Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 26th, 2021

[Reed Cowan]

Well, it's kind of like I said. It gave me the enormous blessing of engaging angels in my communities that I served as a journalist and of knowing that people are good and that when the chips are down, people forget differences of religion, politics and sexuality and all of that, and they just see a father who's hurting. It meant so much to me to see that so many people wanted to be engaged in a good cause in the name of the little boy who will not get to grow up, get the scholarship letter, run the ball, get married, etc.

When we went to Kenya and we opened the school—that later I saw on the Stillman foundation they actually had opened 13 days before—it gave me a place to say.... In fact, I said at the opening of the school, “In giving you this school, I am giving you my son.” I don't know what more I need to say about that.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I hear you.

Would you recommend to others, Mr. Cowan, that they contribute to international charitable organizations if they are looking for ways to get more involved? Would you recommend that today in 2021?

[Reed Cowan]

Would I recommend WE Charity and Free the Children?

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Would you recommend that people contribute to international charitable organizations if they're looking for ways to help. Would you recommend that to people as a way of—

[Reed Cowan]

You know, that's the sad thing about this for me and all the kids who sat in those stadium events. Do you feel burned enough that you never give again? Do you feel burned enough that you just distrust activities overseas and across borders, and just get involved in your own community? I know that for me personally, I will serve the communities I live in and I won't engage across borders, because now I feel burned.

I don't know. I don't know. As I said in my opening statement, I don't know who the bad guys are, and in absence of that, people's time, assets and advocacy are too sacred to roll the dice on.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

What would you say was the most fulfilling part of your work to honour your son's memory?

[Reed Cowan]

It's that I get to have conversations with him at night when my eyes are closed and say, “You can see me, but you can also see the kids in Kenya. Send them a little rain. Send them a little sunshine, and maybe help the one who feels bullied at the back of the classroom to feel confident. Maybe save a life.” But the most fulfilling is that I gave my child a legacy—at least, I thought I did.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

I'm sure you did.

Would you say that you coming before us today has served a purpose?

[Reed Cowan]

I have fulfilled the obligations of the request to be here, and I hope that others who donated, who are in power to clear things up, will see a father who did not want to be here.

You know, my son's birthday is coming up. And six weeks after that is the day he left us. This is a dark time of year for me anyway, so if I had to be here, then the people who are in power—as I said in my opening statement—should be here, and I hope they will be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Ms. Lattanzio.

We'll turn to Madame Gaudreau now for her rounds of questions.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Good afternoon, Mr. Cowan.

You are very brave, and I want to point it out.

I have a few questions to help me go over what I have just heard. It's shocking, it's disturbing, and it makes me very worried about the future.

First, I would like to know if you have seen an episode—I believe it was episode 5—in season 46 of The Fifth Estate. It was a report entitled "The Price WE Paid". Have you watched it?

Yes? Okay.

I'd like you to tell us how you felt watching it and talk about the content of the report. Then I have a few more questions to ask you.

[Reed Cowan]

Thank you for the question.

I'm a journalist, so obviously I look at how stories are laid out and how stories are told. I felt like it was a softball. I felt like it gave viewers no sense of how much money has been raised last year, the year before or in the last 10 or 15 years. I think viewers need to know the magnitude of money that was raised, and I didn't get that in the report.

The part that hurt me the very most was, I believe, between the 20- and 30-minute mark. It talked about the water treatment facility that another group thought they had built. It is similar to how I felt about the buildings in Kenya that I don't know if we built.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you.

I may have misunderstood the interpreting on this, but I'd like to know, for the whole process and your great generosity in that regard, whether you had any contracts or agreements in place?

[Reed Cowan]

If the question is whether I had any contracts, signed agreements or written agreements, then the answer is no.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

When a charity gets this big, do you feel it could lose control? I always look at these issues from a lawmaker's perspective. What can we do to prevent or clamp down?

Do you believe we have a very important role to play as elected officials, particularly with respect to financial assistance when organizations of this size are involved?

[Reed Cowan]

I'm a big believer in line-by-line transparency, line-by-line accounting—when the money came in, what the money was intended to do, what agreements were tied to the money that came in and whether those agreements were met. It's just a matter of good faith, right?

I don't know Canadian law. I don't know your processes and procedures, but if they do not mandate line-by-line accountability—not only how much came in but also how much went out and whether what exists in the world matches the magnitude of the funds that came in, and whether the buildings on the ground match the money—and if you don't have laws and procedures for that, then I hope you do someday.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Cowan, we are looking into the issues of due diligence and conflict of interest, given that gaps have clearly been identified in that respect. I'd like you to know how important it is for me, and for all of us, I hope, to do whatever it takes to ensure that no one else has to face this kind of deadlock. It's an unacceptable situation.

