The RCMP Commissioner, Michael Duheme, is set to testify at an Ethics Committee hearing on Monday afternoon after it was revealed last week that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blocked police from accessing relevant documents while investigating him for potential obstruction of justice over the SNC Lavalin scandal.  

The SNC-Lavalin affair was a massive political scandal that emerged in early 2019 after it was revealed that Trudeau put pressure on then-Attorney General Wilson-Raybould to stop prosecuting SNC-Lavalin, an engineering company found to have bribed both Canadian and Libyan officials.

Trudeau ultimately fired Wilson-Raybould from her position as Attorney General after she refused to succumb to the pressure.

The scandal that won’t die

Last week, documents from Democracy Watch, received through an Access to Information request, showed that the reason the RCMP determined in January 2023 that there was “insufficient evidence” on Trudeau having broken the law, was, in part, due to the fact that the Trudeau government wouldn’t give up what was requested from them. 

“If any other Canadian hid documents from the RCMP they’d end up in jail, but after eight years of this Liberal-NDP government, this prime minister thinks that he’s above the law,” said Conservative MP and ethics critic, Michael Barrett. 

In May, the RCMP falsely claimed that they were still investigating Trudeau for obstruction of justice in an access to information request returned to the government non-profit watchdog, Democracy Watch. Then on June 19, Democracy Watch reported on this claim by the RCMP, creating a firestorm among independent and legacy media outlets in Canada.

But the RCMP quickly issued a statement later that day, indicating the probe into Trudeau had already wrapped up.

Documents later revealed that, immediately after the June 19 report by Democracy Watch, the Minister of Public Safety contacted the RCMP several times over the span of a few hours. During these exchanges, the Public Safety office asked the RCMP to provide a list of journalists and outlets that inquired with them about the SNC-Lavalin scandal — and the RCMP complied with the request, handing over a list of journalists to the feds.

Last week, Democracy Watch Co-founder, Duff Conacher, called the RCMP a lapdog for the Trudeau regime.

“The records show the RCMP is a negligently weak lapdog that rolled over for Prime Minister Trudeau by doing a very superficial investigation into his Cabinet’s obstruction of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, not trying to obtain key secret Cabinet communication records, and burying the investigation with an almost two-year delay,” he said.

Trudeau denies

Trudeau denied the allegations of corruption, but then-ethics commissioner Mario Dion disagreed with the PM.

Dion said in 2019 that Trudeau engaged in a “flagrant attempt to influence” Wilson-Raybould to further “SNC-Lavalin’s private interests” and that Trudeau and his office abused their position to “circumvent, undermine, and ultimately attempt to discredit” her claims.

Dion also said the Trudeau Liberals blocked him from being able to “fully discharge the investigatory duties conferred upon me by the Act.”