Mr. Speaker, I was discussing the Prime Minister's claim that all of these jobs would up and vanish suddenly if the former attorney general did not immediately grant the company the ability to negotiate a special deal avoiding prosecution.
Before my hon. colleague rose on his question of privilege, I pointed out that the Prime Minister's claim that the headquarters of SNC-Lavalin would immediately leave if the company had to face a trial was an easily provable falsehood, one that the Prime Minister would have known, given the prodigious resources he has as the head of a G7 government.
Defenders of the Prime Minister's interference have likewise claimed that he needed to protect the company from trial because if it was convicted, it would lose the ability to bid on federal contracts, thus crippling its workforce and causing thousands of people to lose their jobs. That too is false.
I am reading a document that was written November 9, 2018, from the deputy minister of Justice and deputy attorney general of Canada, Nathalie Drouin, to the Clerk of the Privy Council, the Prime Minister's former top public servant. In that document, she says that there is something called a Canadian integrity regime. The document is designed to tell the government what would be the economic consequences of an SNC-Lavalin conviction. It says that the ability of a company or supplier to contract with the federal government is affected by the ineligibility and suspension policy. It says that the policy ensures the government does business only with ethical companies or suppliers in Canada and abroad. It goes on to say that Public Services and Procurement Canada administers the policy on behalf of the government, that the policy sets out when and how a company or supplier may be declared ineligible or suspended from doing business with the government, and that it provides that a company or supplier is suspended with or charged with, or admits guilt to, one of a number of listed offences such as fraud and bribery of foreign public officials.
That is exactly the charge with which SNC-Lavalin is accused of right now, the bribery and fraud of foreign public officials.
The letter continues on to say that the suspension from being able to contract with the government is for a duration of 18 months, that this suspension is subject to extension, pending a final disposition of the charges. It states that there is something called administrative agreements; that the company or supplier may enter into an administrative agreement with the government to stay the suspension; that the administrative agreement is an arrangement between the company or supplier and the government where the former adopts certain compliance measures; that it is used to mitigate the risk of contracting with a particular company or supplier, for example, the government and a company or a supplier may wish to enter into an administrative agreement to stay the suspension, instead of terminating an existing contract due to determination of ineligibility or suspension.
The public works department has only concluded one administrative agreement. On December 8, 2015, it announced an agreement with who? SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., staying a suspension. According to public works that stay means that the SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. is “allowed to continue doing business with the government pursuant to the regime.”
In other words, even though the company had already been banned from doing business with the federal government because of the fraud and bribery charges it now faces, one of the first acts of the new Liberal government in late 2015 was to permit an administrative agreement exempting SNC-Lavalin from that ban. The ongoing concern is that if the company is convicted, a new band will apply. The letter goes on. The deputy attorney general addresses that too:
If convicted, pursuant to the current “interim” Policy, the convicted company/supplier would be ineligible to contract with the government. Depending on the offence for which there was a conviction, the period of ineligibility could be as long as 10 years.
This ineligibility status would remain for the entire period unless the government considered it possible and appropriate to invoke a public interest exception.
The reasons to invoke public interest exemptions are narrow: emergency, where delay could harm the public interest; company or supplier is the only person capable of performing the contract; the contract is essential to maintain sufficient emergency stocks; and not entering into the contract with a company or supplier would have a significant adverse impact on the health, national security, safety, public security or economic or financial well-being of Canadians.
This is important. The whole purpose, we are told, of granting this company a deferred prosecution agreement to avoid criminal trial is because the company would lose its ability to bid on federal projects and, therefore, its employees would suffer harm.
I have just read an excerpt from the policy which says that the government currently has the power to exempt a company from said ban if it is necessary for the economic or financial well-being of Canadians. Let us just pause on this point for a moment.
We are continuously being told that the Prime Minister desperately wanted to save the company from a bidding ban and thus needed to cancel the trial altogether by imposing on the prosecutor the obligation to negotiate a deferred prosecution agreement.
