Corrupt SNC-Lavalin keeps warship contract: Liberals let disgraced engineering firm work for National Defence

By Sheila Gunn Reid
|
May 05, 2020

By Ezra Levant

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SNC-Lavalin is still getting special treatment from the Liberals, this time with a new “administration agreement” that allows the corrupt Quebec company to skirt the rules of the public procurement process.

The new agreement allows SNC-Lavalin to continue to do business with the government after pleading guilty to fraud in a plea deal that saw other charges dropped in December 2019.

According to Global News,

The charges had centred on allegations that the company paid nearly $48 million to public officials to influence government decisions under the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime between 2001 and 2011.

SNC-Lavalin had also faced charges of fraud and corruption for allegedly defrauding various Libyan organizations of roughly $130 million. The plea deal comes on the heels of the conviction of a former top SNC-Lavalin executive… a jury found former SNC-Lavalin executive Sami Bebawi guilty of paying off foreign officials and pocketing millions as he worked to secure contracts for the Canadian company in Libya.

Those were the charges on which that Trudeau pressured the Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to defer prosecution, a move that led to Trudeau being found guilty of his second ethics violation.

The new rule for the Gadhafi-cuddling engineering firm was revealed in a response to an order paper question from Conservative MP Peter Kent:

“With regard to the impact of SNC-Lavalin's guilty plea in December 2019 on fraud charges in relation to the company's contract to support servicing of minor warships and auxiliary vessels: (a)what impact will the guilty plea have on the scheduled renewal of the contract; (b) what specific considerations will the government take into account when deciding the status of the renewal; (c) what is the projected timeline for either renewing this contract or awarding a new contract to another company; and (d) what changes has the government made to the way it conducts business with SNC-Lavalin following the December 2019 guilty plea?”

The guilty plea to fraud makes SNC-Lavalin ineligible for government work under Integrity Regime rules, yet they have a contract to do warship maintenance with the Department of National Defence.

How?

The Liberals bent the rules for SNC-Lavalin one more time.

The response to the Order Paper, the government admits SNC-Lavalin has a special agreement that overlooks the fraud conviction, and the conviction will not prevent any future contract awards. Oh, and SNC-Lavalin is the only company in Canada with this exemption:

As of February 3, 2020, PSPC (Public Services and Procurement Canada) has one administrative agreement with a supplier in lieu of suspension under the Integrity Regime- SNC-Lavalin Group Inc.

The guilty plea had no impact on the scheduled renewal of the in-service support contract for minor warships and auxiliary vessels.