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Police admit Canadian bribery scandal was nixed without talking to Trudeau, reviewing records

Published

11 months ago

6 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police believed there was political pressure to dismiss a government bribery case against engineering firm SNC-Lavalin in 2019 but claimed there was insufficient evidence to proceed.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) confirmed that it never talked with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or was able to view secret cabinet records before dismissing charges in a bribery scandal involving the large engineering firm SNC-Lavalin.

The RCMP’s admission came after intense questioning before the House of Commons ethics committee late last month.

As per Blacklock’s Reporter, RCMP commissioner Michael Duheme testified, “No one is above the law,” adding that there was “insufficient evidence to proceed” with the investigation.

In a 2021 memo titled RCMP Assessment Report: Obstruction of Justice SNC-Lavalin Affair obtained from Access to Information requests last October by Democracy Watch, the RCMP noted that it did not doubt there was indeed political pressure to stop criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.

“However, for it to be an offence under the Criminal Code, there must be more than a technical violation,” the 2021 memo read.

During the House of Commons ethics committee meeting in February, Duheme said he had considered the SNC-Lavalin case routine, noting, “We approach every investigation in the same manner.”

Staff Sergeant Frédéric Pincince, who serves as a director of investigations, admitted that the RCMP never questioned Trudeau in the SNC-Lavalin case but gave no reason.

“He was not interviewed,” testified Pincince, to which Conservative MP Larry Brock asked, “Was there at least an attempt to interview Justin Trudeau?”

“No,” Pincince replied.

In October 2023, Canadian Liberal MPs on the ethics committee voted to stop the RCMP from testifying about the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal.

In June 2023, LifeSiteNews reported that the RCMP denied it was looking into whether Trudeau and his cabinet committed obstruction of justice concerning the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal.

SNC-Lavalin was faced with changes of corruption and fraud concerning about $48 million in payments made to Libyan government officials between 2001 and 2011. The company had hoped to be spared a trial and prosecution deferred prosecution agreement.

However, then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould did not go along with Trudeau’s plan, which would have allegedly appeared to help SNC-Lavalin. In 2019, she contended that both Trudeau and his top Liberal officials had inappropriately applied pressure on her for four months to directly intervene in the criminal prosecution of Montreal-based global engineering firm SNC-Lavalin relating to its scandal involving corruption and bribery charges connected to government contracts it once had in Libya.

Commissioner mum on whether there was ‘reluctance’ to charge a sitting PM

During the ethics committee meeting, Brock asked Duheme if there was an “overall general reluctance in charging a sitting Prime Minister?”

“I would say to that, we follow the evidence and if the evidence warrants charges, we charge,” Duheme replied.

Brock then asked if the RCMP obtained “all relevant documents to further the investigation?”

Duheme admitted that “we were limited with the information that we had access to.”

Brock pressed him, asking, “Is that a yes or no, sir?” to which Duheme replied, “I don’t know,” adding, “We didn’t know.”

“We don’t know, we still don’t know to this day all the information that is out there,” Duheme responded.

Brock then pressed Duheme, asking why the RCMP did not “exercise its absolute statutory right under the Criminal Code to obtain a production order or search warrant from a justice to obtain those cabinet documents?”

Duheme said the RCMP were not “able to obtain enough information or evidence.”

As for the initial investigation concerning SNC-Lavalin, Wilson-Raybould testified in early 2019 to Canada’s justice committee that she believed she was moved from her then-justice cabinet posting to veterans’ affairs due to the fact she did not grant a request from SNC-Lavalin for a deferred prosecution agreement rather than a criminal trial.

Of note is that a criminal conviction would have banned the company from landing any government contracts for 10 years.

Trudeau flat-out denied it was being investigated by the RCMP.

Less than four years ago, Trudeau was found to have broken the federal ethics laws, or Section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act, for his role in pressuring Wilson-Raybould.

On February 12, 2019, Wilson-Raybould resigned from her veterans’ affairs post and Treasury Board president Jane Philpott quit in March 2019. They both cited a lack of confidence in the Liberal government’s handling of the scandal.

Then, in April 2019, Trudeau turfed Wilson-Raybould and Philpott from his caucus, meaning they were no longer part of the Liberal Party.

