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Liberals fire back at Scheer’s confidence over libel lawsuit threat

Liberals are defending Justin Trudeau’s threatened libel suit against Andrew Scheer, arguing that the Conservative leader is not as confident as he seems in criticizing the prime minister’s role in the SNC-Lavalin affair.

“The leader of the Opposition pretends that he will not back down and he tries to make a show out of it,” Government House leader Bardish Chagger told the House of Commons on Monday.

“We know that is false because while he is saying that, he has already been editing online statements or erasing them entirely.”

Scheer revealed on Sunday that he had received a letter from Julian Porter, Trudeau’s lawyer, notifying Scheer of a potential libel suit regarding a statement issued on Mar. 29, in which the Conservative leader accused Trudeau of leading a campaign to politically interfere with the criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin and directing his former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to break the law.

The letter notifying Scheer of a possible lawsuit is the standard first step in a defamation claim, but does not constitute a lawsuit.

In the House of Commons on Monday, Scheer flaunted the lawsuit to the Liberals as an opportunity to get the prime minister under legal oath.

“Canadians are looking forward to the prime minister finally appearing under oath and testifying in a setting that he, himself, cannot control,” Scheer said, repeatedly asking the government to set a date for legal proceedings to begin.

While Scheer denied having edited or deleted any posts on Twitter, Chagger pointed to a tweet made by Scheer on Mar. 31, the same day he received Porter’s letter, reportedly commenting on Trudeau’s “lies” pleading ignorance of a conversation between Wilson-Raybould and Michael Wernick, clerk of the Privy Council.

According to Chagger, the tweet was deleted and a new one posted to replace “lies” with “falsehoods.”

She also pointed to another tweet she claims Scheer deleted, which was posted on Feb. 11 and had reportedly said there is “potentially criminality at play in the Prime Minister’s Office.”

Brock Harrison, a spokesperson for Scheer, said that the tweets Chagger referred to “are deleted and reposted for a number of reasons, usually to correct typos or to better align the language between English and French.”

“However, contrary to what Ms. Chagger implied in question period, Mr. Trudeau’s threatened lawsuit has nothing to do with these tweets or any other tweets."

With files from The Canadian Press


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