St. Albert MP Michael Cooper says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has lost the moral authority to govern after hearing testimony from former justice minister and former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould on the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Wilson-Raybould testified Wednesday before Cooper and other MPs who sit on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for more than three-and-a-half hours, detailing the sustained partisan political pressure and verbal threats she says she received from top government officials over the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
Cooper said the picture the former minister painted of Trudeau was a "pretty disturbing one."
"I would say within 90 seconds of Jody Wilson-Raybould speaking, it was pretty clear that what she was going to say was going to be explosive," Cooper said.
"Her testimony was extremely compelling. I believe her entirely."
Cooper is joining calls from his fellow federal Conservatives, including Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer, for Trudeau to resign.
"(The) thing that was so shocking was the degree to which there was a systematic, co-ordinated campaign to obstruct justice," he said, adding an RCMP investigation should take place to determine if there was any criminal activity.
Wilson-Raybould detailed Wednesday how the Prime Minister asked her to "help out, to find a solution to SNC" during her time as attorney general. She outlined a months-long effort from almost a dozen officials to get her to drop criminal charges against the Montreal-based engineering and construction giant relating to bribery and fraud allegations in Libya.
"For a period of approximately four months, between September and December of 2018, I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in my role of Attorney General of Canada, in an inapproporiate effort to secure a prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavalin," Wilson-Raybould said.
It was the first time she had spoken publicly since the scandal broke last month in the Globe and Mail.
Part of the pressure the then-minister says she received included a constant reminder of the potential political implications in vote-rich Quebec if SNC-Lavalin was found guilty in the case. The company would be banned from bidding on contracts in Canada for 10 years and could possibly leave Canada.
Wilson-Raybould detailed 10 phone calls and 10 meetings between her and government officials regarding SNC-Lavalin.
After hearing Wilson-Raybould's testimony, Cooper said he believes her version of events and called Clerk of the Privy Council Office Michael Wernick, who testified last week, a "liar."
Wernick testified he had spoken to Wilson-Raybould about SNC-Lavalin and the consequences of prosecution, but denied any inappropriate pressure was put on the former minister.
Cooper says he wants witnesses who testify before the committee to be under oath, so they must tell the truth to the committee.
Despite delivering hours of testimony before the committee, Wilson-Raybould was not able to discuss anything that happened after she was shuffled from justice to veterans affairs. Trudeau waived her solicitor-client privilege only for her time as attorney general.
An NDP motion is requesting that the Prime Minister grant her further freedom and to allow her to speak further on the issue.
On Thursday, Cooper put forward two motions to the clerk of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The first motion asks for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to appear before the committee, and Cooper also wants the Prime Minister to waive further solicitor-client privilege for former-Justice Minister Jody Wilson Raybould, and wants her to appear at committee again.
Next Wednesday, Trudeau’s former top adviser Gerald Butts will be testifying before the committee. Wernick and deputy minister for justice Nathalie Drouin have also been invited back to the committee to testify again.
Trudeau spoke to reporters Wednesday night and denied Wilson-Raybould’s version of events and accusations that his government had conducted themselves inappropriately.
“I strongly maintain, as I have from the beginning, that I and my staff always acted appropriately and professionally. I therefore completely disagree with the former attorney general’s characterization of events,” Trudeau told reporters in Montreal.
