The SNC Lavalin Scandal: Breaking Canada’s Role in the Belt and Road Initiative

Submitted by Matthew Ehret…

Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the past few years, you should know that the world is currently being pulled by two opposing paradigms. The New Silk Road alliance in defense of the multi-polar model of nations led by Russia and China has arisen with incredible speed since 2013 while the technocratic/neo-liberal world order that has been trying to impose a “post nation state system” onto humanity pulls us in another direction. The controllers of this later system arrogantly believed that they had won in 2012 as they toppled Libya’s regime and prepared for a nuclear showdown with Russia and China in order to break the will of this Eurasian alliance into abandoning the Westphalian System of sovereign nations.

Since 2013, The Belt and Road Initiative has recruited over 130 nations to the new system and the neo-liberal agenda of the oligarchs has increasingly fallen to pieces. This has now liberated western nations held hostage under this globalized system to finally break free and join the new paradigm which Xi Jinping has stated is an “inclusive model” open for all. Even America and Canada.

Now a lot of media hullaballoo is repeatedly telling people that Canada’s puppet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will fall in the October elections due to the news that he is just another corporatist bully favoring private interests in the case of the SNC construction scandal. While Justin may fall, the narrative being pushed is a total fallacy which entirely misses why this scandal was created in the first place. This is a scandal which has less to do with Canada and everything to do with the breakdown of the neo-liberal order and the rise of a new paradigm.

The Background of the SNC Lavalin Scandal

For those who may not be aware, the SNC Lavalin scandal centers around the apparent pressure which the Prime Minister’s Office put upon former Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould who, as the story was published days before her resignation, was expected to intervene upon a Quebec court corruption case that threatens to annihilate the existence of SNC Lavalin as a player in Canadian infrastructure development (and most importantly cut off one of the only links Canada has to the Belt and Road Initiative). The “heroic” Raybould took a stand and resigned in protest and while it is not necessary to speculate about the exact mechanisms operating behind the scenes, but something much larger is at play. As it stands now, if found guilty the construction giant which is an international force in infrastructure and nuclear projects, would face a 10 year ban on federal contracts, which representatives from SNC have said could see it leave the country permanently.

While the court case nominally centers on the issue of bribes that SNC undertook in the construction of a major super hospital in 2012 and Libyan infrastructure projects before 2011, the truth runs much deeper and touches upon a battle between two opposing systems which are now clashing globally. These systems are defined by two incompatible paradigms- one based upon an open system of multipolar (ie: pro-nation state) dynamics centered on win-win cooperation and unbounded technological progress. The other is a closed system shaped by a commitment to a unipolar, technocratically-governed mechanics shaped by zero-sum thinking. You can guess which vision is dominant in the Canadian federal government which features a Prime Minister who bragged in 2015 that “Canada is the world’s first post-national state.”

SNC Lavalin Resists the Deep State Attack on National Sovereignty

If the western nations were to accept the new paradigm offered by Putin and Xi Jinping, then the deployment of those productive Canadian forces exemplified by SNC Lavalin, Bombardier, Aecon Ltd, etc… would be vital both in the construction of great projects abroad and at home alike. It is no co-incidence that such companies have been under attack by the Deep State, especially since the 2011 regime change war on Libya that destroyed much of the SNC-built infrastructure plan known as the Great Manmade River. In fact, after a quick evaluation of the major international projects which SNC Lavalin has committed to since that 2011 travesty, it should come as no surprise that this company has distinguished itself as a cooperative partner with both China and Russia on Belt and Road Projects, nuclear power generation, oil and mineral development and transportation infrastructure both in Russia and China’s borders and beyond.

In June 2011 SNC Lavalin, which operates in over 100 countries, adopted a new international strategy by purchasing Atomic Energy Canada Ltd for $15 million from the Federal government, taking over control of Canada’s nuclear science and engineering sector. This purchase created an unexpected potential for international nuclear cooperation outside the control of the Privy Council-run Deep State in Ottawa, as the seed became free to select the soil of another garden.

