OTTAWA: Canada’s opposition leader on Sunday revealed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had threatened him with a defamation case over his comments about a political scandal that has rocked the government months before the country’s election.
Andrew Scheer, head of the Conservative Party, told a press conference he had received a letter from Trudeau’s lawyer accusing him of “highly defamatory” comments made in response to a series of documents released by former attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould at the end of March.
Trudeau has been under fire since February when Wilson-Raybould accused him and his inner circle of applying political pressure to prevent a trial of engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, which is accused of corruption in Libya.
On March 29, the ex-attorney general released 43 pages of new documents that sought to link her January demotion to another portfolio to her resistance to allegedly undue pressure to settle the SNC-Lavalin case. Scheer in turn accused the government of lying to Canadians and of corruption.
He denounced the lawsuit threat as “an intimidation tactic” by the prime minister. “It is a further attempt to silence those who are standing up and seeking the truth,” he said.
A spokesman for Trudeau said Sunday afternoon that the letter had been sent to “put (Scheer) on notice that there are consequences for making completely false and libellous statements”.
The right-wing opposition, which is now polling ahead of the Liberals with a general election six months away, has been bombarding Trudeau since the affair broke. – AFP