We learn, in reading this policy, that if the Prime Minister's only goal in this was to protect the company's ability to continue bidding on federal work, it could have done so even after a trial and a conviction by simply invoking a public interest exemption. It says that right in the policy.
The government would have known that because it already granted a similar exemption to the very same company. Furthermore, if it was not clear enough already that the government had the ability to exempt a convicted SNC-Lavalin from a ban on federal bidding, the public works department was already working on a new policy that makes that even more clear. Public works had proposed to replace the ineligibility and suspension policy with a new policy. It undertook consultations on the revised ineligibility and suspension policy, which closed on November 13, 2018.
Under the new policy, the government would have the discretion to vary or even rescind the period of ineligibility of a convicted company or supplier. The period of ineligibility would be at the discretion of the department.
I know that sounds like a lot of administrative language, but it is extremely important. We keep being told that the company will lose its federal contracts if it is convicted; ergo, the Prime Minister has to take extraordinary steps to prevent that conviction from happening; ergo, he has to pressure his former attorney general to make possible a deferred prosecution agreement. That is what we keep being told.
However, we learn here that none of that was necessary, if the Prime Minister's only goal was to protect the company's ability to continue bidding on federal contracts. The proposed new policy, which the cabinet has the right to approve, without even bringing it before the House of Commons, will allow the Liberal government to exempt SNC-Lavalin from a ban on federal bidding even if a conviction goes ahead. This is more proof that this whole claim that the government was protecting jobs is a lie.
Let me read another story that will further shred the jobs' claim. It was written by the Ottawa correspondent, Abigail Bimman. It says that the Prime Minister “keeps naming this small...town as part of SNC-Lavalin defence, baffling locals.”
The article reads:
Port Elgin, Ont., is a quiet beach town on the shores of Lake Huron, home to about 8,000 people. But in his defence during the SNC-Lavalin affair, the prime minister has named the town at least three times.
“When we’re looking at potential job losses right across the country from Corner Brook to Port Elgin, Ont., to Saskatoon and Regina to Calgary, Edmonton and Grande Prairie, Alta., and Fort McMurray, we are seeing good jobs right across the country that could be at risk,” [the Prime Minister] told reporters in Iqaluit on March 8.
Never mind that most of the people who work for SNC-Lavalin in the aforementioned cities do construction work there, work that can only be done in those localities and therefore the jobs could not be moved from those places. However, let us put that aside and go back to the text of the article.
The article goes on:
He named Port Elgin in a similar context in Montreal on Feb. 28 and Charlottetown on March 4.
Of all those communities, Port Elgin is the tiniest. So Global News headed to Port Elgin to see if they’re worried about job losses—and as it turns out, the situation is just the opposite.
“I think Port Elgin's booming!” said resident Linda Barfoot.
“We're in a protected bubble here,” said another resident who stopped to watch the Global News video of [the Prime Minister] mentioning her town again and again.
That bubble refers to Bruce Power. Twenty minutes down the road from Port Elgin in Tiverton, it supplies a third of the province’s energy and employs 4,000 people full-time. It’s also on the cusp of a $13-billion refurbishment project to extend the life of six of the eight nuclear reactors.
“There aren’t potential job losses at Bruce Power—in fact, there’s a lot of job creation,” said Elizabeth Arnold, who’s lived in town for nearly 40 years. Her husband, she says, used to work for Bruce Power.
“There’s a huge influx of workers for the next two or three years so I’m not sure what [the Prime Minister is] talking about when he says Port Elgin, except that it’s a town in Ontario,” said Arnold.
She seems like a wise local from the area. The story goes on:
Local politicians tell Global News the so-called boom means new subdivisions are being built, schools are filling up and the challenge is getting enough workers to fill positions.
“We’re the fastest-growing community in our region here on Lake Huron and we’ve been ranked one of the best places to live in Canada,” said Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau.
