
Despite several weeks of discussions, the office has remained at an impasse over access to cabinet documents.
On May 3rd, I raised the matter directly with the Prime Minister during his interview.
Through legal counsel, Mr. Trudeau stated that he would consult with the Privy Council office to see whether the ordering council could be amended.
So I guess Justin Trudeau needed permission.
In a letter dated June 13th, the clerk of the Privy Council declined my request for access to all cabinet conferences in respect of this investigation.
Because of the decisions to deny our office further access to cabinet confidences, witnesses were constrained in their ability to provide all evidence.
I was therefore prevented from looking over the entire body of evidence to determine its relevance to my examination.
Decisions that affect my jurisdiction under the Act by setting parameters on my ability to receive evidence should be made transparently and democratically by Parliament, not by the very same public office holders who are subject to the regime I administer.
I am convinced that if our office is to remain truly independent and fulfill its purpose, I must have unfettered access to all information that could be relevant to the exercise of my mandate.
I must be satisfied that decisions made by the most senior public of office holders, including those discussed at cabinet, are free from any conflicts of interest.
In the present examination, I have gathered sufficient factual information to properly determine the matter on its merits.
Because of my inability to access all cabinet conferences related to the matter, I must, however, report that I was unable to fully discharge the investigatory duties conferred upon me by the Act.
All right, I'm sorry to read so much, but my point is this.
Trudeau is a lawbreaker.
That's that's son.
He was convicted today.
But we don't even know the half of it.
Because Trudeau continues to refuse to hand over information, and he has ordered his staff not to talk either, saying it's confidential.
But this is the ethics commissioner.
His job is to investigate confidential things.
He won't blab about state secrets.
He's not an outsider.
He's an internal check on the power of MPs, including cabinet.
And Trudeau refuses to let him see what Trudeau did.
Do you have any plans to resign or at least apologize formally?
I recognize that this was a situation that shouldn't have happened.
But my desire to protect Canadians and at the same time to protect the integrity and the independence of our judicial institutions remained throughout.
We recognize that the way this happened shouldn't have happened.
I take responsibility for the mistakes that I made.
At the same time, we learned many lessons through that and were aided and will be aided by the McClellan report, which has been released today.
Look at how he's talking there.
It was an incredible press conference.
I don't want to play too much of it.
You'll get dumber by the second.
It's like your IQ will be ping, I don't want to make you any dumber.
I did it.
I watched it.
I'm about five IQ points dumber.
I'll never get them back.
But you see what he did there?
He reframed the issue as if he wasn't in it.
He always says, oh, there are lessons learned.
And you see, I was trying so hard.
I love judicial independence, and I love standing up for jobs.
And I just love too much.
So we have to balance.
It's always as if he's an outside observer.
Just like you and me, he's passive.
He's above the fray.
He said he accepts the ruling by the commissioner, but he disagrees with it.
Well, hang on, which one is it, buddy?
You accept it or you disagree with it?
Oh, well, neither.
He's got nothing to do with it.
He'll solve the problem.
In fact, he'll reconcile those two differences, independent, those two different interests, independent judiciary and fighting for jobs.
Neither of which was the fact.
He wasn't fighting for jobs.
The ethics commissioner said it was a private interest he was serving.
But he's above the problem.
He's watching it like a pundit.
No, you crook.
You are the problem.
But you know, precious few journalists dare to say that.
Who can intervene here?
Who can stop this?
It's been five convictions now.
Who can have the power to get those documents that he's hiding, to get those nine witnesses, to make them free to testify in court over Trudeau's objections?
Whoopsies in India00:05:58
Well, the only answer is the RCMP, actually.
But they're silent.
Here's a letter months ago signed by former Attorneys General across Canada from different political parties, different regions.
They're all asking the RCMP to investigate.
So far, silence from the RCMP.
But how can they be silent now in the face of this legal finding of fact that Justin Trudeau broke the law?
How can they not?
They have the facts and they have the law.
He's convicted.
How can they not investigate him for corruption now?
Frankly, to investigate if he himself took bribes, because he sure is acting like he did.
It's that brazenness.
Trudeau and his cronies are daring people to move on.
They're daring them.
They're acting like everything's normal.
They're saying, no, no, no, you're the weird one.
Oh, if you think we did something wrong, well, you must be extremist or racist.
You know, by saying that we shouldn't protect such a star company like SNC Lavaland, even though it's already confessed a seriously corrupt bribe-paying company.
If you don't stand with SNC Lavland, you must be an Islamophobe.
Gerald Butts, the mastermind of both the vacation on Billionaire Island and this corruption, he originally resigned in disgrace.
