Top Liberals to face renewed grilling on SNC-Lavalin as questions linger
Posted February 11, 2019 9:16 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA — The federal attorney general is set to face a fresh round of questions about the simmering political controversy over engineering firm SNC-Lavalin.
David Lametti, who assumed the cabinet post in January, will be pressed for details on the brewing allegations after giving a speech to a gathering of lawyers today.
The Globe and Mail newspaper reported last week that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s aides leaned on Lametti’s predecessor, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to help avoid a prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on bribery and fraud charges.
The newspaper says Wilson-Raybould was shuffled to the veterans-affairs portfolio when she refused to direct the public prosecutor to forge a remediation deal with the company, effectively bypassing criminal charges.
The Liberal government maintains that while discussions on the matter took place with Wilson-Raybould, she wasn’t pressured or told to issue a directive to the prosecutor.
Trudeau, who is in British Columbia today, is also likely to face questions about the nature of those closed-door discussions.
The Canadian Press
