Trudeau may repay money to New Brunswick charity
Liberal leader under fire for speaking fees
OTTAWA — Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau says he may give back some or all of a $20,000 speaker’s fee to a New Brunswick-based charity he received for an event last year.
He may give back more, but that will depend on the charities and organizations who hired him to speak since he was first elected to the House of Commons in 2008.
Trying to stem a week of criticism and questions about having taking speaker’s fees from charitable organizations, Trudeau said he planned to get in touch with every organization that paid him to speak and possibly refund his fee if the organization so wished.
In February, the Ottawa Citizen reported that between 2006 and 2009, Trudeau earned $1.3 million in speaker’s fees. Trudeau has said that he stopped taking speaker’s fees last spring when he considered running for the Liberal leadership.
“I have decided to reach out to all the organizations that hired me as a professional speaker while I was a member of Parliament to engage with them to find a satisfactory solution. I am open to exploring all options with them to ensure that they are satisfied with the outcome,” Trudeau said in a statement.
Last week, the Tories criticized Trudeau for taking high speaking fees for charity events even after he first became an MP in 2008. The criticism grew when a Saint John, N.B.-based charity asked Trudeau to give back the fee he took in 2012 to speak at one of the charity’s events that was a fundraising flop.
“They hired me to help make their event a success,” Trudeau told CTV’s Question Period in an interview aired Sunday morning. “I’m going to work with them and deal with them straight.”
He added: “Canadians expect more from me and I am glad to use what I can, to do what I can to deal with this organization straight and fix this.”
Trudeau said he didn’t believe he had violated any spending or ethics rules for MPs, arguing that nearly half of MPs have secondary sources of income, such as legal fees for those who are lawyers by trade. Trudeau said he didn’t use any speaking fees to help fund his Liberal leadership race, nor did he use House of Commons resources to pay for items such as travel to and from events.