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OTTAWA — Ethics commissioner Mario Dion pulled no punches in a damning report released Wednesday following an investigation into the SNC-Lavalin affair, by far his highest-profile undertaking since his appointment in January 2018.

Dion’s nomination by the Liberal government received a mixed response from opposition parties, and the longtime public servant made headlines when he wouldn’t immediately commit to pursuing ongoing investigations into the prime minister and the finance minister. He later surprised opposition parties when he cleared Finance Minister Bill Morneau last June of conflict-of-interest allegations regarding pension legislation he introduced while holding shares in Morneau Shepell, a pension management firm.

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But if critics of the government had any concerns that Dion would go too easy on the Liberals in his role as ethics watchdog, his report on the SNC-Lavalin scandal must surely have put them to bed. In the report, Dion concluded that Trudeau used his authority to “circumvent, undermine and ultimately discredit” the decision of the director of public prosecutions not to offer a remediation agreement to SNC-Lavalin, which would have allowed the Montreal engineering giant to avoid criminal prosecution. He confirmed former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould’s allegations that she was inappropriately pressured by the prime minister and other senior officials to overrule the public prosecutor’s decision, and that she was improperly asked to consider partisan political interests.