It became apparent where this more fertile soil was located in 2012 which began with an initiative to tighten cooperation with Russia through the acquisition of 48% ownership of the Russian mineral/oil giant Vnipineft and then 49% co-ownership of a joint venture company alongside the Russian Development Bank in 2013 which placed SNC Lavalin in a position to provide technical and financial oversight and support for all infrastructure projects undertaken by the Russian Development Bank.

After establishing firm points of Russian cooperation in an environment increasingly defined by an anti-Russian ABM missile shield and asymmetrical warfare in Ukraine and Syria, SNC Lavalin then began a program of vigorous cooperation with China’s Belt and Road Initiative beginning in earnest in July 2014 with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between SNC and the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) in Vancouver Canada. SNC CEO Preston Swafford then stated “we are pleased to sign this strategic partnership agreement with CNNC to develop nuclear and uranium projects in China, while pursuing high-potential opportunities abroad. These projects have the potential to generate billions of dollars for the Canadian and Chinese economies, while supporting China’s growing demand for energy”

In September 2016, an agreement was reached between SNC Lavalin, CNNC and the Shanghai Electrical Group Company Ltd to “develop, market and build the Advanced Fuel CANDU reactor” which will essential close the fuel cycle rendering buried deposits of depleted and recycled uranium a valuable source of fuel.

On August 7, 2018 another agreement was reached between SNC and the Third Qinshan Nuclear Power Company to implement an advanced 37M fuel for all CANDU Reactors in Qinshan.

Ever afraid of more cooperation between Canadian construction firms and China, the Federal deep state intervened at the final stages of a long-planned deal in May 2018 wherein China’s Construction Civil Engineering Ltd was supposed to purchase Canada’s nearly defunct Aecon Ltd. Construction giant, destroying yet another opportunity for Canadian interests to be integrated into Belt and Road projects both in Eurasia and even in North America.

Today, several leading SNC Lavalin executives who were responsible for those above mentioned development strategies are either facing severe jail time or are sitting in prison for charges of bribery and while Aecon rots without international (or national contracts of merit), SNC Lavalin faces the real danger of a Canadian shutdown leaving China, Russia and other countries seeking a future very little to work with when dealing with Canada.

Ivory Tower Technocrats vs. Reality

The technocrats managing the western system believe in “ivory tower management”. These folks represented by the likes of Rhodes Scholar zombie Chrystia Freeland have been fed sociological theories which presume that mankind is just another beast which thus requires those “constraints” and “limits to growth” which one would impose on any other beast. This was coldly expressed by WWF co-founder Prince Philip in 1988 when he said “as a boy I was made aware of the annual fluctuations in the number of game animals and the need to adjust the “cull” to the size of the surplus population.” In 1981, this same inbred social Darwinist said “Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We’re in for a major disaster if it isn’t curbed–not just for the natural world, but for the human world. The more people there are, the more resources they’ll consume, the more pollution they’ll create, the more fighting they will do. We have no option.”

This ideology is at the heart of today’s Green New Deal agenda in opposition to the optimistic potential of a New Silk Road as the basis of the inevitable new global system. However, the BRI has awoken a different sort of paradigm and set of social theories that presume that humanity is not “just another beast within a closed eco-system”.

For the sorry case of Canada, the particular outcomes of an October election victory by any of the nominal candidates is less important than the needed systemic change needed for western nations to participate in this new epoch of cooperation and growth. Like it or not, but SNC Lavalin will play a vital role in the construction of that new world.

BIO: Matthew J.L. Ehret is a journalist, lecturer and founder of the Canadian Patriot Review and the Rising Tide Foundation. He has published the report “The Time has Come for Canada to Join the New Silk Road” and three volumes of the Untold History of Canada (available on untoldhistory.canadianpatriot.org). He can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com.