OTTAWA—Was it direction, or pressure, or nothing at all?That was a central question in the drama — some would say scandal — that broke out on Parliament Hill this week. The Liberal government was broadsided by allegations that officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, after repeated lobbying by SNC-Lavalin, tried to convince former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to strike a mediation deal instead of pursuing fraud and corruption charges against the Quebec-based engineering giant. Justin Trudeau was accused by the opposition of suspiciously “legalistic” denials, after an obstinate performance at a news conference in Vaughan, where he repeatedly stated that neither he nor anyone in his office “directed” Wilson-Raybould to intervene in the case. He repeatedly refused to answer whether there were attempts to influence or pressure her — although Wilson-Raybould’s replacement in the portfolio, along with other Liberal MPs, have since said there was no pressure or influence from political operatives in Trudeau’s office. Why should you care? To quote from the kiss-off letter that Wilson-Raybould penned last month when she was reassigned to Veterans’ Affairs, “It is a pillar of our democracy that our system of justice be free from even the perception of political interference.” There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s get up to speed: Can the attorney general intervene in federal cases?Yes. Under the Director of Public Prosecutions Act, the attorney general can take over the Crown’s prosecution of criminal cases and direct the federal government’s top prosecutor — the aptly named Director of the Prosecution Service of Canada — on how to conduct a case. The act says this is allowed if the attorney general thinks the proceedings at hand “raise questions of public interest.”But if the attorney general decides to intervene in this way, she ...
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