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The SNC-Lavalin affair has dragged just about every opinion imaginable out into the public square, on topics as diverse as corporate greed, reconciliation with First Nations, sexism, prosecutorial independence and Quebec’s relations with the Rest of Canada. But in the debate over continuing with the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin versus offering it a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA), one obvious question has gone mostly unasked: Why are we going after SNC-Lavalin for its Libya-related transgressions at all, as opposed to the individuals who committed them?

The primary concern among DPA supporters is that innocent people’s jobs not be impacted. There are 9,000 of those jobs at stake, we have heard (though CBC News helpfully tore the claim to shreds). Those supporters insist Lavalin has cleaned house since its various corruption shenanigans both at home and abroad.

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“Under (CEO Neil) Bruce, SNC had essentially become a new company,” Eric Reguly wrote in Report on Business Magazine last year. “The top management had been entirely replaced, as had the board of directors.” Bruce’s predecessor, Robet Card, instituted “a top-to-bottom ethics and compliance fix-it job, which included banning the company from doing business in countries that occupied the bottom ranks of Transparency International’s corruption rankings.”