Canadian ethics commissioner vindicates justice minister -- Prime Minister Trudeau violated Conflict of Interest Act by urging corruption charges against SNC-Lavalin be dropped
Earlier this year, the Canadian justice minister and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, accused Prime Minister Justice Trudeau of inappropriately pressuring her to drop criminal corruption charges against the gargantuan nuclear engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, based in Montreal, Quebec, but operating across not only Canada, but the entire world. The criminal corruption has to do with SNC-Lavalin officials engaging in bribery with the Khadaffi regime in Libya before its overthrow. If found guilty of those charges, SNC-Lavalin would be barred from entering into contracts with the Canadian federal government. It could lose many billions of dollars in revenues.
As the Canadian ethics commissioner has now clearly documented, not only Trudeau, but others in his office, pressured Wilson-Raybould to go easy on SNC-Lavalin, not only in light of the charges' impact on the company's bottom line (and jobs associated with it), but also the impact on provincial and even national elections.
The Canadian federal elections are ten weeks away, in October 2019, making the publication of this ethics commission report all the more explosive.
SNC-Lavalin has formed a consortium with Holtec International, to secure nuclear power plant decommissioning and high-level radioactive waste management contracts at permanently shutdown atomic reactors in the U.S. Actually, the form this is taking, is the complete takeover of the nuclear power plant license, as well as title to the irradiated nuclear fuel, by Holtec/SNC-Lavalin. The consortium already has secured Oyster Creek, NJ site. It is poised to secure the Pilgrim, MA site. It has its eyes on Palisades MI, Indian Point NY, and others as well.
This begs the question, should such companies as SNC-Lavalin, and Holtec International, with so many skeletons in their closets, be entrusted with multiple billions of dollars in decommissioning trust funds, not to mention the most serious tasks of cleaning up radiological contamination, and storing high-level radioactive waste?!
August 15, 2019