Do you remember that?
But now he's just waltz back into the PMO.
I mean, why not?
Who's going to speak against him?
The media, who are now on his payroll through the bailout?
Here's the Huffington Post today.
Oops.
Oh, Teehee.
Oops, he did it again.
Trudeau broke conflict of interest rules in SNC Lavland, a pair of watchdog finds.
Oh, but he's such a lovable lug.
Come here.
Let me give you a hug.
I can't stay mad at you.
Whoopsies.
It was just a little whoopsies, people.
Here's a Toronto Star.
He broke rules.
No, no, no, no.
He didn't broke rules, mate.
He broke the law.
Why is this Toronto Star using weasel words?
Oh, he broke some rules.
No big deal.
No, he broke the law.
The CBC is in full panic mode.
Look at this.
Right in the middle of the whole thing, they tweet something.
I don't know.
I mean, when their master needs them to distract the most, they go full tilt.
Here they are talking about the New Zealand shooter.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Oh, and Donald Trump, Orange Man Bad, and pro-lifers are coming with their unregistered guns.
Whatever it takes to turn the channel from this, that's the CBC state broadcaster.
They're in full damage control mode.
Look, I think it's big what's going on.
Not the crime, the actual corruption and bribes.
That is big.
Not the cover-up.
I mean, that is really big, pressuring the Justice Minister to break the law.
But the fact that the crime has been uncovered and the cover-up itself has been revealed, and that now we're just in a staring contest to see who will blink first.
That kind of staring contest suggests that everyone has the same moral code because Justin Trudeau and his corrupt boss Gerald Butts, they never blink.
So if we're just going to stare at them, they're not going to blink people.
These are the people who took a convicted terrorist on their trip to India and then blamed India.
These are the people who put not one but two Trudeau nannies on the public payroll and dared you to criticize them and didn't care if you did.
Butts himself showed his moral code, his moral fiber, by pocketing more than $100,000 just to move from Toronto to Ottawa.
They're corrupt.
They're the Labranos.
They're breaking the law.
And now that's not an opinion.
That's a legal finding of fact.
They broke the law.
And what are you going to do about it?
The media will make some jokes about it.
Whoopsies, he did it again.
Maybe some of them will even look to get in on some of the acts.
I mean, maybe SNC Lavland will throw them a few bucks for some positive coverage.
That seems to be how they operate.
Maybe they can lobby Trudeau and Mourneau and David LeMetti, the disgraceful lawyer who succeeded Jody Wilson-Raybold.
Maybe they can get in on it, get in on the take.
A healthy country would morally demand that a serial lawbreaker, a corrupt crook like Trudeau resigned.
But I don't think we're healthy as a country, not our media, not our police, not our political class, not our lawyers, not our courts.
A few examples of moral exemplars, to be sure.
Jody Wilson-Raybold, Jane Philpott, but they've been demonized now by the establishment for daring to stand up to Trudeau.
I expect we'll see attacks on Mario Dion, the ethics commissioner, as soon as tomorrow.
And then what?
Is that all?
Is that it?
That's the sad part.
I think this law-breaking, corrupt little trust fund kid, I think he's going to get away with it.
What do you think?
Stay with us for more.
Well, this is a shocking report, but not surprising.
Do you know what I mean by that?
I mean, I don't think anyone was surprised that what Jody Wilson-Raybold and Jane Philpott and others said about Justin Trudeau was in fact the truth in his bald-faced denial in the face of that original Globe and Mail article was false.
I don't think that's surprising, but it is shocking to see the details confirmed by a conflict of interest and ethics commissioner.
And joining us now via Skype from Edmonton is our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist for the Edmonton Sun.
Lauren, you've had a chance to go through the report at least in a cursory manner.
Tell me your biggest takeaway from the report and then maybe tell us some details that you thought were most interesting.
Just one word sums it up.
It's devastating.
It really is.
The ethics commissioner, Mario Dion, says that Trudeau and people directed by Trudeau put undue pressure on Wilson Raybold to overturn a lawful decision made by the Independent Prosecutor's Office.
Devastating Revelations00:08:15
They did it on many occasions.
They did it in inappropriate ways and that they put at risk the independence of the court system in Canada.
To me, that's devastating.
Now, I am articulating it in a slightly less bureaucratic way than Dion's office did, but nonetheless, it's very obvious from what's being said.
It's not you have to read between the lines or you have to figure it out.
He says, on multiple occasions, the Prime Minister directly, or people directed by the Prime Minister, put unwarranted and undue pressure on the Attorney General to try and cover up the SNC prosecution.
