Ethics Watchdog’s SNC-Lavalin Finding Comes Just as Liberals Had Recovered in Polls

Ethics Watchdog’s SNC-Lavalin Finding Comes Just as Liberals Had Recovered in Polls
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits the community centre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., on August 14, 2019. The Canadian Press/Peter Power
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If the Liberals had been hoping that the intervening months since the SNC-Lavalin scandal broke in February would help them rebound in the polls, the ethics commissioner’s finding this week that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act in the affair may have put a damper on that.

Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer was quick to point out that Tudeau is “the only PM in history to be found guilty of breaking federal ethics law not once, but twice,” referring to findings by a previous ethics commissioner that the prime minister violated the same act by going on an all-expense-paid family vacation on a private Bahamian island owned by the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims.