{"id":234092,"date":"2025-10-23T09:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/234092\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T09:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T09:49:12","slug":"poilievre-defends-rcmp-comments-denies-saying-trudeau-should-be-in-jail-national","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/234092\/","title":{"rendered":"Poilievre defends RCMP comments, denies saying Trudeau should be in jail – National"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre<\/a> defended his comments about the RCMP<\/a> Wednesday and denied saying former prime minister Justin Trudeau should be in jail.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not what I said,\u201d he said on Parliament Hill when asked about a recent interview on a YouTube channel.<\/a><\/p>\n

In that interview, which ran on the Northern Perspective channel last week, Poilievre called the RCMP\u2019s leadership \u201cdespicable\u201d and accused it of covering up for Trudeau.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the scandals of the Trudeau era should have involved jail time,\u201d he said. \u201cTrudeau broke the Criminal Code when he took a free vacation from someone with whom he had government business.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the RCMP had been doing its job and not covering up for him, then he would have been criminally charged,\u201d Poilievre added in the interview.<\/p>\n

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Poilievre was referring to cases where Trudeau was found to have violated conflict of interest rules, including his acceptance of a family vacation on the Aga Khan\u2019s private island in 2016, and the SNC-Lavalin saga in 2019.<\/p>\n

The RCMP investigated both the vacation and Trudeau\u2019s handling of the SNC-Lavalin file but did not lay any charges.<\/p>\n

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In the latter case, the ethics commissioner found Trudeau violated the Conflict of Interest Act by attempting to influence then-justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to grant a deferred prosecution agreement to a Quebec-based engineering firm.<\/p>\n

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The RCMP investigated but ultimately determined there was not enough evidence to lay criminal charges in the SNC-Lavalin affair. In 2023, current RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said he agreed with that decision.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Poilievre said he thinks there were some scandals during Trudeau\u2019s time in office that should have resulted in criminal charges. He cited allegations of corruption against a government-funded technology fund \u2014 without mentioning Trudeau.<\/p>\n

He also said his criticisms of the RCMP were directed solely at former RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki. That statement echoed one issued by his office on Monday.<\/p>\n

During his scrum with reporters, Poilievre was asked whether he was confident all his MPs would remain in the Conservative caucus by the end of the day.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYes,\u201d he answered.<\/p>\n

Those MPs met Wednesday morning for the weekly caucus meeting. Walking in, some deflected reporters\u2019 questions about Poilievre\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s a five-alarm fire going on in this country, with jobs, with inflation \u2026 so that\u2019s what we\u2019re going in to talk about,\u201d House leader Andrew Scheer said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course,\u201d Conservative MP Todd Doherty said Wednesday when asked if he supports Poilievre. He also asked reporters why they weren\u2019t asking questions about unemployment and the opioid crisis.<\/p>\n

Conservative MP Andrew Lawton said Poilievre has support from caucus and called his comments \u201clittle, out-of-context things from a podcast\u201d that are not a big priority.<\/p>\n

Conservative MP Michael Barrett said the statement from Poilievre\u2019s office made it clear that he supports RCMP officers.<\/p>\n

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis said Poilievre is a \u201cstrong leader defending men and women in uniform\u201d and he would \u201ctake no lessons from the Liberals on standing up for front line officers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservative MP Greg McLean said Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s government should hold Trudeau\u2019s government \u201cto account over what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Liberals, Greens and NDP this week all called on the Conservative leader to apologize<\/a> for his comments about the RCMP.<\/p>\n

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On Wednesday, government whip Mark Gerretsen said the comments were \u201cshameful\u201d and showed that Poilievre is not qualified to lead the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that there\u2019s no place in Canadian politics to be trying to emulate what we\u2019re seeing in the south,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre defended his comments about the RCMP Wednesday and denied saying former prime minister Justin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,36848,44,18277,714,920],"class_list":["post-234092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-conservatives","tag-news","tag-pierre-poilievre","tag-politics","tag-rcmp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}