Trudeau's Third Corruption Case Could Cost Him His Finance Minister

A timeline of the WE Charity controversy

The Canadian Press ·

Co-founders Craig, left, and Marc Kielburger, right, introduce Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau as they appear at WE Day celebrations in Ottawa in 2015. The Liberal government's

decision to have the WE Charity administer a $912-million student volunteering program has come

under fire due to the Trudeau family's ties to the organization. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

A timeline of events regarding the $912-million Canada Student Service Grant program, based on public events and statements from cabinet ministers, government officials, and WE Charity:

April 5: Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talk over the phone about how to help students whose summer job and volunteer opportunities were vanishing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Finance Department officials are tasked with considering options the next morning.

April 7: Morneau's office contacts the WE organization, among other groups, to get their input on potential programs.

So, it was Morneau's office that initiated contact with WE.

April 9: WE Charity sends an unsolicited proposal for a youth entrepreneurship program to Morneau, Youth Minister Bardish Chagger, Small Business Minister Mary Ng and Trudeau's office. The price tag is between $6 million and $14 million, and the proposal is to provide digital programming and $500 grants, plus "incentive funds," for 8,000 students.

In early April, Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discussed help for students looking for summer work opportunities during the pandemic. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

April 16: Employment and Social Development Canada officials mention WE in the context of the student program in an email discussion with Finance Department officials.

April 18: Morneau's officials raise the idea of partnering with a non-profit or for-profit group to administer the program. (ESDC officials suggest the same day that WE might be an option.) Morneau said it was the first time he was involved in any talk about WE and the grant program.

April 19: A senior official at Employment and Social Development Canada, Rachel Wernick, contacts WE co-founder Craig Kielburger. She learns of the April 9 proposal.

April 20: Morneau's office contacts WE to ask about its ability to deliver a volunteer program. An official's record of the call notes "WE Charity will re-work their 10-week summer program proposal to fully meet the policy objective of national service and increase their current placements of 8,000 to double."

Seems to me there was a Colonel in the military who went through hell for doing something similar to do with shipbuilding contracts.

April 21: Morneau approves going with an outside organization to run the volunteer program, but no specific group is chosen.

April 22: Trudeau announces a $9-billion package of student aid which includes the outline of a volunteer program paying students up to $5,000 toward education costs, based on the number of hours they volunteer. WE sends Wernick an updated proposal to reflect the announcement.

April 26: Morneau speaks with WE co-founder Craig Kielburger — but later told the finance committee neither of them talked about the Canada Student Service Grant program.

And, so, what did they talk about? Were they such good friends as to just pick up the phone and call each other out of the blue? It's amazing with all that's going on that they could avoid talking about it. But wait, read on...

Craig and Marc Kielburger address the audience during the WE Day event in Toronto on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018. (Christopher Katsarov/Canadian Press)

April 27: Volunteer Canada, a charity that promotes volunteering and helps organizations use volunteers, meets Chagger and raises concerns about paying students hourly rates below minimum wage and calling it volunteering.

May 4: WE sends a third proposal to Employment and Social Development Canada, this time with more details specific to the grant program. Finance Department official Michelle Kovacevic, who was working on the program, told the finance committee she received it May 7.

May 5: Chagger goes to a special COVID-19 cabinet committee with the recommendation to go with WE for the program. Morneau isn't at the meeting.

Diversity and Inclusion and Youth Minister Bardish Chagger rises during question period in the House of Commons

on July 20, 2020, to defend the Liberal government's decision to hand control over the $900-million Canada Student

Services Grant program to the WE Charity organization. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

May 22: Cabinet, including Trudeau and Morneau, approves handing the reins of the program to WE.

May 23: The public service officially begins negotiating a contribution agreement with WE, which would have paid up to $43.5 million in fees to the group.

May 25 to June 3: In a series of meetings with Volunteer Canada, WE suggests the target for placements through the program had gone from 20,000 to 100,000.

And did they not expect remuneration to increase 5-fold as well?

June 12: WE co-founder Marc Kielburger says in a video chat with youth leaders that he heard from Trudeau's office about getting involved in the volunteer program the day after it was announced by the prime minister. He later backtracks, saying the contact came the week of April 26 from Wernick, and not the PMO.

That first date would be April 23rd. The second date, the 26th, is the day Morneau called Keilburger, but didn't mention the program at all. That's astonishing! The day he says he found out, and the day Morneau called him are one and the same, and yet they never talked about the program!!!

June 23: WE is informed the contribution agreement has been approved.

June 25: Trudeau unveils more details about student aid. A government release notes that WE will administer the student-volunteer program.

June 26: Facing questions about WE, Trudeau says the non-partisan public service made the recommendation and the government accepted it: "As the public service dug into it, they came back with only one organization that was capable of networking and organizing and delivering this program on the scale that we needed it, and that was the WE program."

July 3: Citing the ongoing controversy, WE and the Liberals announce a parting of ways and the federal government takes control of the program. Ethics commissioner Mario Dion tells Conservative and NDP ethics critics in separate letters he will examine Trudeau's role in the awarding of the agreement because of the prime minister's close ties to the group.