To restore people's trust, we need to know about public funds and how they are spent. You mentioned reasonable confidence. We are humanity. We can save generosity and solidarity, and in that sense, I believe your testimony is very striking. I also believe that it's above the partisan games governments will play. With 338 members of Parliament, it's very hard to get a ship to change course as quickly as we would like.

Thank you so much for your testimony. Please note that we will work to correct the situation. That's why we're taking all this time to get to the bottom of this situation, which is costing taxpayers millions of dollars. It's being confirmed, and we're waiting for a report on it.

If you have any information—various documents and agreements—that could help us supplement your testimony, we would be very grateful if you could send it to us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Madame Gaudreau.

We're going to turn to Mr. Angus now.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Cowan, for coming forward. Again, I think all of us are pretty shaken up, especially for you as a father, as someone who wants young people to believe and to make change, given the incredible energy that you tapped into. We have to honour that. I thank you for your testimony.

I also recognize that you are an Emmy Award-winning journalist, so you're probably not used to having to answer questions. You're probably more comfortable asking the questions, but you'll have to bear with us for a minute.

I want to go to Mr. Kielburger's response to you that this was a mistake. It is possible that a mistake was made, that in their excitement about getting more funds they forgot to contact you. What does concern me is what we saw in the Bloomberg article, in which they talked about having Velcro on plaques and how this was a tactic and how staff seemed to think it was kind of funny. That was shocking. Then we had The Fifth Estate documentary that said this was being done with the water wells, the same kind of tactic of having multiple donors pay for the same waterhole.

We've had staff at WE tell us stuff was going on in the schools, but you have confirmed it. This looks to me like a pattern, a pattern of duplicitous relations with donors. When you see this pattern laid out, how do you feel that this organization can carry on doing this kind of work?

[Reed Cowan]

I have to be honest with you. When I left my conversation with Craig Kielburger, until hearing from all of you to appear, I had become confused enough that I just wanted to put it away.

That said, to answer your question about whether there is a pattern of duplicitous relations with donors, I feel as though there is, at least from comparing the Stillman foundation work and video with mine. How do I feel about it? I feel as though my son has been the victim of fraud.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

David Stillman was your contact person, trying to talk you through this when you raised these concerns. You dealt with Craig, but you also talked to David Stillman. What did David Stillman have to say to you?

[Reed Cowan]

I think David Stillman, board member Stillman, left the conversation feeling as though we had left amicably, but I felt that the conversation was like engaging with a dog barking at the mouth of a dark cave. I couldn't get a word in edgewise, and that dog didn't want me to go into the cave and turn on the lights.

I left disturbed, because I felt that what was said on the phone call and in the well-documented exchange was directly contradicted by an email that followed the next day.

Just to characterize why I felt that I was talking to somebody who I didn't feel I trusted, he said to me—and he's on their board, and I will take out the full use of the profanity—“Would I ever work again with Craig Kielburger? Eff, no. Would I ever want to work with Marc Kielburger again? Eff, no. But I'm here to protect my brother's legacy and to protect the work in Kenya, and that's what I'm doing.”

The next day I followed up with an email, saying that it was my understanding from our conversation that there was no love lost between him and the Kielburger brothers, so if his goal, in his role as a board member, was to protect the legacy of his brother and protect the work in Kenya, as he said, he could put me on the board. He could put me on the board and let me have a say, because I'm invested. He replied—and I'm paraphrasing here—that oh no, he loved Craig and Marc; and he didn't seem really excited about the idea of my being a decision-maker on the board.

When somebody says something one day and the next day contradicts it directly, trust is lost.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I ask this because when the scandal began to break in Canada, the Stillman foundation stepped up big time. They paid for supposedly independent audits, saying that everything was perfect at the Kielburgers' operation, although we don't seem to have anything on what happened internationally. It all seems to be very.... We get a small picture, and that picture tells us everything is fine.

The Stillmans took out full-page ads in Canadian newspapers, which isn't cheap. I'm just surprised that they were then the point person with a school named after their family, which was your family's school, and they were dealing with you.

In your talks with Mr. Stillman, did he raise any concerns about whether money had been moved around inappropriately? In their ads, they said that everything was fine and that there was nothing to worry about. Was that the message he gave to you?

[Reed Cowan]

He insisted there was nothing there. “You can do all you want. You can be ugly.” He used the word “ugly”. Again, I had a hard time getting a word in edgewise. I felt as if I had to repeat myself over and over. I felt that it was I who was on the defensive.

Can you repeat the question? I'm sorry. Did I feel that he had any concern about money?

He just kept insisting that there was nothing there. “There's nothing there. You're not going to find it. Craig and Marc Kielburger are done. They're done. Nobody will answer their phone calls. They're done. So what are you even doing here? This is just ugly. You're just ruining your son's legacy. You're ruining my brother's legacy.”

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

But he took out the full-page ads. That's why I'm just trying to clarify. In response to our investigation, the Stillman family took out full-page ads. They paid for independent audits. I'm just wondering if he said he had any concerns about money not being there or that it should have been there.