Per her testimony, she claims that Trudeau never actually said directly to do something, but simply walked around the edges. If I understood that part of the testimony correctly. Other people inside the PMO’s office may have been a bit more direct. I understand both the ethics and the legal responsibilty that you and Gorsnak have stated quite clearly. If I as usual have badly worded my response, its because I believe that the AG has the power to do what is right in the interests of the country, be it a criminal trial or that deferred option.
If I also understood her testimony, she was not the one that actually brought the criminal charges, she just was not going to over rule the crown that did bring about or is about to bring about charges.
Re. Barbarian: Agreed. So, SNC can’t bid on federal contracts. There are many competent companies that don’t break Canadian laws that can, so net job loss should be zero. Of course, the Liberal party’s concern isn’t that jobs will be lost it is that money won’t be flowing to the Liberal party. One of the reasons they don’t see what SNC did as an issue is baksheesh is their modus operandi.
This is a remarkably persistent issue in politics; the Visible Job versus the Invisible Job.
There are many companies in Canada that do what SNC Lavalin does. If SNC went belly up tomorrow, the net loss in jobs would be immeasurably tiny, if it existed at all. Other companies would simply take on the work and hire away the employees. Shit has to get built, and there’s lots of companies who will build it for you. However, SNC Lavalin is famous; people know who they are. Their jobs are visible. Bigwigs know who they are. If SNC fails, the government will be raked over the coals for what they let happen to poor, poor SNC and all the jobs they had. The fact all the jobs were picked up by J-CON, Davis-Moreau and Bronte Construction isn’t noticed because those are not famous companies, and in fact I bet not a single person reading this knows which two of those names are real and which I literally made up just now.
A similarly absurd dance happens when the government is asked to bail out companies (General Motors) give them loans that will never be paid back (Bombardier) or subsidize them indirectly (all professional sports teams.) Much is said about the jobs jobs jobs they bring, but the problem is that the opportunity cost of the money thrown at them must logically be the economic productivity that money would have spurred in other, more worthy businesses.
It’s always fun to watch the Junos and go “Hey, I know that guy! I met him at a party”
(In this particular case it was one of the performers, Tyler Shaw, who was on immediately after Corey Hart got the lifetime achievement award)
Not me, but it’s quite pervasive here. We had a very snowy and cold winter. Once things started melting the ground was still frozen, and then we had a lot of rain.
More rain coming this weekend.
Well, they just dedicated the entire 6:00 PM Monday local Ottawa CTV newscast to the flooding in this area, and it’s not supposed to peak till Wednesday or Thursday.
