Thursday 13 October 2011

Friends of the Cons

Yet another installment in the ongoing saga of which moneyed interests are bankrolling, lobbying and cozying up to Stevie Spiteful's Contempt Party.

*Gold Card* Baird recently flew to Libya. Did Rusty commandeer luxury travel arrangements for himself and the ConservaTories cronies in his entourage?
John Baird brought Canadian funding for efforts to build democracy and control weapons in Libya, but it was the guest list for his trip to Tripoli that pointed to another priority: Executives from big Canadian companies travelled with him.

The foreign minister flew to the Libyan capital with heavy security and secrecy, but also executives from Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, Alberta oil giant Suncor and Calgary-based pipeline-technology firm Pure Technologies.
From here.

SNC-Lavalin ... oh yes. The Cons recently sold the commercial operations of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to the Montreal-based engineering giant for $15 million.

As well, the RCMP raided their Ontario office, in the course of investigating whether bribes were involved in the award of a large construction project in Bangladesh.

More here (in French so use Google translation to get the goods).

SNC-Lavalin has a MASSIVE Public Works contract to maintain government buildings across Canada; accounting forensic probes led by Price-Waterhouse indicate that the current government has approved irregular and over-priced invoices from the engineering firm.

Not surprisingly, the CEO of SNC-Lavalin dismisses public demands for an official inquiry regarding corruption in the construction industry in Québec. One does wonder if he has received *coaching* from Dimitri Soudas in how to handle inconvenient media queries.

Anyone taking bets on whether SNC-Lavalin might have an inside track on building those mega-prisons that PMSHithead's *Hard-On Crime* Omnibus bill will foster?

3 comments:

Dr.Dawg said...

Anyone taking bets on whether SNC-Lavalin might have an inside track on building those mega-prisons that PMSHithead's *Hard-On Crime* Omnibus bill will foster?

I don't see why not. They were building a spanking new prison for Gaddafi before the Libyan civil war broke out. The torture chambers may have to be omitted here at home, though, at least at the proposal stage.

ck said...

Anyone taking bets on whether SNC-Lavalin might have an inside track on building those mega-prisons that PMSHithead's *Hard-On Crime* Omnibus bill will foster?

Given this is a so-called private/public partnership, I'd lay good odds on that one.

SNC-Lavalin has a MASSIVE Public Works contract to maintain government buildings across Canada; accounting forensic probes led by Price-Waterhouse indicates that the current government has approved irregular and over-priced invoices from the engineering firm.

And I thought the National Assembly and Montreal City Hall had exclusivity to that kind of construction corruption!

Great work, DBO!!

Oh, and another question: What the heck are "democracy and control weapons"?

Luna said...

Interesting. I was just about to write about Gwyn Morgan and his advising job to Christy Clark.

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