But there is an SNC-Lavalin connection to Port Elgin. It’s home to one of more than 130 offices across the country, adding up to about 9,000 employees total. SNC-Lavalin tells Global News it won’t disclose how many people work in each place.
In Port Elgin, the office occupies a single unit in a small strip mall. On the Thursday afternoon when Global News stopped by, there were just a few cars in front.
And [the] Conservative MP [for Huron—Bruce]'s constituency office sits right across the street.
“The massive job losses the prime minister is predicting is right over my shoulder,” said [the member]. “It’s 10 or 12 people.”
“I think he has it wrong. SNC-Lavalin’s nuclear division is a tremendous business, they’re adding jobs.”
To start with, there are only 10 to 12 people who work there, and SNC is adding to it even though the company knows it is not getting a deferred prosecution agreement. The story goes on:
SNC Lavalin is part of the Major Component Replacement (MCR) project at Bruce Power. SNC has a 40 per cent stake in the Shoreline Power Group Consortium, along with AECOM and Aecon. Shoreline has a $475-million contract for a key part of the MCR, scheduled to begin in January 2020.
In other words, SNC-Lavalin's work there is really going to ramp up in another year. Far from leaving, it is actually going to be expanding, and it knows it will be doing this even though the trial, at this point, is going ahead.
The story goes on:
In a press release from June 2018, Bruce Power says the overall [project] will “create and sustain an average of 825 jobs annually” over the next 15 years.
Neither Bruce Power nor SNC-Lavalin would talk to Global News about whether there is any threat to the broader category of nuclear jobs. SNC would not give details about any employment numbers for specific projects and would not confirm whether previously released job numbers in news releases are still accurate today.
[The MP for Huron—Bruce] is confident that in a worst-case scenario for SNC, if they are forbidden to bid on government contracts for 10 years, nuclear jobs are protected because this isn't a government project.
“It’s a business-to-business transaction between SNC Lavalin nuclear and Bruce Power, and regardless of the outcome, it will have no impact on their nuclear division,” said [the member].
The community's mayor, however, is less certain about SNC's future....
“I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future with SNC-Lavalin, and obviously, that’s a big national issue,” said Charbonneau.
“What we do know locally is that SNC-Lavalin is planning an expansion. They’re looking at adding some additional floor space to the office they currently have, they’re looking at going up to as many as 75 engineers here in Port Elgin.”
This story says that while the Prime Minister claims the company is going to be laying off all these employees in Port Elgin, it looks like the plan, even with the trial going ahead, is to expand the workforce from about 12 people to 75 people, in other words, by over 500%. This of course is in a town where the Prime Minister claims all kinds of jobs will be lost if he does not interrupt the criminal trial.
The article continues:
Mayor Luke Charbonneau tells Global News while he’s concerned about potential job losses connected to the SNC Lavalin affair, he has a lot of confidence in Port Elgin’s booming economy.
He goes on to say, “I feel good that our success is going to continue and that SNC can come along with that”.
The story goes on to state:
The Prime Minister’s Office tells Global News [the Prime Minister] was simply mentioning places across the country where SNC-Lavalin has employees, and the comments were not related to nuclear industry.
Somebody should have told him that SNC-Lavalin does work with the nuclear industry there before he put the company's operations for Port Elgin in his speech. However, these are mere details.
This is another example of the jobs lie that the government has been telling, claiming that if the Prime Minister did not take the extraordinary step of interfering with a criminal prosecution, all of these jobs would up and vanish. Again, the evidence contradicts that claim.
Why is it so important for us to examine that falsehood? The answer is this. If the Prime Minister is not protecting jobs as he claims, who is he protecting? He has gone to such extraordinary lengths to get this company off the hook. He slipped an amendment into the Criminal Code, an amendment he executed through a budget omnibus bill. Once that bill became law, he became infuriated to learn that it had not, within days of getting royal assent and taking effect, been used for SNC-Lavalin. He began an intense campaign that extended from September until January, when he shuffled his cabinet. I am not aware of a single—