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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, seen here in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press in Ottawa on Dec. 18, 2019, defended his conduct while acknowledging he could have handled the SNC-Lavalin file better.

Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press

The Liberal government says it played no role in the settlement of criminal charges against SNC-Lavalin 10 months after a political scandal over the prosecution of the Montreal engineering giant ensnared Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his inner circle.

The Prime Minister defended his conduct Wednesday while acknowledging he could have handled the SNC-Lavalin file better.

Obviously, as we look back over the past year and this issue, there are things we could have, should have, would have done differently had we known, had we known all sorts of different aspects of it, he said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press. This process unfolded in an independent way and we got to an outcome that seems positive for everyone involved, particularly for the workers.

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Justice Minister David Lametti said he learned of the settlement this week.

He said Kathleen Roussel, the director of Public Prosecutions Service Canada (PPSC), informed him on Tuesday that a division of SNC-Lavalin had agreed to plead guilty to a single charge of fraud and will pay a $280-million fine and abide by a three-year probation order.

Editorial: SNC-Lavalin got what it wanted. Its still a win for the rule of law

Opinion: SNC-Lavalins plea deal leaves no winners, only losers

This decision was made independently by the PPSC, as part of their responsibility to continually assess and determine the appropriate path for cases under their jurisdiction, Mr. Lametti said Wednesday. Canadians can have confidence that our judicial and legal systems are working as they should.

The case was resolved without the deferred prosecution agreement that the Prime Minister and his top aides had aggressively pushed when they claimed it was necessary to save the company from a ruinous criminal prosecution that could have barred the company from bidding on federal contracts for up to a decade.

The company said Wednesday it does not anticipate that the [guilty] plea will have any long-term material adverse impact on the companys overall business.

The department of Public Services and Procurement did not immediately answer whether the settlement means SNC-Lavalin is spared from a ban on bidding for federal contracts.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pleased that workers at SNC-Lavalin won't suffer as a result of the company's guilty plea to a criminal charge in a Montreal court Wednesday. It would have been good to know how this would play out a year ago, before a scandal over the attempt to get the company a different deal rocked his government, he says, but there are no do-overs in politics. The Canadian Press

University of Ottawa law professor Jennifer Quaid said its her understanding Wednesdays court decision does not trigger a federal ban on SNC-Lavalin bidding on contracts because the offence to which its division pleaded guilty fraud against an entity other than the Crown is not one of the crimes that would result in such a debarment.

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The bribery charge that SNC had previously faced would have triggered a ban on federal bidding but it was dropped by the federal prosecution service as part of this plea settlement, she said.

The prosecution of the Quebec company triggered a political crisis for the governing Liberals after The Globe and Mail reported that then-attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould was pressed by Mr. Trudeau and senior staff to settle bribery and fraud charges against SNC-Lavalin without a trial, using a new legal measure known as a deferred prosecution agreement.

The guilty plea by SNC without a DPA is proof that Jody Wilson-Raybould was right to stay the course and that the relentless pressure from Prime Minister Trudeau and his surrogates amounted to interference, Conservative foreign affairs critic Erin OToole told The Globe.

The Conservatives have accused Mr. Trudeau and his top aides of trying to obstruct justice.

In the new minority Parliament, the opposition parties could force a parliamentary inquiry into SNC-Lavalins efforts to avoid a criminal prosecution for fraud and bribery charges and the role played by the Prime Ministers Office.

The justification for either the justice committee or the ethics committee to investigate is pretty overwhelming," Conservative MP Peter Kent said. "One would hope the Bloc Qubcois and the NDP would support the Official Opposition in getting it done.

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On the eve of the fall election, the RCMP sought and were denied access to cabinet documents and key witnesses involved in the SNC-Lavalin affair with the Trudeau government citing cabinet privilege and confidentiality.

The RCMP would not say Wednesday if they are still examining whether to launch a criminal investigation into obstruction of justice.

Ms. Wilson-Raybould paid a heavy price when she refused to buckle under political pressure from the Prime Ministers Office to grant a deferred prosecution agreement to SNC-Lavalin.

On Wednesday, she said on Twitter: 2019 began with very public questions about the rule of law in our country. I am glad to see it end with that principle being upheld. The justice system did its work. It is time to move forward and for the company to look to its future.

