Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said RCMP covered up what he calls scandals involving former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and said they would otherwise have led to criminal charges.
In a recent interview with the Northern Perspective YouTube channel, Poilievre called the RCMP's leadership “despicable” and added that many of the Trudeau-era scandals “should have resulted in jail time.”
Poilievre said the former prime minister “probably” violated the criminal code during the SNC-Lavalin affair.
“Normally this would have resulted in criminal charges, but of course the RCMP covered it all up,” he said.
In 2023, the Conservatives argued that the Liberals, NDP and Bloc censored the RCMP by banning testimony from the RCMP commissioner on the SNC-Lavalin scandal at a parliamentary committee meeting.
In the interview, Poilievre also said Trudeau violated the code when he took “a free vacation from someone with whom he had government affairs,” a reference to the Aga Khan scandal in 2016.
Receive daily national news
Get the day's top news, political, economic and current affairs headlines delivered to your inbox once a day.
“If the RCMP had been doing their job and not covering for him, he would have been criminally charged,” Poilievre said.
Speaking to reporters at a news conference in Toronto on Thursday, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duhaime said the SNC-Lavalin case was “discussed quite a bit” under the previous government and that there was no intervention.
“I don’t take any orders from any political figure,” Duhaime said.
Duhaime invited Poilievre to meet with the RCMP to discuss his comments about the organization's leadership.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangari said in an emailed statement that Poilievre's comments were “grossly irresponsible” and risked undermining trust in the national institution.
He said Canadians can have complete confidence in the RCMP and its independence from political interference.
“The RCMP operates free from the leadership of elected officials, regardless of who is in government,” Anandasangari said. “To suggest that Canada's national police are engaged in a political cover-up without evidence is not leadership, but an attack on the impartiality of law enforcement in our country.”
“Political leaders must respect the work of the RCMP and not try to undermine public trust in the dedicated officers who serve and protect Canadians every day from coast to coast.”
© 2025 The Canadian Press
