PM fights perception of family ties to WE
Trudeau calls for further ‘due diligence’ on plan to outsource $544M program
OTTAWA— Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his call for further “due diligence” on a proposal to outsource a $544-million program to WE Charity was to defend against inevitable questions about his family’s ties to the Toronto-based organization.
Even though he spotted “red flags” in the proposal from the public service to award the program to a charity that has given his wife, mother and brother tens of thousands of dollars for fees and expenses, Trudeau said Friday that he did not discuss it with the House of Commons’ conflict of interest and ethics commissioner.
Instead, he said he asked the public service to “triple check” their claim that only WE Charity — and not the government or any other private organization — could deliver the grant program for student volunteers to make sure it was “the hard and cold truth.”
That way, Trudeau said he could explain the decision when questions came up around “perceptions” of his family’s ties to the organization.
“The extra due diligence I asked for was really about being able to stand in front of Canadians and to stand in front of critiques from the opposition that were undoubtedly to come,” the prime minister told reporters in Ottawa.
“The concerns around the personal connections that my family had were all around perception,” he added. “We needed to make sure that the public service and others could stand up and say, ‘No — the decision to go with WE was because they are the right organization to deliver this, and indeed the only organization to deliver this.’ ”
Trudeau was elaborating after his extraordinary appearance before a parliamentary committee on Thursday, in which he weathered questions from opposition MPs amid a controversy that has enveloped the Liberal minority government in the weeks since the prime minister announced a $912million grant program for student volunteers on June 25.
The prime minister testified that he was presented with a recommendation from the public service on May 8 to outsource the initiative to WE Charity, a youth service organization founded by Toronto’s Marc and Craig Kielburger. Trudeau said he had expected the government’s Canada Service Corps to head the program and that he was also concerned how the public would see ties that he and other members of his government have with WE if they awarded the charity a massive program.
That’s why Trudeau said he pulled the proposal from his cabinet agenda that day and asked public servants to goover the proposal again to ensure there was no other option. By May 22, Trudeau said this was done and his cabinet approved the plan, which ended up involving a deal to pay WE up to $43.5 million to administer up to $500 million in volunteer grants.
The prime minister and Finance Minister Bill Morneau — who said he would repay WE more than $41,000 for trips that he and his family took with the organization in 2017 — have since apologized for participating in that decision. The program has now been cancelled and Trudeau and Morneau are each facing an ethics probe over whether they broke parliament’s Conflict of Interest Act, a law Trudeau has already violated twice as prime minister.
Regarding his ties with WE, the prime minister said this week that his wife’s role with the organization — as an unpaid podcast host and event speaker whose travel expenses are covered by WE — was cleared by the ethics commissioner. But asked Friday whether he or his staff had gone back to discuss the proposal to outsource a massive government program to WE with the commissioner,
Trudeau said, “No, we did not.” and that his wife’s link with the group was “pre-cleared.”
The commissioner’s office says it can’t comment on any discussions with office holders about the Conflict of Interest Act. In a statement Friday, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer questioned whether there was any “additional scrutiny,” pointing to reports of problems with WE that “should have disqualified them from receiving government funding.”
Former WE staffers have told the Star the organization exaggerates its reach with youth, while the Kielburger brothers told the committee this week the entity laid off about 200 staff in March because of financial troubles during the pandemic.
Scheer also pointed to testimony from Katie Telford, Trudeau’s chief of staff, that an official in the Prime Minister’s Office spoke with WE on May 5 — the same day the outsourcing plan was endorsed by the government’s COVID-19 committee and that WE started working on the program. Cabinet didn’t approve it until 17 days later.
“It’s clear that this program was never about helping students. It was about bailing out the prime minister’s friends,” Scheer’s statement said.
Asked Friday why WE started working on the program more than two weeks before it was approved, Trudeau pointed to the Kielburger’s explanation that they were willing to risk losing money spent getting it started if it was ultimately rejected by the government.
“They knew how important it was to get this program out, and they assumed certain risks in going forward and starting to spend on a program that hadn’t yet been approved,” he said.