When you lie down with dogs, you get……..

You are known by the company you keep and if you hang around people who have a dogged history of being unsavory in their day to day conduct, doing all you can to help them avoid a deserving day in court is plain dumb, and depending on who you are, could in fact be a conflict of interest! Did you expect the Prime Minister of Canada would be caught trying to peddle influence on behalf of just about the worst corporate citizen in the country? Did you expect this virtuous servant of the people would be caught trying to help someone who by any criteria needs to again answer for a list of shady exploits. Think bribery! Think kickbacks! Think political chicanery!?

And then to completely dislodge his halo, he has pulled an Al Capone and ordered his henchmen to put a bullet into the attempt to get to the bottom of the Lavalin affair. The latest Valentine’s massacre has left truth on the parliamentary floor.

The Lavalin affair has deep roots. It involves a company with an incredible track record of bribery, fraud and kickbacks. These nefarious deeds have been the MO of the Quebec-based corporation for decades. The latest boss says “we’ve changed”. Yes, Lavalin claims a born-again experience but only a fool would accept this as gospel. Unfortunately it appears the Prime Minister has accepted the claims of the conversion.

The “L’Afaire Lavalin” is not over no matter how fervently the PM prays every night for a new beginning with the people as the feminist Prime minister, as the champion of the poor, as the friend to the First Nations and as the protector of jobs no matter the felonious character of the company they work for. As for the latter, there seems to be a disconnect between Mr. Trudeau’s understanding of how many jobs he is trying to save on behalf of SNC-Lavalin and how many jobs SNC Lavalin says need to be protected by the Prime Minister and his Liberal cohorts.

On the one hand the Prime Minister continues to bleat about Canadian jobs that must be saved, so Lavalin can avoid going to court to face allegations it paid millions in bribes to obtain business in Libya. Lavalin CEO Neil Bruce says he has never cited protection of Canadian jobs as the reason his company wants to get out of going to court. He wants the Liberal government to cancel Lavalin’s day in court so he and the rest of the Lavalin brain trust can bid on more and more Canadian government business so Lavalin heavyweights and their shareholders can make more and more millions. BUT if his company has to face trial on bribery charges involving the Libyans, well that just ruins the picnic right there!

In the pre-sequel, of course we know what happened. The Lavalin people put the arm on the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister in the depth of his ignorance put the arm on the Attorney-General, the administrator of law and order. Growing up in the household of his father, Trudeau the Elder, young Justin would be quite familiar with the way the game was played. Unfortunately for Trudeau the Younger his Attorney-General really believed in Law, Order and Honest government. She said no, there would be no dispensation for SNC Lavalin people. They will go to court. The Prime minister then sent in some high powered members of his team to see her. Men and women who could say they spoke for the Prime Minister and raised the terrible price that 9000 people employed by Lavalin across the country would have to pay because she would not give Lavalin a bye, a pass. During the months of harassment, one of the High Placed mandarins was quoted as telling her ‘regardless of your intransigence, Madam Attorney-General I can assure you that one way or the Prime minister will get his way’. And he did. Because the harassment would not stop, the Attorney-General submitted her resignation to the Prime Minister. Mr. Trudeau then appointed one of the dumbest people in the Cabinet to be Attorney-General and the scene was set for a change relating to SNC Lavalin. Cancel the court date. Do a pirouette in the study at 24 Sussex Drive!

But there was an undercurrent agitating the smooth surface of a political coup. Somebody was talking. All was not copacetic. He didn’t know it yet but the Prime Minister was just about to step on a political landmine and now, weeks later, every effort he has made to try and make “L’Affaire Lavalin” a non-story has failed. In fact last week in Maclean’s magazine, Jane Philpott, one of several people to fall victim to the attempt by the prime Minister to influence the rule of law in this country, tells us that there is much more to tell. Who will tell it? Justin Trudeau cannot be trusted because he has said there is nothing more to tell. We choose to believe there is much more to tell but we need to hear it from the women who have taken a stand for law and order and truth against the dishonest, the liars and those who are trying to cheat the system. We need to hear from the women because we’ve had it with the men in this troubling scenario.

We don’t know if Attorney-General Jody Wilson-Raybould considered the serial malfeasance of the SNC Lavalin in her decision- making but not nearly enough has been said about the history of the company that has come cap in hand to avoid another day in court. SNC Lavalin is an engineering firm that moves shoulder to shoulder with legal trouble in just about every jurisdiction it walks. It’s a subject that has been ignored by reporters, the opposition and members of the Prime Ministers cabinet. It would be impossible to enumerate in this space the list of SNC Lavalin related list of legal entanglements. Let’s zero in on a couple:

There was the Quebec inquiry into the province’s building industry. Lavalin was among several companies ordered to repay close to 100 million ill-gotten gains. There was the huge McGill hospital embrolio that was called the biggest building scandal in Canadian history–SNC was in the middle of that one. A 1.5 Billion dollar deal. Of course SNC Lavalin is the the reason Justin Trudeau is betting his political life on SNC’s Libyan-related bribery, kickback, yacht and hookers. He’s betting that he is smart enough to outfox the country and get his pals at SNC Lavalin the GO card. The one that says don’t stop at the courthouse Go directly to the DPA that, “I Justin Trudeau have prepared especially for you, my dogged friends.”