The Quebec engineering and construction giant had heavily lobbied Mr. Trudeau and the PMO to bring in DPA legislation and renewed its efforts after Ms. Roussel refused to to drop the bribery and fraud charges against the company and allow it to pay fine, without acknowledging any guilt.

When Ms. Wilson-Raybould refused to override Ms. Roussel, the Prime Minister demoted her to veterans affairs minister.

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In the fallout from The Globe revelations, Ms. Wilson-Raybould and colleague Jane Philpott resigned from cabinet. Mr. Trudeau later kicked them out of the Liberal caucus and party. Both ran as independents in the Oct. 21 election with Ms. Wilson-Raybould winning her Vancouver Granville riding and Ms. Philpott losing her Ontario seat.

I have long believed in the essential necessity of our judicial system operating as it should based on the rule of law and prosecutorial independence, and without political interference or pressure, Ms. Wilson-Raybould said of Wednesdays court settlement.

NDP MP Charlie Angus said Ms. Wilson-Raybould deserves the countrys gratitude for refusing to give into the snake like behaviour of the Prime Ministers Office to try cut a deal for SNC-Lavalin.

I have seen people kicked out of caucus for all manner of things but I have never seen anyone kicked out caucus and a party for standing up for the rule of law, Mr. Angus said. If she hadnt done that, who knows what kind of deal would have been shaken down for SNC-Lavalin.

Mr. Angus said the Prime Minister and his top aides kept saying the company could go under and that 9,000 jobs could be lost, which never happened.

In a report released in August, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion said Mr. Trudeau and senior officials violated the Conflict of Interest Act by improperly pressing Ms. Wilson-Raybould to order the Public Prosecution Service to grant a DPA to SNC-Lavalin.

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Liberal government says it played no role in SNC-Lavalin court settlement - The Globe and Mail

While Premier John Horgan says his government needs to renew and refresh itself, the same can be said of the BC Liberals sitting in opposition.

It can be argued its the Liberals who are most urgently in need of a shake-up that injects new life into the party. And if that isnt done before the next election, the party will likely find itself stuck in opposition for another long four years.

Winning the most seats in 2017 election yet being unable to form a lasting government was a wrenching experience for the BC Liberals

The shift out of power was a psychological blow for many and it has taken time for many of them to recover.

The only real way for the party to renew itself and offer a fresh vision to voters is to inject itself with new blood.

And that means veteran MLAs may be pressured by some in the party to consider stepping aside to allow a younger and more diverse group of candidates to become the new face of the party going forward.

So far, four incumbent BC Liberal MLAs have said they wont seek re-election. They are: Linda Reid (Richmond South Centre), Steve Thomson (Kelowna-Mission), Linda Larson (Boundary-Similkameen) and Ralph Sultan (West Vancouver-Capilano).

The Kelowna and West Vancouver seats are considered virtual locks for the BC Liberals to hold in the next election, while the party has to be considered a strong favourite to win the other two seats as well.

So it is a safe bet that four new faces will be part of the next BC Liberal caucus after the election. But many in the party will tell you that is not enough.

The partys internal spotlight continues to shine on other long-term MLAs who have accumulated enough political baggage over the years to wear the party and other candidates down come the next campaign.

So there is speculation that 23-year veteran Rich Coleman (Langley East) will be pressured to give up his safe seat and make way for someone new. His record in government, particularly in regards to the gambling file, makes him an easy target for the NDP.

It is also unclear whether fellow veterans Shirley Bond (Prince George-Valemount), Mike de Jong (Abbotsord West) and Mary Polak (Langley) will run again, although I would argue both have emerged as solid critics after years as cabinet ministers.

But Bond and de Jong aside, the BC Liberal caucus hasnt really found its sea legs in opposition. With the exception of rookie MLAs Peter Milobar and Jas Johal, and veterans such as John Rustad and Jane Thornthwaite, no one has really shone.

The party is in urgent need of new talent. Horgan thinks his side needs to press the restart button, but it would seem BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinsons party may require more of a general makeover.

Keith Baldrey is chief political reporter for Global BC.

