Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre defended his comments about the RCMP Wednesday and denied saying former prime minister Justin Trudeau should be in jail.
“That’s not what I said,” he said on Parliament Hill when asked about a recent interview on a YouTube channel.
In that interview, which ran on the Northern Perspective channel last week, Poilievre called the RCMP’s leadership “despicable” and accused it of covering up for Trudeau.
“Many of the scandals of the Trudeau era should have involved jail time,” he said. “Trudeau broke the Criminal Code when he took a free vacation from someone with whom he had government business.”
“If the RCMP had been doing its job and not covering up for him, then he would have been criminally charged,” Poilievre added in the interview.
Poilievre was referring to cases where Trudeau was found to have violated conflict of interest rules, including his acceptance of a family vacation on the Aga Khan’s private island in 2016, and the SNC-Lavalin saga in 2019.
The RCMP investigated both the vacation and Trudeau’s handling of the SNC-Lavalin file but did not lay any charges.
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In the latter case, the ethics commissioner found Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act by attempting to influence then-justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to grant a deferred prosecution agreement to a Quebec-based engineering firm.
The RCMP investigated but ultimately determined there was not enough evidence to lay criminal charges in the SNC-Lavalin affair. In 2023, current RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said he agreed with that decision.
On Wednesday, Poilievre said he thinks there were some scandals during Trudeau’s time in office that should have resulted in criminal charges. He cited allegations of corruption against a government-funded technology fund — without mentioning Trudeau.
He also said his criticisms of the RCMP were directed solely at former RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki. That statement echoed one issued by his office on Monday.
During his scrum with reporters, Poilievre was asked whether he was confident all his MPs would remain in the Conservative caucus by the end of the day.
“Yes,” he answered.
Those MPs met Wednesday morning for the weekly caucus meeting. Walking in, some deflected reporters’ questions about Poilievre’s comments.
“There’s a five-alarm fire going on in this country, with jobs, with inflation … so that’s what we’re going in to talk about,” House leader Andrew Scheer said.
“Of course,” Conservative MP Todd Doherty said Wednesday when asked if he supports Poilievre. He also asked reporters why they weren’t asking questions about unemployment and the opioid crisis.
Conservative MP Andrew Lawton said Poilievre has support from caucus and called his comments “little, out-of-context things from a podcast” that are not a big priority.
Conservative MP Michael Barrett said the statement from Poilievre’s office made it clear that he supports RCMP officers.
Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said Poilievre is a “strong leader defending men and women in uniform” and he would “take no lessons from the Liberals on standing up for front line officers.”
Conservative MP Greg McLean said Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government should hold Trudeau’s government “to account over what happened.”
The Liberals, Greens and NDP this week all called on the Conservative leader to apologize for his comments about the RCMP.
On Wednesday, government whip Mark Gerretsen said the comments were “shameful” and showed that Poilievre is not qualified to lead the country.
“I think that there’s no place in Canadian politics to be trying to emulate what we’re seeing in the south,” he said.
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