CHARITY PAID PM’S FAMILY
Big bucks for wife, mother, brother
Justin Trudeau’s wife, mother and brother have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in total speaking fees from the WE organization, contradicting an earlier claim by the group that no member of the Trudeau family had been paid for their work.
The WE organization confirmed it had paid $312,000 to Margaret Trudeau, the prime minister’s mother, for 28 speaking engagements since 2016, according to information first revealed by CANADALAND.
WE also says it paid $40,000 for eight appearances in 2017-2018 to Trudeau’s brother, Alexandre “Sacha” Trudeau, and $1,400 for a single appearance to Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, back in 2012 (while her husband was an MP, but not yet leader of the Liberal Party). All these amounts include a 20 per cent commission to their speaking agency.
Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet demanded Trudeau temporarily step aside from his role as prime minister and hand over the reins of government to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland until all remaining questions surrounding WE Charity and the Trudeau government are answered.
“The nature of the allegations, the importance of the sums in play, the blatant appearance of conflict of interest, the possibility … that there are criminal investigations on this file in the future, make it impossible for the prime minister to continue in his functions,” Blanchet said during a scrum in Rivière-du-loup, Que. He said that it would not be appropriate to call for Trudeau’s resignation in the middle of a pandemic.
“When one holds a function as important as that of prime minister, you have an obligation to be above all suspicions. And this would not be the first time that Trudeau woefully fails a probity test,” Blanchet added.
WE is the umbrella organization that covers WE Charity, which recently pulled out of a $900 million sole-source contract to administer a federal student volunteer grant program. It also runs the for-profit social enterprise, ME to WE.
“Justin Trudeau has never been paid by WE Charity or ME to WE Social Enterprise for any speeches or other matters,” the organization said in a statement. It later clarified that Trudeau had also never been paid for one of his many event appearances when the organization was called “Free The Children.”
The payouts to family members directly contradict previous statements by WE Charity claiming that no member of the Trudeau family had ever been paid for their work with the organization, minus the occasional travel expense offered to Sophie Grégoire Trudeau.
In its statement, WE explained that all payments to the Trudeaus were meant to be made by ME to WE Social Enterprise, and not WE Charity. But due to a billing “error,” part of Margaret Trudeau’s fees were actually paid by WE Charity rather than the for-profit division.
In response to a question asking why Trudeau had never revealed the fees paid to his relatives or corrected WE’S statement claiming they had never received payment, the Prime Minister’s Office said that he wasn’t involved in his family’s business.
“The Prime Minister’s relatives engage with a variety of organizations and support many personal causes on their own accord. What is important to remember here is that this is about a charity supporting students. The Canada Student Service Grant program is about giving young people opportunities to contribute to their communities, not about benefits to anyone else,” wrote PMO spokesperson Ann-clara Vaillancourt.
But that explanation did not satisfy Transparency International Canada executive director James Cohen.
“No, you don’t get to put up ‘won’t someone please think of the children’ as a defence from ethics scrutiny,” Cohen tweeted Thursday.
“How on earth is there no one in the PMO who thought to advise the Prime Minister to recuse himself from discussions on this? How did the PMO, after Aga Khan and
Snc-lavalin, not think to recuse himself ?”
In a statement, Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett said all of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers must now admit if they knew Trudeau’s family had been paid by WE Charity before signing off on the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) deal.
“Today’s news is scandalous. We now know that Justin Trudeau handed almost a billion-dollar contract to a charity that not only had close ties to the Liberal Party, but which paid his family almost $300,000. Parliament must immediately be recalled so that we can get to the bottom of this,” Barrett wrote. “Canadians deserve answers and the Prime Minister and his government must be held accountable.”
The prime minister and WE Charity have been embroiled in controversy ever since Trudeau announced two weeks ago that the government was outsourcing the $900-million Canada Student Service Grant to the Toronto-based organization.
At the time, he said the public service had decided WE Charity was the “best and only” organization able to run the program. To this day, bureaucrats have refused to disclose how many or which other groups were considered.
Beyond his mother and brother’s paid appearances at WE events, Justin Trudeau has regularly hosted “WE Day,” the organization’s stadium-sized youth rallies. His wife is currently a “WE ambassador and ally,” hosts a WE podcast and attended a “WE Day” event in London back in March.
One week after the announcement and multiple controversies later, WE Charity pulled out of the deal to run the CSSG.
Two parliamentary committees are also set to study how WE Charity received the contract for the CSSG.