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Kitchen believes Trudeau should resign

Souris-Moose Mountain Member of Parliament Robert Kitchen believes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should resign in light of the SNC-Lavalin controversy. “I believe he has definitely lost his moral authority to govern,” Kitchen told the Mercury.
Robert Kitchen

Souris-Moose Mountain Member of Parliament Robert Kitchen believes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should resign in light of the SNC-Lavalin controversy.

“I believe he has definitely lost his moral authority to govern,” Kitchen told the Mercury. “My leader, Andrew Scheer, has called for him to resign, and in that regard, we look at him, and I don’t believe he can continue to govern.”

He pointed out that Scheer has sent a letter to the RCMP, asking them to open an investigation into numerous issues that occurred, which the Tories believe could reflect criminal activity.

“There’s evidence for at least the RCMP to look into,” he said.

He doubts the prime minister will actually step down.

Trudeau and the federal Liberal government has been under fire for nearly a month after reports surfaced that Jody Wilson-Raybould was pressured to drop charges against Canadian engineering firm SNC-Lavalin back when Wilson-Raybould was attorney general and the minister of justice. Her refusal was allegedly what led to her being removed from the post, and moved into veterans affairs, a post she later resigned.

Wilson-Raybould presented testimony before a Commons justice committee Feb. 27. 

“She presented … the indications of a co-ordinated, unwanted, concerted, consistent and sustained effort to politically interfere in the exercise of her role for prosecutorial discretion,” said Kitchen.

He pointed to pressure from 11 senior government officials, including the prime minister, Finance Miniser Bill Morneau and other top-ranking Liberals.

“She indicated that there were approximately 10 meetings and 10 phone calls, and all of them were putting pressure on her, and she believes, and I believe she stated, the objective that she saw was to get her to stop criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,” said Kitchen.

The prime minister has been changing his story, Kitchen said, and the local MP believes that causes Canadians to wonder what’s been going on.

When he first heard of the story, he didn’t believe it would grow into something that would be a daily topic of discussion for a month.

“It seems to be growing daily, and I don’t think we’ve seen the end of it yet, and I think ultimately what it does show is the reality that Canadians expect better of their government, and they should not expect the government to break the law in order to save jobs, and that’s the spin being put on by the Liberals at this point of time,” said Kitchen.

Kitchen said he was disappointed to see that the SNC-Lavalin scandal overshadowed a number of other stories, the pro-resource rally that made its way across much of the country to Ottawa in late February.