Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Rodriguez, Mr. Angus just asked you a question about meetings. He asked about a specific meeting, but I believe you said they tried to get a bunch of meetings before that and they didn't get them. Maybe after this meeting you could give us those dates that they tried to get in touch with Mr. Theis.
In response to Mr. Gourde, you said you were never involved in the WE process. Yet you're the minister who Mr. Trudeau sent to committee today. I'm sure you prepared extensively for today, but you may notice there's some frustration in our voices, because there are so many contradictions in what the government's put out on this. Our job is to get to the truth for Canadians. I just want to lay out the narrative that has been given by your government.
Mr. Rodriguez, on April 18 officials from the former finance minister, Bill Morneau, and other government officials suggested WE as a potential third party for a student service grant program. On April 20 Michelle Kovacevic, deputy assistant minister of finance, said in an email to officials from the Privy Council Office that the PMO was already weighing in on the WE proposal. Yet according to the PMO's released timeline of events, there's no mention of the PMO until Sofia Marquez, the director of government relations at WE, emailed a staffer at the PMO and referred her to Rick Theis, the Prime Minister's policy adviser. On May 1 Mr. Theis contacted Ms. Marquez indicating interest in a meeting by phone, a call that takes place on May 5 with both Marc and Craig Kielburger as well as Ms. Marquez.
Before finance committee last year, the Prime Minister's chief of staff testified that the 25-minute call was merely for general discussion before Mr. Theis referred the Kielburgers and Ms. Marquez to the ESDC, yet the PMO summary says the only topic of the call had to do with Rick Theis's concern regarding diversity of placement for programs, which is an issue that takes no more than five minutes to resolve, leaving approximately 20 minutes unaccounted for. Like, what exactly was in that conversation? What are we hiding here? What's the government hiding?
To make matters worse, Mr. Rodriguez, in response to Craig's follow-up email, Mr. Theis said that they should be in touch soon. There'd be no plausible reason for why Mr. Theis would think to be in contact with a stakeholder that hasn't even been approved for a relevant government contract—that is, of course, unless your government had something to hide. Yet Craig Kielburger sent a follow-up email suggesting that Mr. Theis and the PMO should help WE streamline the contribution agreement. That was three days before the Prime Minister was even made aware of WE's approval, according to the PMO's summary, and 17 days before cabinet approved WE as the third party administrating the Canada student service grant program.
There's no reason why talk of a contribution agreement should come up unless the call was more than a general discussion, Mr. Rodriguez. It's also critical to note that May 5 was the exact date that the contribution agreement, which was approved on June 23, applied retroactively, meaning that WE was able to receive reimbursement expenses from the federal government before the Prime Minister even knew of WE's approval.
With your government's narrative laid out, the math just doesn't add up. We have a finance official saying the PMO is weighing in on WE's proposal 10 days before the PMO's summary indicates any substantive discussion between WE and PMO officials; a 25-minute phone call that was supposedly very general but suspiciously took 20 minutes longer than needed; Craig Kielburger suggesting that the PMO should help WE streamline the contribution agreement despite the PMO not even being aware of WE's proposal until three days later; and Mr. Theis suggesting to Craig Kielburger that they should speak again soon despite your government's claim that it's the ESDC alone who handled the Canada student service grant program's crafting. To top it all off, the contribution agreement signed between WE and the government applied retroactively to May 5, long before WE was supposedly given the go-ahead to implement the program.
Mr. Rodriguez, I can't even count how many holes are in this plot, and here today you have given no testimony that lays any rest to the unanswered questions evident in your government's narrative. There are only four people who can do that—Rick Theis, Ben Chin, Amitpal Singh and the Prime Minister. My question is very simple. You are not one of those people. Which ones will be coming to testify before us on Wednesday? Could you please let us know? We need to find answers.