Sudbury bribery trial: As prosecution rests, defence teams to argue charges should be tossed out

The prosecution in the Sudbury bribery trial rested its case Wednesday morning — and the defence teams are now preparing to argue that the government lawyers failed to prove any of the charges that have become a major scandal for the Ontario Liberal Party.

The defence teams moved for a directed verdict acquitting their clients of all charges. That  means that if their joint arguments are successful, the case would be tossed out before the defence would call any witnesses. If they're unsuccessful, the lawyers will have the opportunity to proceed with their defence.

The case will be back in court Oct. 10 with oral arguments on the motion, with written arguments submitted to the judge in advance.

Here’s a rundown of where things stand at the end of the Crown’s case.

The Thibeault-related charge

Pat Sorbara (pictured above), who was the Liberals' campaign director and premier’s deputy chief of staff, is accused of inducing Glenn Thibeault to become the Ontario Liberal candidate in the Sudbury 2015 byelection with a bribe. The Crown alleges that the bribe was jobs for two men who were working in Thibeault’s constituency office at the time, as he was then an NDP MP.

The jobs in question were temporary paid positions on his Liberal byelection campaign, for which they were paid around a couple of thousand dollars each.

Whether that legally constitutes a bribe is before the court.

As for the court of public opinion, this part of the case looks different now than it appeared months ago, when the substance of the alleged bribe wasn’t publicly known, but was the source of much speculation around Queen’s Park.

The court case has shown that the alleged bribe to induce Thibeault to become a candidate was that two men who worked for him — Brian Band and Darrell Marsh — would receive "jobs" that were less lucrative and less secure than the ones they already had. If Thibeault had decided against switching to the Liberals, those two men would have had no reason to leave the stable, paying jobs they had in the NDP constituency office.

Thibeault is not charged and the only benefit he is alleged to have personally received, related to the bribery charge, was that two men he trusted would work on his campaign, and both testified they were prepared to do that for free as volunteers.

The Crown’s evidence for the charge includes emails Thibeault and Sorbara exchanged on Dec. 11, 2014 — the same day he had agreed to become the Liberal candidate — that reference “commitments that were made.”

Thibeault testified that paid campaign jobs for his staffers were one of the commitments he was referring to in his email — however, on cross examination, he said “no promises were made” about that commitment before he was the candidate.

Instead, he testified that Sorbara had only told him that arranging the paid jobs was “doable.” She had made him a commitment that the Liberals would make sure he had a professionally run, well-funded campaign, and paid jobs were part of that, he said.

Questions about the $3,500 in “income replacement” he received during the campaign, to make up for the MP's salary he lost when he resigned to run for the Liberals, and yet more questions about whether he sought a guarantee he’d get a cabinet post as a condition of running (which he has denied doing) have made up a large part of the testimony and the media coverage of the case. However, they aren’t the basis for any charge.

The Olivier-related charge

Sorbara and Gerry Lougheed Jr., a prominent Sudbury Liberal fundraiser, are alleged to have offered Andrew Olivier — a former Liberal candidate — a bribe, in the form of a job, to induce him not to seek the Liberal nomination in the byelection, and to endorse Thibeault instead.

The main evidence for the charge is conversations each had with Olivier, which he recorded. In those conversations, the accused made references to potential jobs for Olivier, in the context of asking him to step aside, the Crown alleges.

However, the defence teams have argued that the bribery charge under the Election Act doesn’t apply, as it refers to bribing someone to be, or not to be, a “candidate” in an election, whereas the facts of the case relate to being a candidate in a Liberal nomination contest.

Michael Lacy, Lougheed’s lawyer, argued on the first day of the trial that the Crown’s case “requires proof that Mr. Olivier was a candidate for the Liberal Party … or was to be the Ontario Liberal Party candidate for the pending byelection that ultimately took place in 2015,” and that was not the case.

“There was never going to be a contested nomination process in this riding for that byelection. Mr. Olivier's wishful thinking in that regard does not transform him into a candidate for the purposes of the Ontario elections act,” Lacy continued.

Throughout the case, the Crown has called numerous witnesses — most of them Liberals, including Premier Kathleen Wynne — to testify about the political situation and the party’s nomination processes.

Court has heard that party officials thought it would be politically advantageous for Olivier to publicly support Thibeault. However, the premier testified that she was not prepared to allow Olivier to run in a nomination contest, as she was determined that Thibeault would be the candidate. Either he would be acclaimed as the candidate with Olivier’s support or she would use her power to appoint him, which is what she ultimately did.

Complicating matters, the Crown has indicated it may argue a theory that the accused had sought not only to prevent Olivier from seeking the Liberal nomination, but also to prevent him from running as an independent candidate in the byelection.

The Crown has not yet fully articulated its arguments on this issue in court. However, according to the premier’s testimony, the goal of the conversations Lougheed and Sobrara had with Olivier — now the subject of the bribery charges — were about keeping him involved in the Liberal party.

“He wasn’t the candidate and he was a member of the Liberal family; we wanted to keep him as a member of the Liberal family and so the only conversations that could’ve been had were about how he might want to be involved in the, in the Liberal Party going forward,” she testified.

But ultimately, Olivier chose to run as an independent and placed third. Thibeault, the Liberal candidate, won and today is the minister of energy.

To contact the reporter on this story: jscross@torstar.ca.