Resignation calls revived over WE affair, as PM skips special House sitting

OTTAWA -- Questions around the ongoing WE Charity student grant controversy and concerns about the Liberals’ handling of other pandemic response efforts dominated Wednesday’s special summer House of Commons sitting, as the Bloc Quebecois continued to push for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and two of his top officials to resign, threatening attempts to force a snap election if they don’t. While Trudeau wasn’t in the House to take any of the opposition questions, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and others in cabinet fielded a volley of inquiries about their ethical concerns with the Liberal’s approach to various COVID-19 aid programs.

Trudeau’s absence at the third of four of the pre-arranged special summer sitting days was noted repeatedly during question period, with some MPs noting they managed to make it into the Commons or onto the virtual video conference to participate in the sitting. “Mr. Speaker, I’m happy to speak on behalf the prime minister and say that he continues to view his role, and our role as a government is to support Canadians. We continue to be in emergency time,” Morneau said, as the opposition sought new information about the WE Charity controversy and the ongoing conflict of interest investigations that the ethics commissioner is pursuing, as well as new concerns about the Liberals’ handling of the federal rent relief program.

Both Morneau and Trudeau have appeared before the House of Commons Finance Committee to testify on the WE matter, which is one of several committees now either studying or looking to study the controversial student grant deal. The House Ethics Committee has asked to hear more from Trudeau on the affair and there’s also a pending trove of documents set to be presented to MPs in the days ahead, detailing more cabinet correspondence about the grant program.

Select other cabinet ministers have also testified, sometimes more than once, about this summer’s main federal political controversy. Telford has also appeared, where she doubled down on Trudeau’s testimony that he did nothing to influence the decision, rather he sought extra scrutiny because the PMO was aware early on of the perceived conflict Trudeau had in granting the now-likely cancelled $912-million student volunteer grant program. Further, as The Canadian Press has reported, the government handed responsibility for the program to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, but the Crown corporation decided to contract it out to MCAP, a mortgage lender that employs Trudeau’s chief of staff Katie Telford’s husband. The Prime Minister’s Office has said that CMHC independently chose to outsource the $84-million program and that Telford set up an ethics screen as to not be involved with agreements that MCAP stood to benefit from.

In what will be his last day in the House of Commons as the Official Opposition Leader, Andrew Scheer called out Trudeau’s absence and referenced a series of past Liberal scandals over his three years as Conservative leader. “Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has had enough. He’s tired of accountability and facing tough questions. He doesn’t want to explain why he paid off his friends at WE with taxpayers money. He won’t tell us about the contract that he gave to the company that employs his top staffer’s husband,” Scheer said. “So can the person auditioning for the role of prime minister today please tell us why the prime minister picked today, if he wasn’t going to show up?” NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh also questioned the government’s handling of these aid programs.

“What we’re seeing is Liberals, helping themselves instead of helping people,” he said.