Unfortunately, it was not a long silence. That being said, an empty wagon rattles the loudest, Mr. Speaker.
The reality is that nothing has changed for the old entitlement Liberals. This is a party that seems to have an impossible time shedding itself of its core identity, which is one of entitlement, stuffing its pockets with other people's money, helping its friends and breaking the law. That is what it did under the sponsorship Liberals, and that is exactly what it is doing now.
I should mention, as I was remiss earlier, and I thank the members across the way for reminding me, that SNC-Lavalin gave about $100,000 of illegal donations to the Liberal Party, money it funnelled through the creation of phoney invoices, expenses and bonuses. Can members imagine the amount of coordination that must have been involved when the executives at that company told employees it wanted them to make phoney expense claims so it could reimburse them to give that phoney reimbursement in the form of a donation to the Liberal Party? For reasons unknown to me, when this fraud came to light, the Commissioner of Canada Elections decided to let the company and the Liberal Party off with respect to a trial or charges. The company was simply given a slap on the wrist through a compliance agreement, whereby the money was returned and the company promised never to do it again. Once again, the company was able to avoid accountability for a serious breach of law, which is very unfortunate indeed.
That being said, that does not mean that accountability is over. As it stands now, the company will face trial. As it stands now, it will face prosecution for fraud and bribery. I keep saying, “as it stands now”, because we do not know if the new Attorney General is going to make the decision to interfere in the criminal prosecution the way the former attorney general refused to do. We know he has an open mind to the idea, but he has not made a decision. That in itself is interesting, because it shows that the cabinet shuffle of the former attorney general out and the new Attorney General in had a material impact on the prospect of prosecution for the company. As of September 2018, it was the official position of the then attorney general that the company would be prosecuted. That is no longer the case. Now it is the official position of the Attorney General that the company might be prosecuted. In other words, he has left open the possibility of taking over the prosecution himself in order to negotiate a deferred prosecution agreement or of writing a directive to the director of public prosecutions ordering that she do so on behalf of the government.
It would be extremely telling if, after all of this, the Prime Minister were to get his way and have the company get off. I suspect that is exactly what he plans, that he is hoping and praying that he can put this scandal under the rug until the election is over, and then in the first couple of weeks, out will come the special deal. The Liberals will do it early in the term to make sure that everyone has forgotten by the subsequent election. Remember December 8, 2015, and one of the very first acts of the current government was to give SNC-Lavalin an exemption on a federal bidding ban that it had faced due to the fraud and bribery charges it is contesting right now. On December 8, there was a special deal for SNC-Lavalin within weeks of this Prime Minister taking office.
We know it is always a priority for Liberals to help this company whenever they can. Do not be surprised. If this Prime Minister gets back in office, it will not be two months. This trial will be over. This company will have a special deal. A small monetary fine will be paid. The CEO will cry crocodile tears and promise never do it again, and on we will go.
The message will have gone out that if individuals are charged with a serious crime in Canada, their recourse is not to go to court and defend themselves with a lawyer in front of a jury and a judge; their recourse is to hire an army of lobbyists and swarm the Prime Minister's Office to convince him to come to their rescue. If they have enough influence and enough political power, they might just get their way. Of course, that is a violation of the basic principle that everyone is equal before the law.
That is why Canadians have reacted so forcefully to this scandal. The Prime Minister assumed that no one would be interested. There were a lot of details and facts to keep track of. How can anyone follow all of these different debates about deferred prosecution agreements and directors of public prosecutions and attorneys general and on and on? The reason is that, at its core, this scandal is really simple. It comes down to this: Do we have one system of justice or two? Is it one set of rules for the people and another for the powerful? Do we have the rule of law or the law of rulers? People understand that because we have a proud, enduring history that goes back hundreds of years, which says no one is above the law, that not even the king or the queen are above the law in our system. Because of that principle, we all live in one of the most prosperous places in the world.
We see this everywhere. If we go around the world, we will see the difference between those countries that have a good, well-functioning legal system that is supreme over all of their rulers. Compare the quality of life, for example, in Hong Kong to the quality of life in other Asian countries. Hong Kong has a British legal system respected around the world, at least for now, and God willing, we hope it will continue in the future. People who have commercial interests from around the world will go to Hong Kong to litigate their differences, because the system there is so successful in mimicking British common law. It is inherited from generations of British people who brought that system to that jurisdiction before the reunification. Looking at the quality of life in Hong Kong, people there have a GDP per capita that is almost the same as Canada, even though it is what I would call a “city state”. It is on a piece of land that is a seventh of the size of the city of Ottawa and has eight times the population. They have to import their own water; they have no natural resources. However, it is an extremely prosperous place. Why? It is because they have the rule of law and, I might add, free enterprise.
Those basic ingredients make for an incredibly prosperous outcome for any place anywhere in the world, regardless of culture, race, history or background. If one has the ingredients of rule of law, free enterprise and democracy, one's people are almost destined to flourish. Once the rule of law starts to be corrupted, everything else comes tumbling down.
The Liberals are scratching their heads on the other side to try to figure out why Canadians are so angry about the SNC scandal. It is because Canadians know that all of our good fortune rests on the rule of law. We never want to normalize the idea that a politician, particularly the head of government, could pick up the phone and start twisting arms and threatening people's jobs in order to get a prosecution dropped.