And I don't think you can get much more devastating than that.
Yeah.
Well, and the idea of interfering with the trial, I mean, it's so unusual to hear that in a free country.
There's probably been a thousand Hollywood movies made of some mob boss interfering with the trial.
And how do they do it?
Well, maybe they can bribe a judge or a prosecutor, but more likely they can bribe someone on the jury.
But it's all dirty interference, obviously illegal and criminal.
I mean, I can't help but think of that scene in The Godfather where someone was going to turn on the mob boss and then they get to him through threatening his family.
They bring his brother in from Italy.
That's how it normally looks in the movies.
It's a dirty criminal act by a gang.
When it's orchestrated through the lawful instruments of the prime minister's office, it's going to look the way described in this report.
I mean, there's no difference in how, in the goal, stop the prosecution.
It's just, it doesn't look grubby.
It looks lawyerly, but it's still corrupt.
Yeah, I think corrupt's a good word for it, too.
And, you know, of course, Trudeau is the first prime minister to have been found in violation of the ethics laws for taking the free trip to the Aga Khan's private island in the Bahamas.
Now he's the first prime minister to be found in violation of the ethics laws for having done this and the conflict of interest laws for having done this.
Anybody with any shame would resign.
And you could bet that already online and on TV, the CBC and the star would have been hollering for Stephen Harper's resignation if this had happened under a conservative.
If Andrew Scheer becomes the prime minister and something like this happens to him, they'll be the first to shout that he must step aside for the good of the country.
They would already have had, like, because we all knew this report was coming sometime this week.
They would already have had lined up their constitutional experts and political scientists who would say, it's not possible for a prime minister so badly damaged by these accusations to continue in office.
But will you see any of that around Trudeau?
No.
And Trudeau has no shame, and I don't think he has a lot of intellect, so he probably will not resign.
In fact, he definitely won't resign.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I'm already looking at some of the headlines by the star and the CBC.
He broke the rules.
No, no, they weren't rules.
They were the Conflict of Interest Act.
He broke the law.
Oh, he went outside the guidelines.
Like, they're using the most minimalistic language that's not even accurate.
I compare that to the year and a half-long mania over the accusation that Mike Duffy expensed too much in travel, and so Nigel Wright just cut a check to the government to make it good.
That turned into a year and a half-long criminal trial, of which there was no convictions in the end.
But holy cow were there calls for resignations.
Let me ask you a question.
Harper must have known.
And that was the theme throughout the investigation and the trial.
I remember when the RCMP's report into the Duffy scandal came out and the questioning went on in the House of Commons, it was always about, well, there's nothing in this report that says Harper knew anything about this, but he must have known.
Surely he must have known what his chief of staff was doing.
And therefore, he's guilty by association and must resign.
Well, this is a report that says the prime minister was in violation of section 9 of the Conflict of Interests Act.
And will he resign?
No.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, I understand the allegation that maybe Mike Duffy padded his expenses.
I don't know if he did.
He wasn't convicted of doing so.
But the reason there was a whole whole trial there was that allegedly Nigel Wright, by paying the money back anyways, had committed some sort of bribery.
Like I don't even think 90% of Canadians, if you put it to them that way, would understand what the alleged crime was.
And you will remember that I worked for the leader of the government in the Senate in the 1980s.
And what Mike Duffy was doing was what many, many, many senators were doing then and since, and that was claiming to be a resident of his original home province, while actually being a resident of Ottawa, and then writing off the Ottawa residents as his away from home residence, as his government paid accommodation when he had to be away.
Well, he hadn't lived in PEI in 40 years, but he was claiming that he did and expensing his Ottawa residence.
That's scummy.
There's no question about it.
It shouldn't be allowed.
But we're not talking here about threatening the independence of the prosecutorial system in Canada, threatening the judicial system in Canada by putting undue pressure on an attorney general, which is what Trudeau and Butz and others who are named in this report have done.
Right.
Well, and so Nigel Wright's solution to this problem was cut a check to the government to fix it.
That's what spurred the whole RCMP action, I think.
And compare that to massive fraud, bribery, corruption in Libya.
And we know SNC Lavland has corrupted the bidding process here in North America too, including in Canada, including in Montreal.
And so I'm saying the underlying problem, okay, Nigel Wright cut a check to the government of 90 grand.
SNC Lavland paid tens of millions of dollars in bribes to corrupt the program.
So the underlying crime is spectacularly more devastating in the SNC Lavland case.
And the prime minister himself led a long, months-long process to undermine a prosecution.
