Political interference with front-line prosecutors is a problem in Canada, says the head of a national group of Crown attorneys in the wake of the SNC-Lavalin affair, in which the country’s top prosecutor came under pressure from federal officials to settle charges out of court.
“It can be as subtle as a not-so-innocent inquiry, to overt discussions about the file,” Rick Woodburn, president of the Canadian Association of Crown Counsel, said in an interview from Halifax, where he is a senior prosecutor for the Public Prosecution Service, a provincial agency.
“Anyone who comes to my office inquiring about a prosecution who has a vested interest in the prosecution can raise an alarm in my mind,” he said, speaking for the association, whose members include representatives of criminal and civil Crown lawyers working for the provinces and the federal government.
“Any form of political interference is too much. Politics and prosecutions do not mix.”
The overt interference he mentioned has included visits from political aides, or a bureaucrat carrying a message from a politician. While he declined to share examples that colleagues from other jurisdictions have told him about (“uncommon, but it happens”), he said that, across the country, there are “always interested parties when a politician gets into trouble.”
He added: “Nobody darkens your door and tells you you’re doing a good job on a file. They come to your door and say, ‘We’re aware that you have this file.’ That alone can be enough to have a chilling effect on a prosecutor.”
Mr. Woodburn declined for the most part to address the SNC-Lavalin matter directly, saying that prosecutors maintain their independence partly by staying out of the political arena.
“We’ve discussed this ad nauseam across the country, with regards to what can be said and what can’t be said. We do our best as prosecutors not to step into the political fray,” he said.
Still, he said, “what has consistently and constantly been debated? The identity of the corporation and the national economic impact [of a prosecution]. Those are not and cannot be included in decisions to prosecute.” The head of an anti-bribery agency with the Paris-based Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development raised a similar point last week, saying that the loss of jobs is a political factor that cannot influence a prosecution involving foreign corruption charges.
The Prime Minister’s Office referred a request for comment to the Attorney-General’s Office, which did not immediately provide a response.
On Feb. 7, The Globe and Mail published allegations that former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould came under pressure from senior officials in the PMO to put a stop to the federal prosecution of Quebec engineering giant SNC-Lavalin on bribery and fraud charges. Since then, in televised hearings of the Commons justice committee, Ms. Wilson-Raybould testified that she was contacted more than 20 times, by 11 different people, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick, and pressed to settle with the Quebec company out of court.
Nova Scotia, like the Canadian government, has an independent prosecution service. It was set up after a judicial inquiry in 1989 into the wrongful murder conviction of Donald Marshall. That inquiry uncovered “a two-tier justice system where people who are powerful and have friends in the right places can, behind closed doors, have things happen that prevent prosecutions from being brought,” Stephen Coughlan, who teaches at Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said in an interview.
Jonathan Denis, who served as attorney-general of Alberta from 2012 to 2015, said in an interview that he did not witness political interference with prosecutors, but “even one instance like this is a problem as it brings the whole administration of justice into disrepute, which is something we want to avoid at all costs.”
Mr. Woodburn explained what he does when approached in a way that he considers inappropriate: “Ignore and proceed.” With subtle interference, “you brush it off, until it becomes so pointed that you say, ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ ” He said prosecutors need to have strength of character and integrity to resist the interference.
He said he thinks Nova Scotia’s model of an independent prosecution service (found in other provinces, too, such as Quebec and British Columbia) is a good answer to interference. “Everyone knows that there’s a clear line between politicians and … calling my boss. It aids in protecting our service from outside influences, to an extent.”
Sean Fine