Ontario ends relationship with embattled WE
The Ontario government is dropping WE Charity like a hot potato.
The organization, which as recently as June 18 was heralded as part of the province’s response to COVID-19 and student well-being, will not have its contract with the province renewed.
“The Ministry of Education’s relationship with WE is ending. I am encouraging school boards across the province to halt all contracts and investigate existing contracts,” Education Minister Stephen Lecce told me exclusively.
Lecce isn’t able to order local school boards to cease dealing with WE, but he can encourage them to reconsider their relationship and some boards are already doing that. Toronto District School Board, the biggest school board in the country, is reconsidering its relationship with WE.
“There will be a review and evaluation of the partnership before our current partnership agreement ends in February, 2021 and before any decision to continue with the partnership is made,” TDSB spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz told this paper in an email last week.
WE has been involved with more than 7,000 schools across Canada — 3,200 in Ontario alone — over the past several years, but that is now declining as the international aid and youth empowerment group comes under fire amid a political scandal.
In many of those schools, including Toronto, the organization has gone so far as to help develop curriculum.
“WE Charity developed a comprehensive curriculum, a student guide, called Take Action: A Guide to Active Citizenship, offered hands-on leadership workshops in schools, professional development training programs for educators, and celebrated and recognized the service actions of young people at WE Day events,” the organization boasts on its website regarding the Toronto school board agreement.
Late last week the Alberta government walked away from a three-year, $750,000 agreement with WE that would have seen the group help with mental health programming and would have included WE Day programming.
Alberta’s Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said what she has learned about the organization in recent weeks is “shocking.”
Like Ontario, Alberta’s decision does not stop individual boards from working with WE Charity but the tone has been set from the top.
Most recently, the province of Ontario had included WE as part of a $25-million initiative to bolster student mental health amid the pandemic. Despite being one of the smaller contracts, the government still highlighted the group.
“The WE Schools Program supports positive mental health by providing resources to help educate young people about making a difference in local communities,” Lecce’s department stated in June.
Now they are walking away.
The Ford PC government had already reduced funding compared to the Wynne Liberal government. Each year under Ford, WE has been receiving about $250,000, a fraction of what the Wynne Liberals provided.
Between 2011 and 2017, the Wynne Liberals gave WE Charity, on average, $650,000 a year according to government figures. In the year before the last election, 2017-18, that amount jumped to $1.5 million.
Former Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne was a speaker for at least one WE Day in 2013. There have been many claims that the WE Charity has been especially close to the Liberal Party in Canada.
Media reports have said staff were encouraged to attend Liberal Party events such as federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s Christmas Party, a claim WE denies.
Government officials say they are concerned about many aspects of continuing to fund
WE, including the current political scandal and concerns about taxpayer dollars being used appropriately.