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The public prosecutor filed a response in January, claiming the application “was bereft of any possibility of success and should be struck.”

The director of public prosecutions, Kathleen Roussel, first told the company on Sept. 4 that there would be no remediation agreement. Her Oct. 9 letter to SNC-Lavalin makes clear that the company contacted her four times after that to provide further information about the case, but that her decision remained unchanged. This point was central to the testimony of former principal secretary Gerald Butts and Privy Council clerk Michael Wernick before the justice committee this week. They suggested that Wilson-Raybould should have been willing to revisit her decision based on new evidence about the case. The information Wilson-Raybould and Roussel used to make their decisions has not been made public.

But Quaid said the Federal Court likely would have reviewed the same evidence SNC-Lavalin provided to the public prosecutor. “If the court had the benefit of information from the parties on this, I think that that now is going to make it much harder to suggest that Jody Wilson-Raybould was being unreasonable or close-minded,” she said.

The federal government introduced remediation agreements as part of the 2018 budget, and this is the first case where one might have been used. The agreements are intended to hold companies accountable for economic crimes without making innocent employees and pensioners suffer the consequences of a criminal trial.

SNC-Lavalin is charged with offering Libyan government officials $48 million in bribes between 2001 and 2011, and would face a 10-year ban on federal contracts if convicted. The company says all senior officers involved with the alleged crimes have been dismissed.

It is still possible the company could get the deferred prosecution agreement it seeks. Attorney General David Lametti, who replaced Wilson-Raybould in January, has not ruled out the possibility that he might overrule the director of public prosecutions.

• Email: mforrest@postmedia.com | Twitter: MauraForrest