Charity paid Trudeau’s wife, mother and brother
OPPOSITION CALLS FOR TRUDEAU TO STEP ASIDE AMID CONFLICT OF INTEREST QUESTIONS
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 Yvesfrançois 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.