OTTAWA—SNC-Lavalin executives and lawyers kept in close contact with the Prime Minister’s Office as Justin Trudeau’s senior staff worked on finding a “solution” for the Quebec construction giant’s legal woes.Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion’s report on the SNC-Lavalin affair Wednesday revealed new details about the interaction between senior political staff in the Trudeau government and executives at the company.Dion’s investigation, which ruled Trudeau broke the conflict of interest law for the second time, found a senior adviser to the prime minister had been engaged on the question of offering a “deferred prosecution agreement” to SNC-Lavalin since 2016. A deferred prosecution agreement, also called a “remediation agreement” in Dion’s report, would allow SNC-Lavalin to avoid a criminal trial into fraud and bribery allegations — and a 10-year ban on federal contracts, should the company be convicted — in exchange for a monetary penalty and corporate reforms.The company also floated the idea of deferred prosecution agreements with Finance Minister Bill Morneau, a month before his 2018 budget bill amended the Criminal Code to allow them.Below is a select timeline of interactions between senior political staff in the Trudeau government and SNC-Lavalin executives and lawyers.Early 2016Trudeau and a senior adviser, Mathieu Bouchard, met with SNC-Lavalin’s CEO and senior representatives. According to Trudeau, the company discussed the consequences of a criminal conviction on the company. Trudeau testified that he instructed Bouchard to look into “remediation agreements” and how other countries handle similar situations, and tasked Bouchard with staying on top of the SNC-Lavalin file. Sept. 25 to Nov. 17, 2017The federal government holds public consultations on legal tools for dealing with corporate wrongdoing.Jan. 23, 2018SNC-Lavalin requests a meeting between C ...
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