PM SAYS HE WAS TOLD WE CHARITY ONLY OPTION

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified Thursday before the House of Commons finance committee probing the awarding of the student grant program to WE Charity to administer. Here is an excerpt from Trudeau’s opening remarks.

‘Ifirst learned that WE Charity was being proposed to deliver the program on May 8 when the (Canada Student Service Grant) was to go before full cabinet, Until that date, I had not spoken at all with my staff about WE Charity in relation to the CSSG. In fact, as of May 8, my expectation was still that a supercharged version of the Canada Service Corps (a government agency) would likely deliver the program. From my perspective, WE Charity hadn’t come up.

“As you know, by May 8, the public service had already concluded that WE Charity was the best option to deliver this program. … I received a briefing before the cabinet meeting and learned for the first time that WE Charity had been recommended as a partner and was on the cabinet agenda. I asked why the plan didn’t involve the Canada Service Corps. We were told that the Canada Service Corps wouldn’t be able to scale up to deliver the program in time.

“… Of course, policy staff in my office had been working with the Privy Council Office and other departments. They knew that WE Charity was under consideration. However, I never spoke with my staff about WE Charity or its proposed involvement in administering this program until May 8. I also never spoke to Craig or Marc Kielburger

or anyone at WE Charity about the CSSG.

“… My chief of staff, Katie Telford, also didn’t know until the briefing on May 8 that We Charity was being proposed. So my chief of staff and I were finding out about this important part of the proposal only hours before the cabinet meeting. Even given the rapid pace of work during the crisis, this was not the way things were supposed to go.

“We learned that there had been tough questions asked about the CSS proposal and WE Charity during the COVID committee a few days earlier, we both felt that we needed more time before this item was presented to cabinet,

“We had several questions that we wanted answered, particularly given my specific expertise in youth issues … We both knew that WE Charity was known to be connected to people in our government, including myself as I’d spoken at their events in the past. So we knew that the selection of WE Charity would be closely scrutinized. We wanted to make sure that the process and decision were the best possible in the circumstance. So I decided to pull the CSSG proposal from the cabinet agenda for May 8 so that further work could be done. … My primary concern was to make sure that the public service could fully support its recommendation. That without a doubt, WE Charity was the right and indeed the only partner to deliver the program.

“I was briefed again on May 21 and the public service told me that they had done the due diligence we’d asked for. They were confident in the recommendation in effect. They said that if we wanted this program to happen, it could only be with WE Charity.”