Liberals block hearings into scathing ethics report on SNC-Lavalin affair
OTTAWA — Cries of a coverup competed with claims of pre-election, hyper-partisan excess Wednesday after Liberal MPs blocked an opposition attempt to hold hearings on ethics commissioner Mario Dion’s scathing report into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin affair.
Only one of six Liberal MPs on the 10-member House of Commons ethics committee supported a Conservative motion to call Dion, and possibly others, to testify about the report.
The lone Liberal outlier, Toronto MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, supported the motion only because he said he wanted Dion to explain what he considered the commissioner’s “legally flawed” conclusion that Trudeau broke the Conflict of Interest Act.
All six Liberals voted against a subsequent NDP motion to call Trudeau, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and his former chief of staff, Ben Chin, to testify about their roles.