One issue is the $543 million. That was very problematic for many people in the charity sector, but the claim Trudeau made that this was the only organization that could handle this was phenomenal and angered many people, because it is just incredibly ridiculous. It's demeaning to the charity sector. The charity sector has huge capacities in people, expertise and other things, so for something like to be said was just offensive to the charity sector.
On the plus side, Trudeau did cancel the program very quickly, which I want to give him credit for, and the money that was given was brought back. However, there are a lot issues, including detailed information on 30,000 or 40,000 people, including some who might be minors. I don't know what happened to that information and to other very detailed information WE has been collecting over the years. I would be certainly a little worried about that, if this is a committee tasked with privacy, because it could involve hundreds of thousands of youth and young adults in this country.
In terms of the decision-making, the actual decision-making and the conflict issue is a big issue in Ottawa. Within the charity sector, the biggest concern was that this program was very poorly constructed. That's an ESDC issue and not a WE issue. Second was the choice of WE. The exact details of what the cabinet did are of less interest to the charity sector, I would think, but certainly so little has been done for the charity sector, yet so much money was going to be given to WE. It was a $60-million organization getting $543 million to spend on all this stuff.
While the charity sector usually gets 12% overhead costs with government grants, this was much higher overhead, potentially, depending on how the framework worked out in terms of the number of people involved and things like that.
I would certainly not see this as a good situation, and hopefully we'll get more answers in the future.