The withdrawal of WE from the program was stunningly fast. Makes one wonder if maybe there was something someone was hiding? Something like:

July 9: WE says it has paid Trudeau's mother Margaret about $250,000 for 28 speaking appearances at WE-related events between 2016 and 2020. His brother Alexandre was paid $32,000 for eight events, and Trudeau's wife Sophie Gregoire Trudeau received $1,400 in 2012 for a single appearance. The organization says Trudeau himself has never been paid by the charity or its for-profit arm.

Margaret Trudeau, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's mother, greets fans at the We Day event in Toronto on Sept. 20, 2018. Margaret Trudeau has spoken at approximately 28 WE Charity events and received honoraria amounting to $250,000. 

The prime minister's brother, Alexandre, has spoken at eight events and received approximately $32,000.

(Christopher Katsarov/Canadian Press)

July 13: Trudeau apologizes for not recusing himself from discussions about WE due to his family's longtime involvement with the organization. Morneau also issues an apology; his daughter actually works for WE.

July 16: Dion says he will investigate Morneau's actions in the affair. Chagger testifies at the finance committee, saying Trudeau's office didn't direct her to go with WE.

Of course not, that would have been Morneau's office.

July 21: Ian Shugart, clerk of the Privy Council, tells the Commons finance committee there is no evidence to suggest Trudeau spoke with WE before the organization was awarded the deal to run the student-volunteer program.

Notice, no-one actually said Trudeau never spoke with WE, only that there was no evidence. Will Trudeau back that up?

Clerk of the Privy Council, (top Civil Servant in Canada), Ian Shugart told MPs on the finance committee that the prime minister and finance minister had to be involved in discussions over whether WE Charity should administer the program because of its size and importance. But he stressed that he was not making a judgment on whether they should have recused themselves from the final decision. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

July 22: Morneau tells the finance committee he just repaid over $41,000 to WE for travel expenses the organization covered for the minister and his family. (For family trips to Central America and Africa). The Opposition Conservatives call for Morneau to resign. 

The announcement came on the day Morneau was to testify before the Finance Committee. He literally wrote the check a few hours before the committee meeting. He had forgotten about a $41,000 dollar debt for years before suddenly remembering the day of the meeting!!!

Trudeau's office says he and his chief of staff, Katie Telford, have agreed to testify before the committee with a date and time to be set.

He apparently said he wanted to get this over with. Once again, remarkable haste to try and bury this scandal. Does it mean that there is still more to hide? It seems like something new and dreadful comes out every day. See below.

The House of Commons ethics committee also calls on Trudeau to testify, and votes to seek copies of records for Trudeau and his family's speaking appearances dating back years. Six opposition members outvote five Liberals to have that committee start its own investigation.

July 23: Conservatives and New Democrats ask Dion to launch a new probe of Morneau over his travel expenses.

What CBC/CP failed to mention over the past two days was:

1)  It was not actually WE Charity that was commissioned by the government but, according to Global News, it was WE Charity Foundation. The difference seems small, and they do operate out of the same offices, however, according to their own words, they are completely separate charities. Which means, in all probability, that you cannot hold one accountable for the other.

Trudeau gov. contract for $912M student program was with WE Charity’s real estate holding foundation

Who is WE Charity Foundation? They have nothing to do with charity work at all, but are a charity set up to run WE Charity's several real estate holdings, which, it appears, are in some considerable financial stress. WE Charity Foundations have no experience in doing anything like what they were commissioned to do, and have only been in existence for less than two years, lying dormant for some, if not most of that time. The word 'Foundation' has not been mentioned before today, that I know of. 

WE Charity Foundation — a shell corporation with no assets,

no history, no record of charitable work.

Charity lawyer Mark Blumberg said it was “shocking” the Trudeau government provided the $912-million student service grant to the WE Charity Foundation and not WE Charity.

“This appears to completely different than what was said by a number of government officials in different forums,” said Blumberg, a partner at Blumberg Segal LLP.

“It is absolutely shocking that the government would say that they provided a grant to WE Charity when in fact they provided the grant or funds to WE Charity Foundation — a shell corporation with no assets, no history, no record of charitable work.”

“WE Charity Foundation does not hold WE Charity real estate assets,” WE Charity said in a statement Wednesday. “This is incorrect. In its initial application to the CRA, holding real estate was initially considered and proposed, but this never took place.”

“WE Charity Foundation never held any funds for any purpose, and was created in part to manage legal liability. The CSSG program was one which had significant potential liability.”

So, there you have it. Trudeau and Morneau were attempting to slide nearly a billion dollars into the hands of a shell company and thought they could finesse it through parliament. Between this revelation and all the money that flew back and forth between the Trudeaus, Morneau and WE, we have what looks an awful lot like a money-laundering operation.

The RCMP needs to get involved here and follow the money trail. I expect Morneau will end up taking the fall for this, which he fully deserves, but all the corruption-forgiving Liberals in Ottawa will not have a problem with Justin Trudeau, Canada's acting Prime Minister.