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The remediation option that was legislated in a budget message last year, which confers on the attorney general of Canada or that minister’s director of prosecutions the right to assess a fine rather than criminal indictments, is entirely sensible and necessary and should not have been portrayed, as it has been, as an escape hatch to enable officials to make a cowardly flight from an inflexible public duty to prosecute. If Canadian citizens or residents are receiving money themselves in a manner that is illegal, that is a suitable subject for prosecution in this country, but of the individuals, not of the company, unless there is very clear evidence of the complicity of senior officers in accord with company policy. We should try to avoid the injustice of having shareholders pay the price of executive misconduct. A good deal more would need to be known about the details of the various controversial transactions in the SNC-Lavalin controversy for a member of the public, even a well-informed journalist, to know what was the best course for prosecutors to follow.

There is nothing wrong with the prime minister or his office requiring the attorney general and senior officials to reveal the evidence to them and to determine whether the request for a fine rather than prosecution is reasonable. If the case is ambiguous, a prosecution would not be appropriate. I believe that if the conduct objected to was acceptable in the country where it occurred and likely necessary to obtain profitable business for the company in the shareholders’ interest, but prosecutors wished to prosecute anyway, it would have been quite acceptable for the prime minister to overrule the attorney general and her officials, explaining exactly the reasons, and it would have been quite appropriate for them to have resigned, having lost the confidence of the head of the government. This scenario would not be illicit political interference in the course of justice; it would be the imposition of reasonable public policy in the national interest. But it is such an explosive area, the prime minister and his inner circle would have to be ready to justify it convincingly on the grounds described.