At issue in the SNC-Lavalin scandal was a new tool of corporate criminal law: remediation agreements. Introduced in 2018, remediation agreements allow corporate diversion and create an alternative to the prosecution of corporations suspected of criminal wrongdoing. This article examines why the federal government adopted and chose this particular new tool. Drawing on a wide-ranging documentary record, I argue that this reform was the product of transnational lawmaking and the ongoing influence of Canada's international commitments to prohibit and punish foreign bribery. The article shows how international criticism of Canada's lacklustre anti–foreign bribery enforcement record catalyzed cross-national policy diffusion and learning from other states. This led Canada to adopt corporate diversion, which promised greater enforcement, and also led Canada to adopt a form of the practice with legislative and judicial limits that narrowed the chances of any company—including SNC-Lavalin—of obtaining a remediation agreement.

The Canadian government is considering changes to its Integrity and Suspension Policy, particularly the rules governing debarment and when an individual or corporation can be precluded from public contracting due to misconduct. The reforms would bring Canada’s policy closer to that of the US. This article compares federal debarment policies in Canada and the US and examines the consequences of these distinct policies by considering their role in anti‐foreign bribery enforcement. This discussion reveals a disjuncture between Canada’s policy goals and practice, which suggests that the proposed reforms to Canada’s debarment policy are not as significant as they first appear.

The expansive reach of US prosecutions addressing corporate and economic crimes has piqued the interest of many commentators and scholars. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the enforcement of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”) against non-American corporations. The US adopted the FCPA in 1977 to ban the payment of bribes to foreign public officials to obtain a business advantage—decades before most other countries did so and with jurisdiction over American and many foreign corporations. More than 40 years after the creation of the FCPA, this article reviews and outlines a growing interdisciplinary research agenda that considers historical, legal, and political influences on the application of the FCPA to foreign corporations. In addition to mapping the contours of this growing research agenda, the article identifies several challenges for such research and proposes potential avenues for future research that promise to deepen our understanding of why and when the US makes use of its expansive jurisdiction to prosecute foreign corporations for bribery of foreign public officials.

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