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Canada’s Aging Population Is Creating A Fiscal Crisis

Published on March 6, 2025

By

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Ian Madsen

Rising OAS and GIS costs outpacing economic growth, straining the federal budget

Canada’s aging population is creating a financial crisis that policymakers cannot afford to ignore. The rising costs of Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) pose a growing risk to federal finances, yet no dedicated funding has been established to ensure their long-term viability.

The numbers are staggering. The 2024 Financial Accounts (Public Accounts of Canada, Volume I, p. 43) show that spending on elderly benefits rose at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.24 per cent between 2015 and 2024, climbing from $44.1 billion to $76.04 billion. Over the same period, total federal program spending increased at a CAGR of 7.24 per cent, from $248.7 billion to $466.7 billion.

Although elderly benefits made up 17.7 per cent of total program spending in 2015, they now account for 16.3 per cent. This decline is not due to reduced spending but rather a surge in pandemic-related government expenditures, which temporarily outpaced OAS-GIS growth. Nevertheless, the trajectory is clear: elderly benefits are now the federal government’s third-largest expense, behind only ‘Other Transfer Payments’ and ‘Operating Expenses.’

While these figures already indicate a growing fiscal challenge, government projections suggest the problem will only get worse. According to the federal Fall Economic Statement (Table A1.11, p. 211), economic growth is expected to average four per cent annually until 2029-30. Yet OAS-GIS costs are projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.5 per cent, outpacing both GDP growth and other program spending. By 2029-30, spending on elderly benefits is expected to reach $104.4 billion, or 18.3 per cent of all program expenditures.

Government projections highlight the rapid growth in elderly benefits over the next six years, as shown in the table below:

Fiscal Year                  Elderly Benefits ($B)                Total Program Expenses ($B)              Percentage of Total Program Expenses
2023-24                       76.0                                          466.7                                                   16.2 per cent
2024-25                       80.9                                          485.7                                                   16.7 per cent
2025-26                       85.5                                          500.3                                                   17.1 per cent
2026-27                       90.1                                          509.3                                                   17.7 per cent
2027-28                       94.6                                          529.7                                                   17.9 per cent
2028-29                       99.5                                          549.7                                                   18.1 per cent
2029-30                       104.4                                        570.3                                                   18.3 per cent

As the table shows, OAS-GIS spending is rising as a proportion of total government expenditures. This mirrors the original crisis in the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), when benefits outpaced contributions as the population aged.

The CPP once faced a similar sustainability crisis, and its reform in 1997 offers a potential model for addressing the challenges of OAS-GIS today. The federal government overhauled the CPP by creating the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), which now manages $570 billion in assets. At the time, CPP benefits were paid through general government revenues rather than dedicated investments.

The solution involved higher contribution rates and the creation of an independent investment board to manage the fund sustainably.

These changes secured the CPP’s future, but OAS-GIS remains entirely dependent on government revenue, with no financial backing of its own. That makes it even more vulnerable to economic downturns and demographic shifts.

Policymakers must take decisive action to secure its future. One option is to tighten eligibility criteria to curb uncontrolled spending. Cost-of-living adjustments should also be limited to official inflation measures, ensuring sustainability without unfairly burdening low-income seniors.

The federal government must acknowledge the problem before it becomes unmanageable. The next finance minister should seek input from actuaries, investment professionals, economists and the public to explore feasible long-term solutions. A dedicated OAS-GIS Investment Board, similar to the CPPIB, could help ensure the program’s sustainability. The government already expanded CPP in 2019—there is precedent for such an approach.

Since OAS-GIS has no existing assets, the government will need to inject capital into the program. This could be done through annual surpluses deemed excessive for current needs or through long-term debt financing. Issuing 30-, 40- or even 50-year bonds specifically designed to fund OAS-GIS could provide a market-friendly, fiscally responsible path to solvency. If properly structured, such a plan could improve Canada’s credit rating rather than weaken it, ultimately reducing borrowing costs.

Even today, OAS-GIS spending exceeds the annual federal deficit, a clear warning sign that this issue can no longer be ignored. If no action is taken, Canada will face soaring elderly benefits with no sustainable way to fund them.

The time to act is now. Delaying reform will only make the crisis worse, burdening future generations with an unsustainable system. Policymakers have a choice: build a sustainable future for OAS-GIS or allow it to become a fiscal disaster.

Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Business

What if Canada’s Income Tax Rate Was Zero?

Published on March 6, 2025

By

  By David Clinton

It won’t happening. And perhaps it shouldn’t happen. But we can talk.

By reputation, income tax is an immutable fact of life. But perhaps we can push back against that popular assumption. Or, to put it a different way, thinking about how different things can be is actually loads of fun.

That’s not to suggest that accurately anticipating the full impact of blowing up central economic pillars is simple. But it’s worth a conversation.

First off, because they’ve been around so long, we can easily lose sight of the fact that income taxes cause real economic pain. The median Canadian household earns around $85,000 in a year. Of that, some 13 percent ($11,000) is lost to federal income tax. Provincial income tax and sales taxes, of course, drive that number a lot higher. If owning a house is out of reach for so many Canadians, that’s one of the biggest reasons why.

Having said that, the $200 billion or so in personal income taxes that Canada collects each year represents around 40 percent of federal spending. In fact, in the absence of other policy changes, eliminating federal personal income tax would probably lead to significant drops in business tax revenues too. (I could see many small businesses choosing to maximize employee salaries to reduce their corporate tax liability.)

So if we wanted to cut taxes without piling on even more debt, we’d need to replace that amount either by finding alternate revenue sources or by cutting spending. If you’ve been keeping up with The Audit, you’ve already seen where and how we might find some serious budget savings in previous posts.

But for fascinating reasons, some of that $200 billion (or, including corporate taxes, $300 billion) shortfall could be made up by wiping out income tax itself. How’s that?

For one thing, many government entitlements and payouts essentially exist to make up for income lost through taxes. For example, the federal government will spend around $26 billion on child tax credits (CCB) in 2025. Since those payments are indexed to income, eliminating federal income tax would, de facto, raise everyone’s income. That increase would drop CCB spending by as much as $15 billion. Naturally, we’d want to reset the program eligibility thresholds to ensure that low-income working families aren’t being hurt by the change, but the savings would still be significant.

There are more payment programs of that sort than you might imagine. Without income taxes to worry about:

  • The $6.2 billion GST/HST credit would cost us around $3 billion less each year.
  • The Canada Workers Benefit (CWB) could cost $1.5 billion dollars less.
  • The Old Age Security (OAS) Clawback would likely generate an extra billion dollars each year in taxes.
  • The Guaranteed Income Supplement for low-income OAS recipients could save $4 billion a year.

Even when factoring in for threshold recalculations to protect vulnerable families from unintended consequences, all those indirect consequences of a tax cut could easily add up to $20 billion in federal spending cuts. And don’t forget how the cost of administering and enforcing the income tax system would disappear. That’ll save us most of the $11 billion CRA costs us each year.

Nevertheless, last I heard, $30 billion (in savings) was a long, long way from $300 billion (in tax revenue shortfalls). No matter how hard we look, we’re not going to find $270 billion in government waste, fraud, and marginal programs to eliminate. And adding more government debt will benefit exactly no one (besides bond holders).

Ok then, let’s say we can find $100 billion in reasonable cuts (see The Audit for details). That would get us close to half way there. But it would also generate some serious economic turbulence.

On the one hand, such cuts would require dropping hundreds of thousands of workers off the federal payroll¹. It would also exert powerful downward pressure on our gross domestic product (GDP).

On the plus side however, a drop in government borrowing of this scale would likely reduce interest rates. That, in turn, could spark private investment activities that partially offset the GDP hit. If you add the personal wealth freed up by our income tax cuts to that mix, you’d likely see another nice GDP bump from sharp increases in household spending and investments.

Precisely predicting how a proposed change might affect all these moving parts is hard. Perhaps the ideal scenario would involve 20 percent or 50 percent cuts to taxes rather than 100 percent. Or maybe we’d be better off by playing around with sales tax rates. But I’m not convinced that anyone is even seriously and objectively thinking about our options right now.

One way or the other, the impact of such radical economic changes would be historic. I think it would be fascinating to develop data models to calculate and rank the macro economic consequences of applying various combinations of variables to the problem.

But taxation is a problem. And it’d be an important first step to recognize it as such.

Although on the bright side, as least they wouldn’t have to worry about delayed or incorrect Phoenix payments anymore.

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