Read more:
Opinion: Pressure is on for some veteran BC Liberal MLAs to quit - Burnaby Now

The battle for 1989 was won by illiberal populism. Thats one thing we can say with certainty 30 years on from the fall of the iron curtain. In the narrative spun by Jarosaw Kaczyski, Viktor Orbn and their supporters, democratic transformation turned out to be a fraud, liberal democracy an illusion, and integration with the EU an upmarket form of foreign occupation. The illiberal populists, under the cover of such rhetoric, simultaneously dismantle the rule of law and independent institutions. Meanwhile, liberals seem devoid of ideas or initiative, agreeing only that somehow, it all went wrong.

This is not just about melancholy and misunderstanding. In a sense, post-communist countries became a testing ground after 1989. Both our families came from Warsaw and they struggled not only to survive the upheavals of that era, but to create better lives, if not for themselves, at least for their children. Individually, some succeeded, but it came at a high price. The revolutions of 1989 meant the almost overnight disintegration of entire ways of life. That had an immense impact, even if most people would not have wanted to hang on to their experience of pure socialism.

Todays populists tend to focus only on the downsides of what came after 1989. But how have they been so effective at imposing their interpretation of events, even now, 30 years on?

In the last year of the cold war, the west of our collective imagination was a place of hope Moscow we were more familiar with, and viewed with fear. Yet, contrary to the image often conveyed, the reaction in our countries to the end of communism was far from euphoric.

The promise of freedom and a better life lay on the distant horizon. Day to day, though, we experienced a poverty more humiliating than anything that had come before especially after seeing the west with our own eyes. It is a common mistake to think that illiberal politicians in post-communist countries are popular despite these countries successes. The contrary seems more plausible: their popularity is a consequence of the success.

At a time when populist leaders are in power in other parts of the world, including the US, it may be instructive to look at the causes of illiberal populism generally.

Our focus is on an aspect of human nature that is underexplored in political analysis: namely political emotion, and in particular, the feeling of loss.

It is astonishing to us to hear people in the US, the UK, France or Italy express views so familiar to us: Our jobs are being stolen, The world is changing too much, I dont recognise my country. This is where 1989 meets 2019 at least in the populists narratives. Their pessimistic interpretation of the fall of communism is mirrored in the current over-simplifications.

The year 1989 was one of those breakthrough moments in human history whose impact is felt in contradictory ways. As Charles Dickens wrote about 1789 in A Tale of Two Cities, it was the best of times and the worst of times. It was a spring of hope, and a winter of despair, it was indeed the age of wisdom and the age of foolishness.

The same duality was felt elsewhere. As well as the fall of communism, 1989 marked the beginning of an era of global change and acceleration. Quality of life and longevity improved, as revolutions were occurring in technology, communication, and social mobility. There was simultaneous gain and loss.

Central and eastern Europe has registered extraordinary economic growth on almost every parameter since the end of communism. But change, when it happens so swiftly and completely, can also involve great loss for the individual. We dont just mean the disappearance of jobs or bankruptcies. We mean something much deeper. A loss that relates to the micro-world of secure long-term relationships, identity and feelings of security, so important in the classical liberalism of Adam Smith and JS Mill.

In German, there is a word that captures this disruption: schleudern, which means to spin round and round as in a washing machine. In the social sense, our world spun repeatedly as we strived for a better future. This is the context in which we can see that illiberal populists are effective not because they buy voters, or manipulate negative emotions, such as fear or rage. Their skill is to recognise and empathise with feelings of loss when liberals tactlessly disregard or ridicule them.

And it is how we can explain the reactionary aspect of populism in eastern Europe, and beyond. Brexiters won with the slogan Take back control, and Donald Trump cut through with Make America great again. Kaczyski in Poland, Bjrn Hcke in Germany and Thierry Baudet in the Netherlands all talk about protecting the traditional values of their societies (usually without being specific about what this would mean).

Liberals often feel overwhelmed by this kind of politics. A peculiar defeatism surrounds the failure of liberal democracy to deliver. Liberals also fear that pandering to emotion plays the same game as populists. They prefer to calm feelings down or just steer clear of them.

