Ethics commissioner investigates… again By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Jul. 7, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/07/2020 (2145 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the vagueness of a politician’s answer to a specifically worded question is directly proportional to the likelihood that something requires scrutiny, then the federal Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner’s investigation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s role in the recently cancelled government contract with WE Charity appears to be a necessary next step in a process that has so far defied clear explanation.

The office of Commissioner Mario Dion is investigating the prime minister’s involvement in the contract that would have seen WE Charity administer the $900-million Canada Student Service Grant. The international charity organization, founded by siblings Craig and Marc Kielburger, runs education and development programs around the world and is best known for its WE Day celebrations staged for students who have participated in service-education programs in their schools.

The untendered student-service program contract was announced early last week and abruptly cancelled a few days later after opposition parties raised objections to the deal and asked questions about how the charity would administer the program.

The prime minister had previously stated WE Charity was the “only” organization capable of administering the program, which would have seen WE pay teachers for recruiting students to fill summer placements at participating not-for-profit agencies. Students were also to be paid (less than minimum wage) for their “volunteer” efforts. WE Charity would have received $19.5 million for delivering the plan.

Last Friday, WE Charity and the federal government issued statements saying the two parties had mutually agreed to cancel the contract.

Mr. Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, have long-standing connections to WE Charity and have frequently appeared at WE Day events. Ms. Grégoire Trudeau is also an official ambassador for the organization and hosts a podcast focused on its efforts.

The ethics commissioner’s probe will seek to ascertain whether the prime minister played a direct role in the contract arrangement between the government and WE Charity. It’s the third time Mr. Trudeau has faced an ethics investigation as prime minister — the first two, related to the SNC-Lavalin affair and a vacation trip his family accepted from the Aga Khan, resulted in conflict-of-interest findings.

When asked by the Globe and Mail whether he or anyone in his office directly contacted WE Charity about the government contract, Mr. Trudeau offered this:

“We knew from the beginning that because of work that has been ongoing between this government and WE that this was a decision that needed to be made by our professional public service.”

One can’t help thinking back to the similarly obtuse manner in which Mr. Trudeau answered questions about whether he pressured former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to intervene in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin on fraud charges. In that case, deflection by not-quite-denial proved to be a wholly ineffective strategy for avoiding controversy.

It’s entirely possible nothing untoward has occurred here, and that WE Charity’s decision to step away from the contract is a simple matter of saving itself from messy but undue accusations of contract-agreement chicanery. It’s also possible that Mr. Trudeau’s close relationship with WE and the Kielburgers had nothing to do with the awarding (and subsequent cancellation) of the contract.

If that’s the case, however, all parties involved would benefit greatly from a lot less obfuscation from the prime minister. Mr. Trudeau’s current line of defence will only reinforce for Canadians how his loose and privileged interpretation of conflict-of-interest rules has kept the ethics commissioner unnecessarily busy for the past half-decade.