Running Head: SNC-LAVALIN ETHICAL ISSUES BY THE GOVERNMENT 1

SNC-Lavalin Ethical Issues by the Federal Government

The Effects on Canada

Christie B. Pederson

Athabasca University
SNC-LAVALIN ETHICAL ISSUES BY THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT 2

Abstract

In 2015, SNC-Lavalin (SNC), a Montreal based engineer and construction company was charged

with corruption and fraud in order to obtain business opportunities in Libya. Canada’s federal

government, at the time being the Liberal Party, was discovered to have played a massive role in

what is known as one of the biggest scandals in Canadian history.

There were issues with the actions that SNC-Lavalin had taken in handling the situation.

However, the more important issue lies with the federal government. Trudeau and his Liberal

Party have acted unethically in their involvement with SNC-Lavalin’s actions and trying to gain

business in Libya. The government’s actions including pressuring the Attorney General and

Justice Minister, changing laws that have relation to the actions of the SNC-Lavalin affair

including the Criminal Code of Canada, limiting involved parties as well as opposition parties of

the Federal Government on what they are able to speak about regarding the matter, and having a

hand in multiple losing their jobs amongst other things.

Regardless of specific political views, there is professional evidence on ethical and legal grounds

that the representatives of the federal government have done wrong. As leaders of Canada,

representatives should be the first ones to abide by all laws and put the interests of Canadians

and Canadian business first. The SNC-Lavalin affair, however, has only weakened the trust that

Canadians have for the Government of Canada.

SNC-Lavalin Ethical Issues by the Federal Government: The Effects on Canada

Over the past several years, the actions of SNC-Lavalin to achieve business dealings in

Libya were discovered. The relationship between SNC and the Gaddafi family as grown over the

past 15 plus years. This family is internationally known for murder, abductions, and abusing

many other human rights for their own gain. (Garossino, 2019)

There is no denying that the actions of the company’s representatives were wrong.

However, the more concerning issue is the actions of Canada’s federal government. They

defended these actions. They wanted to give SNC forgiveness instead of making the

representatives of the company deal with the consequences. It will be explored how the Liberal

government has changed Canadian laws including the Criminal Code of Canada, and had broken

ethical laws and conflict of interest rules. The federal government’s actions as a result played a

role in multiple jobs being affected and the share prices of SNC-Lavalin dropping.

The first of many issues is how Canada’s laws were changed solely for this purpose. The

amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada came at a time that was “favouring SNC-Lavalin’s

interests”. (Scott, 2019). The status quo to changing or introducing a law is to have it brought to

Parliament to be debated. However, this was not the case. What the Liberals had instead done is

placed the amendments, along with other unrelated items, in the Budget Implementation Act. The

changes to the Criminal Code that were place include now “allowing remediation agreements,

and plea bargain-like details between prosecutors and corporations to avoid criminal

proceedings.” (Canadian Press, Breen, 2019). Having this in the criminal code enables other

companies to potentially commit unethical actions and have little to no consequences for them.
SNC-LAVALIN ETHICAL ISSUES BY THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT 4

The second concern that is raised by the actions of Canada’s federal government is how

they, the individuals that are supposed to be leaders of Canada and representing citizens, are

breaking ethical laws and conflict of interest rules. The federal government of Canada has much

power and is expected to uphold the responsibilities that come along with those powers. Rather

than acting ethically, Justin Trudeau and his government had broken the Conflict of Interest Act

and the Criminal Code. Part 1, Section 7 of the Conflict of Interest Act states “no public office

holder shall, in the exercise of an official power, duty or function, give preferential treatment to

any person or organization based on the identity of the person or organization that represents the

first-mentioned person or organization.”, With complete disregard to Canadian legislation the

representatives in the Prime Minister’s Office, including the Prime Minister himself, used their

power to “discredit the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown’s chief law

officer.” On multiple occasions, the federal government has pressured Jody Wilson-Raybould,

who was the attorney-general at the time, to give SNC options to avoid criminal charges on the

matter. It is very alarming, however, that this is not the first time that Trudeau had to be

investigated by the office of the ethics commissioner. An unrelated incident involving a Trudeau

family vacation resulted in Mr. Trudeau being investigated. That incident resulted in the Prime

Minister having violated conflict of interest rules.

There is no denying that if SNC-Lavalin would not have acted unethically in the first

place, nobody’s job would have been affected and the SNC’s share prices wouldn’t have been

expected to drop. According to Yahoo! Finance, in the past five years there has only been 85

dates out of a total of 1255 recorded dates that SNC’s share price has gone up instead of down.

Given there was no one day significant losses, the total loss over the past five years is over

$2,500. Another consequence of the actions of those at SNC was multiple jobs being impacted.
SNC-LAVALIN ETHICAL ISSUES BY THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT 5

On top of the jobs that have already been affected with the SNC-Lavalin, such as the Attorney-

General, Treasury Board president, Michael Wernick who was known as Canada’s top

bureaucrat, as well as many others, there are 9000 jobs that are dependent on how the SNC-

Lavalin controversy is going to be handled. According to The National Observer, Justin Trudeau

had told reporters that he “can’t apologize for standing up for Canadian jobs.” (McIntosh, Meyer,

Syed, Sharp, 2019). With the pending fraud and corruption charges that SNC-Lavalin has, the

worst-case scenario for the company would be being forced to close Canadian doors. If this were

to happen, there would be much bigger issues. SNC-Lavalin is currently working on

approximately $67 billion of projects in Canada alone right now. (Swain, 2019) All of these

companies that had hired SNC would need to find a solution to the problem that they are now

involved in.

There have already been consequences as a result of everything that has happened with

the SNC -Lavalin events. The Criminal Code of Canada has been changed and it now doesn’t

reflect Canada’s best interests. As referenced in Roach’s article, there are discussions pas well of

the Attorney General’s involvement in Parliament. These raise the question of what is best for

Canada’s public.

In conclusion, there have clearly been many issues that have affected Canadians.

Although we are already seeing some of the results of the actions of SNC as well as the Canadian

Government, many are yet to be seen. There are speculations but nothing is certain. It is

understandable if the trust that Canadians have for our federal leaders is diminishing. There are

many questions and concerns of Canadians that remain to be answered. Are there any other

pieces of legislation that have or will be changed? Why did the government do what they did?

How many jobs are going to be lost? What does this mean for the Canadian economy? Amongst
SNC-LAVALIN ETHICAL ISSUES BY THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT 6

all of these questions though there is one big screaming question: how will the ethical issues

committed by the federal government affect the nation and the citizens living it?
SNC-LAVALIN ETHICAL ISSUES BY THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT 7

References

Breen, K. (2019, August 15). Timeline: What's happened so far in the SNC-Lavalin affair.
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breakdown/

Garossino, S. (2019, March 20). The hidden key to the SNC-Lavalin scandal. Retrieved
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snc-lavalin-scandal

Spratt, M. (2019, February 25). The real scandal in the SNC-Lavalin affair. Retrieved November
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Kurl, S., & Holliday, I. (2019, April 8). Trudeau government's handling of SNC-Lavalin affair
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Roach, K. (2019, May 6). The SNC Lavalin Controversy: The Shawcross Principle and
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Conflict of Interest Act 2006 (SC) s.2 (Can)

Criminal Code 1985 (C) s.46 (Can)

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