Enemies of democracy have, of course, always manipulated feelings. Yet we believe that theres a key lesson from 1989 that liberalism can learn. We need a passionate defence of liberal democracy and the liberal order. We also need to embrace the feeling of loss and translate it into something positive and enriching, into a feeling about political community.

How could this be done? The collective sense of loss we have been describing is akin to the grief that follows the death of a loved one. In bereavement our first reaction is to look back, to dwell on the loss. Reactionary populisms concentration on the negative aspects of transformation might be compared with bereavement. As humans we know that after bereavement comes the recovery phase. And this means looking to the future and building networks of friends. It requires courage, hope and compassion especially for those who think so differently that they vote for populists.

This is what the liberalism of the future could mean. It could retell the story of 1989, while doing justice to this great and complex moment. Central and eastern Europe still has an important message for the world. It is the knowledge that the greatest successes of liberal democracy, including 1989, were enabled by passionate hope.

Karolina Wigura is a historian, political editor of the Polish weekly Kultural Liberalna and a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin

Jarosaw Kuisz is a historian, editor-in-chief of the Polish weekly Kultura Liberalna and a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin

Original post:
Populists understand the power of human emotion. Europes liberals need to grasp it, too - The Guardian

A recurring theme of this election has been the battle for Labours leave-voting constituencies, the so-called red wall of seats running from north Wales to the Humber estuary the seats that Boris Johnsons Get Brexit done slogan is designed to win over. But despite being billed as the Brexit election, many of the key moments of the campaign have come back to economics: taxation, nationalisation, pensions and of course the NHS. This has clearly been a strategy by the Labour party to try to hold together its coalition of 2017 voters, who are broadly united on the economic aims of the party.

Keeping the conversation on the economy doesnt seem to have been as successful as it might have been, with recent polls and modelling suggesting that Labour is struggling to reach the 40% share of the vote it achieved in 2017. Since the move to support a confirmatory referendum, it seems to be more successfully recapturing remain voters who had flirted with the Liberal Democrats than those who voted leave and had variously been taken by the Conservatives, the Brexit party and non-voting. Is the economic message failing to cut through to voters or are they hearing it loud and clear but are, nonetheless, unconvinced?

The problem is not that there are too few leftwing voters in the electorate. The British Election Study (BES) measures these political positions using a series of attitudinal statements that include There is one law for the rich and one for the poor and Ordinary people get their fair share of the nations wealth. Since these questions were first asked at the 1992 election, the British public have been on average slightly leftwing. If people voted only on their economic values, we should have had a Labour government for the last two decades. In light of its absence, it clearly isnt just the economy, stupid.

The problem for Labour is two-fold. Voters do not cast their votes based on economic issues alone, and, more critically, voters on the left are divided on non-economic issues such as justice and immigration. The BES data measures responses to statements such as People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences and Young people dont have enough respect for traditional values. Peoples positions on this social dimension are statistically unrelated to their positions on the economic issues, or in the language of political science, these two sets of values cross-cut, rather than reinforce each other.

If we compare the BES results in elections 20 years apart, we see some fascinating cultural shifts. Taking only those voters whose responses place them on the economic left, we find that in 1997, it did not matter what social values they held, around 60% voted Labour. By 2017, this picture was very different. Among those economically leftwing respondents who held socially liberal values, almost 70% voted Labour; while among those who did not, less than 50% voted Labour, and more than a third voted Conservative. While this divergence may be part of a long-term restructuring of the vote that eventually leads to two camps reflecting a Brexit position, what is interesting is that this shift was visible in 2010, well before any Brexit realignment had begun.

This divide runs deeper than Brexit position alone, which explains why appearing more leave-leaning in leave-voting areas is insufficient for Labour to win back lost voters. Attitudes to migrants highlight the divisions that run through the potential Labour vote on the left. Asked whether they agreed that Immigrants increase crime rates in Britain, one in 10 of those on the economic left with socially liberal values agreed with the statement, while among those on the economic left with socially conservative values this was a little more than half. Meanwhile, more than half of the socially conservative group also agreed that The will of the majority should always prevail, even over the rights of minorities.

