In this case it is important to remember that the decision to prosecute and on what charges can be a political judgement because prosecutors have to consider the public interest. I can't see why the elected government should not have a role is deciding what the public interest is. The current system which makes any such involvement by politicians a matter of public record provides a good defense against politicians using this power to reward friends and punish enemies.
Is there any possible way of making sure that such involvement is part of the public record?
I am also not sold on the notion that letting SNC-Lavalin off with a slap on the wrist is in the public interest. If SNC-Lavalin were the only engineering company in Canada, then maybe one could argue that their corruption at least helped keep Canadians employed. But in the McGill Hospital case, they obtained an edge over their competitors by bribing a McGill official to the tune of 10 million dollars. If SNC gets off with a slap on the wrist for using criminal tactics to win a $1.5 billion contract, clearly the message to their competitors is that they need to start bribing officials too.
The idea that SNC-Lavalin is too important to punish smacks of the "too big to jail" mentality that prevented any of the bad actors in the 2008 financial collapse from facing criminal charges.
With the SNC-Lavalin case it is not clear what was said and the subsequent demotion of the MOJ is concerning so I agree it stinks. However, the simple fact of the PMO asking about a case and expressing an opinion is not, in itself, wrong. Nor is it wrong for MOJ the to direct prosecutors to use the provisions in the law to to negotiate a settlement wrong provided all of the instructions are in writing and made public. People need to keep these distinctions in mind as we get more information on what exactly happened.
And judging from the Andrew Coyne excerpt that was posted earlier in this thread, these provisions in the law that Reybould-Wilson was allegedly pressured to use to "remediate" SNC-Lavalin out of trouble were snuck into an omnibus bill last January. One can't help wonder if the "remediation" process in itself was invented with the intention of letting SNC-Lavalin escape their legal troubles with just a slap on the wrist.
Circumstances around this whole affair create an appearance of impropriety such that a full and transparent is required to clear the air.
-k