. OTTAWA — The Conservatives are pushing to revive a request for a committee probe of Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion’s report that found that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke the federal Conflict of Interest Act in relation to the SNC-Lavalin scandal. On Wednesday, the Tories put forward a motion at the House Ethics Committee, seeking to have the “Trudeau II Report” studied, calling on Dion to appear and testify for two hours on his findings, and requesting “other witnesses as required” be invited. The proposal has yet to come to a vote after the debate was paused on the matter until a future meeting, but it is the second attempt from the Conservatives to revive the SNC-Lavalin scandal in this minority Parliament.
A similar motion was moved on Monday and failed, with the Bloc Quebecois and Liberals opposing the proposal. Given committees are now majority controlled by the opposition parties, the Liberals do not have the same ability to decide which studies are launched or left off the agenda as they did in their majority days, and require the support of another party to win votes. Though at Wednesday’s meeting the committee did agree to invite Dion to appear to discuss his mandate more broadly, and it’s likely questions on the report will arise during his appearance. In his efforts to argue for the motion, Conservative MP Michael Barrett said that Canadians “continue to expect” a “full examination” of this issue, though Liberal MP Greg Fergus said that in his view Canadians don’t want parliamentarians “looking back in the rearview mirror.”
The attempts to study this report come nearly a year to the day of Jody Wilson-Raybould’s House Justice Committee testimony in the SNC-Lavalin affair. It was during her testimony that she alleged that she faced high-level “veiled threats” and political interference in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, leaving Trudeau facing calls to resign. Source:.ctvnews.ca/
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
