Gerry Lougheed
Charges have been stayed in the case of an Ontario Liberal fundraiser who was accused of attempting to bribe a candidate to drop out of last year's provincial by-election in Sudbury.
Gerry Lougheed Jr. faced one count of unlawfully influencing or negotiating an appointment and one count of counselling an offence not committed.
Mr. Lougheed – a Sudbury businessman who owns a funeral home and previously chaired the local police board – was accused of discussing a government job with Andrew Olivier, whom he was trying to persuade to quit the race for the Liberal nomination in the by-election.
Premier Kathleen Wynne wanted Mr. Olivier to make way for her chosen candidate, former New Democratic MP Glenn Thibeault, to be nominated unopposed.
Both charges were stayed in a Sudbury court on Wednesday morning. Vern Brewer, the federal Crown prosecutor who had been handling the case, did not show up to court to explain the reason for the stay. A stayed charge means the prosecution will not proceed for the time being. The Crown has up to a year to reactivate the case. If it does not, the charge will be dropped.
Mr. Lougheed has maintained his innocence from the start.
"It's unfortunate the Crown and the police, after almost two years they decide, for the first time, that they are not in a position to proceed," Michael Lacy, Mr. Lougheed's lawyer, said in court. "This could have been done a long time ago without my client ever having been charged."
Afterward, Mr. Lacy told reporters Mr. Lougheed was happy to see the prosecution ended, but that he would have a cloud hanging over him because the Crown had not fully withdrawn the charges.
"My client is obviously pleased that the criminal charges are at an end. We've always maintained that there was no basis to charge him in the first place. From that perspective, today is a good day for him," Mr. Lacy said. "But at the same time, as you heard me say in court, it's with a caveat that they're stayed for now."
He said the Crown and police had clearly laid charges "prematurely."
"It seems pretty clear today that what happened, in light of the stayed proceedings, that the decision to proceed with criminal charges was done prematurely, was done in circumstances where they had not either fully investigated the matter or fully considered whether this could meet the threshold of a criminal charge," he said.
Mr. Brewer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why the Crown stayed the charges. However, he said at a previous court hearing that the Crown is waiting for the outcome of a parallel investigation into less-serious provincial Election Act charges.
Chief Electoral Officer Greg Essensa ruled more than a year ago that Mr. Lougheed and Patricia Sorbara, Ms. Wynne's deputy chief of staff and the Liberals' campaign director, "apparently" broke a provision of the act that prohibits offering a person something in exchange for not running in an election.
Elections Ontario does not have the power to lay charges, so Mr. Essensa handed the file to the Ontario Provincial Police in February, 2015.
OPP Detective Superintendent David Truax confirmed the force has not finished that investigation yet.
"The investigation being conducted under the Election Act is ongoing. I am not able to speculate when it will be completed. It is separate from the criminal investigation," he wrote in an e-mail.
Det. Supt. Truax said the OPP had to complete the criminal investigation before moving forward with the Election Act probe.
"There are different legislative powers, search authorities, et cetera under different federal or provincial legislation. Thorough and detailed investigations do take time to conduct," he added.
The development will likely bring some measure of relief to Ms. Wynne and the province's Liberal government, which has been dogged by the Sudbury controversy for more than a year.
The by-election was called after Sudbury New Democratic MPP Joe Cimino unexpectedly resigned in December, 2014, six months into his term. Mr. Olivier, who had been the Liberal candidate in the previous election, announced he would seek the party's nomination again.
Mr. Lougheed and Ms. Sorbara both spoke with Mr. Olivier to try to persuade him to quit the race and clear the way for Mr. Thibeault. Mr. Olivier, who is quadriplegic and records conversations instead of taking notes, released recordings of the discussions.
"I come to you on behalf of the Premier … to ask you if you would consider stepping aside," Mr. Lougheed told Mr. Olivier in the recording. "The Premier wants to talk to you. We would like to present to you options in terms of appointments, jobs, whatever."
Mr. Lougheed also told Mr. Olivier he could receive a "reward" for quitting the race: "I hate to sound kind of Machiavellian about it, but at the end of the day, if you take the high road on this – what is your reward?"
Ms. Sorbara discussed possible jobs with Mr. Olivier, including work in Mr. Thibeault's constituency office, an appointment to a provincial disability panel or a post on the Liberal Party executive.
"We should have the broader discussion about what is it that you'd be most interested in doing and then decide what shape that could take," she said. "Whether it's a full-time or a part-time job at a constituency office, whether it is appointments to boards or commissions, whether it is also going on the executive."
Mr. Olivier ran in the Feb. 5, 2015, by-election as an independent. He placed third behind Mr. Thibeault and NDP candidate Suzanne Shawbonquit.
Court documents obtained by The Globe and Mail revealed doubt within the OPP about whether the discussions broke the law. When Detective Constable Erin Thomas, one of the investigators on the case, first listened to the recordings, she concluded that they did not warrant further investigation: "I … noted no offers of specific positions were made during the conversations," she wrote in a court filing last year.
However, Det. Constable Thomas and fellow OPP officers ultimately decided to investigate further after receiving a confidential legal opinion and reviewing previous case law.
After the OPP finished their investigation, it took time for prosecutors to decide whether to advise them to proceed with charges. In an unusual move, OPP Commissioner Vince Hawkes even complained to the Toronto Star last summer that the process had stalled.
Police laid charges against Mr. Lougheed on Sept. 24. They opted not to charge Ms. Sorbara.
Ms. Wynne stood by Ms. Sorbara throughout the imbroglio, repeatedly rejecting calls for her resignation.
The Premier's office, however, tried to distance itself from Mr. Lougheed: "Gerry Lougheed is not government or Liberal Party staff, he speaks for himself," said Lyndsay Miller, Ms. Wynne's spokeswoman at the time, in a statement the day Mr. Olivier released the recordings.