“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Who would sacrifice 9,000 Canadian jobs for the sake of keeping her own job? If you believe Justin Trudeau and his former right-hand-man Gerald Butts the culprit is former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Trouble is, it isn’t true.

Not if you believe the Toronto Globe and Mail, which in a fully-documented article in its highly respected Report on Business page March 2 revealed the 9,000 Canadian job figure is a fallacy; a fallacy dreamed up by the current Prime Minister of Canada and his former henchman to fool Canadians into believing a phoney cover story that has little, if any, basis in fact.

Judge for yourself.

In the article, Justice, Jobs and SNC-Lavalin, the Globe reveals there aren’t 9,000 Canadian jobs at stake at all. SNC has been laying off Canadian employees since 2012 when it was first charged with bribing Libyan officials and hiring prostitutes for Libyan negotiators to secure a large contract in the Middle Eastern country where contracts are greased differently than they are in Canada.

In fact, SNC’s Canadian payroll has shrunk by more than half in Canada since 2012 to “roughly” 8,500 jobs, says the Globe. In fact, five times as many SNC employees work outside Canada as in it, including almost 10,000 in Britain alone, the paper adds. Not only this, but SNC officials in recent years have talked openly about moving their head office to London. “Poof,” there goes Trudeau and Butts’ cover story.

Like it or not, SNC-Lavalin is a multi-national company and multi-national companies by definition are world-wide in scope and their loyalty is not to any particular country but to the countries where they do business.

So, the “jobs, jobs, jobs” mantra of Trudeau and his henchman is only a cynical attempt to mislead voters. The real scandal is that integrity of the Canadian justice system and its constitutionally guaranteed right to operate independently from politics is being compromised as maintained by Wilson-Raybould. And maybe she is difficult to work with, but then again, she has a difficult job.

German Count Otto Von Bismarck, defined politics as “the art of the possible.” Apparently that principle is alive and well in Canada where the law can be bent and stretched to fit the needs and whims of its political masters.

Why else was a bill authorizing Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPA) slipped into an omnibus bill in Ottawa last year? Could it have had anything to do with the intense lobbying of SNC for just such a get out of jail free card which avoids prosecution and a criminal record in return for paying a fine?

According to Elections Canada, SNC made nearly $118,000 in illegal donations to federal political parties from 2004 to 2011, the bulk of which went to the Liberals. Elections Canada forced the parties (Liberal, Conservative and NDP) to transfer the donated funds to the Receiver General of Canada in a move that didn’t exactly enhance the reputation of Canadian politics.

Nor does it help that former SNC CEO Guy Saint-Pierre is listed as a donor to the Trudeau Foundation, which isn’t illegal, but shows the cozy relationship between the company and the Prime Minister. SNC also encouraged its employees to donate personally to the Liberals.

This is the backdrop to the assertion by Trudeau and Butts that it was “jobs” and not politics that motivated the numerous conversations they – and several other senior Liberals – had with Wilson-Raybould and that inappropriate “pressure” wasn’t used. A bit of a stretch, don’t you think? Conversely, if it was true that 9,000 jobs were directly on the line with the SNC charges you might be able to build a case in favour of the company being allowed a DPA instead of a court trial and the risk of yet another criminal conviction.

But the 9,000 jobs argument appears to be nothing more than a desperate expedient raised by a government more concerned about its political position in Quebec than concern about the plight of Canadian workers regardless of where they work.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist who has heard a few political “cover” stories in his time.

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