TORONTO – There was no corruption, there was no conflict of interest, just a government and a prime minister working 24 hours a day to save lives and livelihoods during a pandemic.
That was Justin Trudeau’s message Thursday to Canadians, who for the past month have raised their heads from the grueling fight with the coronavirus to see a growing political scandal over his government’s decision to award a strong contract without tender to a charity that has ties to your family.
“Nothing in this program would in any way benefit any member of my family,” the prime minister said during a rare virtual appearance before the standing finance committee of the Canadian Parliament. “It was not in a conflict of interest.”
The highly anticipated session, which spanned 90 minutes, had elements of drama: heated exchanges, harassment questions, and even a blackout during a storm over the President’s house.
But Mr. Trudeau predictably remained calm, showing off his well-honed political talents.
The contract, made to WE Charity, was to oversee hundreds of millions of government dollars for an emergency summer youth volunteer program. Mr. Trudeau defended the decision to award the contract to the charity by posing as a long-time youth champion.
And he said he was following the advice of public servants to start a program that, like others his government has established, would help thousands of people across the country.
“We moved quickly to try to help people as fast as we could with as much flexibility as possible,” said Trudeau.
The question is: Was his performance enough to persuade Canadians that he did nothing wrong and discarded thorny ethical questions that have set the media on fire for the past month and reduced his party’s voting numbers?
WE Charity is linked not only to Mr. Trudeau’s family, but also to his finance minister, Bill Morneau.
Mr. Trudeau’s mother and brother have earned over $ 200,000 in the past five years for participating in talks with the charity. Mr. Morneau’s daughter works there, and her family has traveled abroad with the charity twice in recent years.
Both Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Morneau have apologized for not withdrawing from the cabinet decision. Both are under investigation by the country’s ethics commissioner.
But during Thursday’s testimony, Trudeau reinforced what others have said before: that Canada’s apolitical public service officials chose the charity and that his cabinet was given a “binary option” to accept the plan or have to abandon it entirely. .
The perception of a conflict with his family, he added, caused him to suspend the decision for two weeks and pressured the public service to “make sure that everything was done exactly right, because he knew there would be questions.”
Lori Turnbull, principal of Dalhousie University School of Public Administration in Halifax, was among the engrossed onlookers who blocked hours from watching the testimonies unfold.
“He got his message across: You want the liberals to be there to take care of you when a crisis like this comes,” he said, referring to Mr. Trudeau’s party. “For me, the prime minister left this meeting as a youth champion who made a small mistake.”
Still, the prime minister has already been twice violated in the country’s conflict-of-interest rules since taking office five years ago. The fact that he acknowledged a perceived conflict but did not recuse himself raises troubling questions about his impeachment, said Shachi Kurl, executive director of the Angus Reid Institute, a Canadian Vancouver-based nonprofit firm.
“In some ways, I think he did very well,” Kurl said. “But it doesn’t solve other problems. Now, we have to assess to what extent these ongoing examples of the prime minister not having good judgment will become a matter of voting. ”
The story has played out since the end of June, when the Trudeau government announced that it had awarded the job of managing the summer program and its $ 912 million budget to the organization WE Charity.
Two brothers, Craig and Marc Kielburger, founded the charity when they were teenagers. Since then, it has become a network of organizations that have built schools and wells in countries like Kenya and Nicaragua.
But he is best known for inspiring young Canadians to get involved in social justice issues through school programs and large concert-type events with motivational speakers, including Prince Harry, Malala Yousafzai, Mr. Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau .
The charity says that Trudeaus volunteered their time and was never paid, with one exception in 2012, when Mrs. Gregoire Trudeau received around $ 1,000 for a commitment to speak. Trudeau was not Prime Minister at the time.
Since then, Ms. Gregoire Trudeau has become a charity “ambassador”, speaking regularly at events and presenting a podcast called WE Well-being. Trudeau said Thursday that the country’s ethics commissioner had examined these roles.
But WE Charity paid Trudeau’s brother Alexandre, a filmmaker, and his mother, Margaret, the country’s former first lady, for speaking over the past four years on behalf of the organization at various events. The Kielburger brothers said that attracting sponsors for these events was their primary way of raising money.
On Thursday, Mr. Trudeau said that he had no personal relationship with the Kielburger brothers and that he had no contact with them about this contract.
In recent days, witnesses before the committee reinforced what Mr. Trudeau said Thursday: that he was not involved in selecting the charity to administer the program, which involved supervising up to 100,000 students who volunteered for jobs. public service.
We were supposed to have received up to C $ 43.5 million to run the program, according to documents released this week. But after the controversy erupted, the government announced it would withdraw the program, and the Kielburgers said they would return all the money.
The program is still on hold.
Hours before Mr. Morneau, the finance minister, testified last week before the committee, he announced that he had written a check to the charity for C $ 41,366, stating that he had not realized that he and his family They had not paid full fee for the two trips they made with the organization.
He also revealed that his family had donated C $ 100,000 to the charity in recent years.
“You don’t donate $ 100,000, you travel with a charity and you have a daughter who works there and doesn’t know there is a conflict of interest,” said Duff Conacher, co-founder of a nonprofit watchdog organization, Democracy Watch, which calls for a criminal investigation
“This is a story about how each government has friends, those friends help them get elected and promote them, and then the government wants to help those friends because they will promote and promote them more,” he said.
Several political experts noted that the committee has not heard any evidence that Trudeau is financially benefiting from the contract. If there has been any damage, it has been in the optics.
“Technically speaking, he didn’t need to recuse himself, in my opinion,” said Ian Stedman, a professor of Canadian public law and government at York University in Toronto, and a Canadian parliamentary ethics law expert.
But he added: “But speaking pragmatically, what he did was bad politics. He allowed himself to be history, rather than his policies. “
Canadians are generally happy with the Trudeau government’s handling of the coronavirus epidemic, which has stabilized across the country, allowing hairdressers and restaurants in most places to reopen and plans for the opening of schools.
But in recent weeks, as news of the charity has continuously appeared on the covers, Trudeau’s approval rating has dropped. It is unclear if that is a problem or the beginning of a trend.
“People are concerned about this, but they have a lot of other problems right now,” said Jean-Marc Léger, executive director of the Montreal-based survey company Léger. “They are concerned about the pandemic, the economic crisis, relations with the United States.”
The Kielburger brothers argue that they would not have made a profit from the contract.
Due to intense scrutiny over the past few weeks, many big sponsors have cut ties to WE (the organization called the decisions mutual) and former staff members have told stories on social media about the organization’s “culture of fear” charitable.
Craig Kielburger said the developing controversy could “destroy” the organization.
“Frankly, there are days when we want to not answer the phone,” when the government called to ask for “help,” he told the committee near the exhausting end of the brothers’ four-hour appearance earlier this week.
Dan Bilefsky contributed reporting from Montreal.