These newly salient divides among the voters on the economic left make it very difficult for Labour, whenever the conversation moves away from core economic issues. But it also makes it more difficult for the economic messages themselves to cut through to these voters. Manifesto promises can be popular in themselves, but still fail to move voters, if the party making them is not trusted to deliver. On the vital issues of trust and alienation, again we find a divide among the lefts socially liberal and socially conservative voters. Asked whether Politicians dont care what people like me think, around a third of the socially liberal cohort agreed, compared with seven in 10 of the socially conservative cohort. While 44% of the socially liberal left agreed that People like me have no say in what government does this was 75% of the socially conservative left.

There has been considerable talk of the politically homeless over the last two years, and several new parties have formed in an attempt to offer them shelter. Britains lost voters are often assumed to be mostly centrist on economics but socially liberal and pro-remain. The performance of parties aimed at winning over these voters perhaps suggests this diagnosis was wrong.

Instead, there seems to be a potential cohort of voters who are economically left-leaning, socially conservative, voted leave and have become increasingly detached from both the Labour party and politics more generally. In 2017, there is evidence to suggest that these voters were more likely to stay at home than before. In 2019, some of these voters may move across to the Conservative party; some will vote for the Brexit party, where they have that option; others may stay at home again. But the Labour party needs to hold on to those more socially conservative voters who were willing to stick with the party in 2017; the difficulty is that their economic messages fail to cut through to voters who believe that the party is no longer listening to people like them.

Paula Surridge is a senior lecturer at the University of Bristols school of sociology, politics and international studies

View original post here:
The difficult truth for liberals: Labour must win back social conservatives - The Guardian

This week, climate-change doomsayer and truant 10th grader Greta Thunberg won Time magazine's Person of the Year. I haven't cared about POTY since the second time they gave it to Obama, but if you do care, presumably you're either delighted or enraged. The very first person to be awarded Time's highest honor was Charles Lindbergh. He won it in 1927 for flying across the Atlantic. Thunberg just won it for refusing to fly across the Atlantic. We call this "progress."

So of course, as is customary in 2019, Donald Trump tweeted about it and everybody lost their minds:

To me, the funniest part of this is that the president of the United States is replying to the star of Touched by an Angel.

Then Thunberg owned him, or something, by changing her Twitter bio:

And both sides claimed victory, and nothing was gained, and nothing was learned.

Now, just a week ago I was defending Barron Trump from an opponent of his father who decided it would be funny to mock Barron's first name. Pamela Karlan said:

I thought it was a cheap shot. You can hate Trump all you want, but leave the kid out of it. Barron Trump didn't ask for any of this.

So my instinct is to say the same thing to the POTUS: Leave the kid out of it.

But then I have to catch myself. Is Donald Trump really the one who dragged Greta Thunberg into the spotlight? No. The global warmists are the ones who hang on her every word. The legacy media are the ones treating her like a rock star.

Libs are the ones who made Greta Thunberg the face of the climate change movement. They're the ones exploiting her for political purposes. They've taken a confused child with a head full of delusions about the world, and they've turned her into a human shield. They recruited her to spew their rhetoric, and now they hide behind her when anybody talks back. "How dare you treat a child like this!" It's cynical. It's low. It's liberalism.

I would prefer if Trump didn't tweet mean things about her, and I'm not going to tell anybody not to scold him for it. Go right ahead. But if all these adults are going to hide behind a child to push their political agenda, she'd going to get some pushback.

In fact, they know she will. They're counting on it. That's the whole idea. They love that Trump is yelling at her. He's playing right into their hands.

Libs aren't protecting Greta Thunberg. They're not helping her. They don't really care about her. They're just exploiting her. The minute she's no longer useful to them, they'll drop her like a global warming-heated rock.

Ask Cindy Sheehan. Ask Sandra Fluke. Ask the Krassenstein brothers. Ask any other one-time liberal superstar who is now long forgotten. It's a short ride.

I hope Greta Thunberg grows up to have a long, productive, happy life. And when she realizes that the world isn't ending after all, I hope she resents all the people who convinced her it was. I hope she realizes that they were not her friends.

This was all a setup, and the libs made a vulnerable little girl their dupe. They're just awful, awful people.

Continue reading here:
Shame on the Liberals Who Use Greta Thunberg as a Human Shield - PJ Media