My question to you, Lauren, is where's the cops?
We've had five attorneys general, former attorneys general of provinces and the feds, say, RCMP, you need to investigate.
We see this conviction now by the Conflict of Interest Act Commissioner.
We now know more of the underlying facts.
If the RCMP will go to war over Nigel Wright chipping in 90 grand to make things even, where's the RCMP here, Lauren?
And I would say the RCMP did the right thing in the Nigel Wright case in investigating it.
Because you couldn't tell whether or not, on the face of it, whether or not the illegality had happened.
So that's what the RCMP does.
But should it also happen in this one?
Well, we already know that somebody's broken the law and his name is Justin Trudeau.
But I think the irony in all of this, and this came out two or three weeks ago, the finance minister in Quebec said that after SNC announced that it was going to do a big corporate shake-up and restructure and lots of jobs were going to be lost and they were going to get out of big infrastructure programs across the country for a while.
He said, yeah, we're not paying any money towards these guys to keep them afloat.
This whole thing was based on the Trudeau government deciding that we had to do everything as a country that we possibly could, including going easy on a criminal act, potential criminal act of bribery.
We had to do everything we could as a country to keep SNC happy so that they would stay in Montreal and they would continue to employ thousands of Quebecers.
And the Quebec government won't even do that.
Voting Liberal vs. Green00:08:53
Yeah.
Well, and by the way, of course, SNC Lavland just did a major renovation and renewed their lease in Montreal.
They're not going anywhere.
I just, you know, a lot of the rule of law depends on the consent of the governed, the consent of the people to go along with the rules.
I mean, in some ways, all law depends on the compliant agreement of citizens because if every single citizen decided one day to do something illegal, there just aren't enough cops in courts to enforce it.
So we have to agree to abide by the rules.
And so when there's something as stunning as this report, in a responsible democracy, you would see resignations in the name of honor.
You still see that in places like Korea, Japan.
You see politicians groveling and saying, I have let you down and disgraced my family and my name.
In a way, Jody Wilson-Raybould was living after that very high moral standard for herself, and Jane Philpott even more so.
The problem with Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts is they're amoral and they'll never step down unless forced, and they'll brazen it out and they tempt others to say oh, this is the new normal now, or we don't have to go along with the rules now, or the rules don't apply now.
That's what I'm worried about.
They are, they are benighted progressives and they have convinced themselves that no one else sees things with as much compassion and wisdom and justice as they do.
So therefore, we have to stop any criticism of them that might threaten their existence in power, because only they are qualified to do these it's.
It's not as you know in their own minds.
It's not as though they're malicious, it's just that, my God, could you imagine if, if this criticism continues and Andrew Scheer becomes the prime minister, then all of the great things that we are doing, which are exactly the same, fit exactly tightly with the national interest in their minds, all of these great things we are doing to save Canada and save the planet, they will go out the window.
So, what we do, while it may be a little rough at times, it's fully justified because the alternative is worse.
Yeah yeah, that's.
It's sort of like how feminists would defend Bill Clinton, despite all of his sexual harassment and even credible claims of rape, and Teddy Kennedy rapist, sexual harasser, murderer of Mary Joe Kopechny.
They said, well, you know, they may be awful, but they do so much good we have to.
I mean, I think that Bill Clinton killed the feminist movement in for a decade because they basically said, we're going to do a trade-off here and the liberals are asking their side of the aisle to do the same thing.
Yeah, sure we're corrupt, sure we feather our nests, sure we're at the trough, but we're not evil like Andrew Scheer.
And I wonder if they'll get away with it.
Let me ask you this, Lauren, when the first four convictions under the Conflict Of Interest Act happened, it was the trip to Billionaires Island by the Aga Khan, and you know that Gerald Butts and Trudeau knew was wrong because they kept it secret.
If you don't think you're doing anything wrong, you don't try and hide it and cover it up.
Yeah, but that was before Trudeau's Teflon was blown off by this SNC Lavalam matter.
So Trudeau really got away with those first four convictions, no problem.
The difference here is that since February he hasn't had that Teflon anymore.
He's actually been Been trailing in most polls.
Do you think this will make a bigger dent, or has the market already accounted for this news?
Well, I honestly think the liberals have been bouncing back the last few months.
I think that their scare campaigns are working.
They're, you know, okay, just exactly what you said.
We're bad, but the alternative is way worse.
So stick with us.
You hold your nose and vote liberal.
And, you know, they're going to play up gun control, it sounds like, in the coming election.
They're certainly going to play up climate change, which, you know, they basically created a moral panic over climate change.
