Trudeau of Canada denies he wants his former justice minister to lie while elections run out

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario, September 11 (Reuters) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denied on Saturday that he wanted his former justice minister to lie to the public amid a dispute over a 2019 corporate legal case, an indictment included in a book published days before the election.

Former Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould resurrected the so-called SNC-Lavalin scandal, which haunted the prime minister before the 2019 election, when Globe and Mail published an excerpt from her new book, which will be published in its entirety. next week.

The excerpt describes the meetings he held with Trudeau in early 2019 after the Globe published a news story saying the prime minister’s office had pressured him to reverse the decision not to stop criminal proceedings against the construction company SNC -Lavalin Group Inc. offering a different processing agreement.

He alleges that in a tense conversation, the prime minister knew she had been pressured and instead wanted him to say publicly no.

“I knew I wanted him to lie, to testify that what had happened hadn’t happened,” Wilson-Raybould writes.

Wilson-Raybould refused to overturn the prosecutor’s decision to take the case to court and resigned days after the meeting described in the excerpt. In August 2019, an independent watchdog said Trudeau had tried to influence him, violating ethical standards.

“I didn’t want him to lie,” Trudeau told reporters at a campaign stop in the Toronto area. “I would never do that.”

The accusations come at a difficult time for the 49-year-old Liberal leader, when there are only nine days left for the polls shown by the polls to be too close to the call.

Trudeau has admitted that he tried to persuade Wilson-Raybould to reconsider the prosecutor’s decision to continue with a trial, saying he had been trying to defend jobs at the Quebec-based company.

A 1,200-vote Nanos Research poll conducted on Friday showed the Liberals led 34.4% with rival Conservatives at 30.1%, a change from Thursday when the Conservatives led the Liberals by more than two percentage points.

Left-wing New Democrats had 19 percent on Friday, about the same as a day earlier.

Reports by Steve Scherer; Edited by Daniel Wallis

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