And they're going to claim on the social side that Andrew Scheer is a closet gay basher.
And so they're going to do all those things that are markers for progressive voters around the country in order to frighten people to stay in the liberal base.
And I think it will largely work.
I mean, some people will probably get fed up with the scandals who otherwise would vote liberal and will vote green or maybe NDP.
But by and large, I worry, because if you look at the regional breakdowns of polls, not just the overall national polls, the conservatives have highly concentrated support in the prairie provinces and the interior of BC.
But the liberals have very good support in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, that whole golden horseshoe around Toronto and the lower mainland of BC, which is almost enough by itself, all those put together, to win a majority.
I think they'll get a solid minority.
That's my prediction right now.
Well, very interesting.
It'll just be interesting to see all those ethical keepers of the flame, the ones who freaked out over Bevota's $16 orange juice.
The ones who jumped on every pretend foible of Stephen Harper.
The excusology we're going to see in the day.
I think it's going to be a combination.
Wall-to-wall stories at the CBC about Islamophobia, Orange Man bad.
Andrew Scheer's coming for your abortion rights.
I've been away the last weekend.
There was some sort of racist rant on a video with a woman holding up a vote shear sign or something.
Yeah, the whole thing was a hoax.
It was a fake.
Yeah, well, we expect a lot more of that.
Yeah.
Well, Lauren, I'm impressed with this report, but it only goes so far.
It's toothless.
I think Bob Fife and the Globe and Mail are energized by it.
It confirms everything they ever said.
So at least there's one journalist who's going to keep at this.
I sense you are.
We will.
It'll be interesting to see what I call the media party, what they will do.
I wonder, because I think they just love Trudeau too much.
They'll forgive that lovable old lug anything.
We'll find out in the months ahead.
It's what, 75 days to the election.
We'll know soon enough.
And you wait.
There are going to be lots of ads morphing Andrew Scheer's face into Doug Ford's face because that's where they think that their votes lie.
Yeah, you're so right.
All right, great to see you, Lauren.
Thanks for your time.
You bet.
All right, there's our friend Lauren Cunter, senior columnist for the Edmonton Sun.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about a fake news hoax about Andrew Scheer being promoted by the mainstream media.
Liza writes, Talia Davidson didn't sound like any conservative I know.
They don't talk or act like that.
Well, it's not just that she didn't sound like a conservative.
No one who is sane would think that swearing, shouting, insulting, spitting at someone wins votes.
So if you have a sign saying, vote Andrew Scheer, while doing something you know is extremely bad, everyone knows that's a fake.
Everyone knows that's a fake.
reminds me of a story some some Democrat politicians told.
I can't even remember who, but it's very funny.
He said he used to, this Democrat, he used to, when he rode taxis, leave a huge tip and say, vote Democrat.
But one day he wised up and he left no tip and said, vote Republican.
You see my point?
If your conduct is irritating and annoying, You put a false flag up.
No one believes that Talya Davidson really wanted people to vote for sheer, because you don't spit at someone when you're trying to get their vote.
Only the media party was stupid enough to believe that.
Revelation writes, as Rosa 100% right when he says it's a leftist stereotypical view of a conservative, that's the success of the left-wing media.
I've run into it many times around the internet.
Yeah, that's the thing is that, I mean, we've talked about this before.
If you're right-wing, you have had to get used to liberal thinking, liberal people, because you're surrounded by it.
No matter where you are in the world, you're inundated by the popular culture.
You can be in the most right-wing district in Canada, the United States, anywhere.
You're going to get your left-wing dose.
But there are many leftists who are in an impermeable barrier, who have never met a conservative, who have never met anyone other than their class and caste.
And so they have only this caricature of the right.
China's Threat to Hong Kong00:01:00
I think that's what we saw there.
On my interview with Gordon Chang, Paul writes, China cannot be trusted.
Taiwan is no doubt taking note of what's going on in Hong Kong.
Give up any sovereignty to China today, and you'll be giving up lives tomorrow.
Yeah, I'm really nervous about these trucks mustering on the Hong Kong border.
I can't believe they would destroy such a jewel.
Hong Kong is one of the, I mean, in some ways it's not comparable to London, Paris, New York.
But in other ways, it is.
It's a remarkable city.
It's a huge city.
It's a developed city.
It's a cultural city.
It's a historic city.
It's a brilliant city.
It's a commercially powerful city.
To wreck it in a kind of civil war, which is what China is threatening, it's unthinkable.
It's unthinkable to do that to yourself.
I don't know, but I think China would crush anything and anyone that threatened their power.
Well, that's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.