Information & Ethics Committee on April 28th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 67 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of Thursday, June 23, 2022. Members are participating in person, in the room, and remotely via the Zoom application.

Should any technical issues arise, please let me know immediately. It may be necessary to suspend the meeting to ensure that all members are able to participate fully in the proceedings.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(h) and the motion adopted by the committee on Wednesday, December 7, 2022, the committee is resuming its study on foreign interference and threats to the integrity of democratic institutions, intellectual property and the Canadian state.

Now I would like to welcome our witness today. Appearing as an individual is Pascale Fournier, former president and chief executive officer of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and full professor in the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa.

Over to you, Ms. Fournier. You have five minutes.

[Pascale Fournier, Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

First, I should say that I didn't ask to appear before the committee. I received a summons to appear.

I am a lawyer, so my initial response, as I'm sure you can appreciate, was to ask the House of Commons to ensure that my duty of confidentiality and loyalty to my former employer, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, would not be breached, or that I be protected by parliamentary privilege should I be required to disclose confidential information that I had access to during my employment with the foundation. I received confirmation of that in writing, of course.

That parliamentary privilege is provided for by the Constitution. Accordingly, I will co-operate with the committee in answering its questions. Bear in mind that I had access to a considerable amount of confidential information, which is to be expected since I was the foundation's president and chief executive officer from July 9, 2018 to April 11, 2023.

Second, I want to point out that I, myself, am a former recipient of a Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation scholarship. I was among the very first cohort of scholars in 2003, so 20 years ago. I was a law student at Harvard University at the time. I was working on my Ph.D., and the foundation made a tremendous difference in my life as a researcher. My specialty is human rights, I teach the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and I have worked on the ground in many countries, including Iran and Egypt. Thanks to the foundation, I have travelled all over the world and been in close contact with various populations, marginalized women in particular, in an effort to understand the issues they face and engage meaningfully with our democratic institutions to advance those issues.

Ethics is something I am deeply committed to. This year, in fact, I worked with the National Judicial Institute to develop the very first mandatory podcast on ethics for federally appointed judges in Canada. Ethics is really in my wheelhouse.

When I was approached to become the foundation's president and chief executive officer, I was very moved, having been one of its scholars. The foundation changed my life for the better. When I joined the foundation, I was given a mandate to reform the scholarship programming for fellows and mentors, and I put forward an innovative strategic plan. Prior to 2018, the foundation's mandate did not include a strategic plan.

I toured the country, visiting every province and territory and inviting people from all sectors to participate, from private and public sector stakeholders to members of non-governmental organizations and the academic community. We held 23 events known as Future Forums, and then we implemented an innovative strategic plan. It included leadership curriculum for doctoral scholars to help them foster innovation and have a meaningful impact on society and systems. I carried out my mandate with great passion and conviction.

You will have understood that I am interested in ethics, and a key component of the strategic plan revolved around good governance. The foundation adopted a large number of policies to ensure good governance and predictability. As you know, the foundation has a government endowment of $125 million. That is taxpayer money, and that matters deeply to me. It's not a private foundation. It's funded by taxpayer money. Accordingly, the foundation must show accountability and adhere to good governance policies. Under my leadership, the foundation adopted a large number of policies to ensure good governance and make a meaningful impact on scholars' lives.

That concludes my opening remarks. I am available to answer questions. As I said, I started with the foundation on July 9, 2018. It's important to keep that in mind because the issues involving the Chinese donation and the three expected payments were before my time at the head of the foundation. I had to respond to a crisis stemming from a situation that did not occur under my leadership.

As you can appreciate, it can be very difficult to try to piece together something that happened in the past, when I was not there, when certain individuals were on the board and others were not. I had to piece together what happened from internal documents, in an attempt to figure out how I, as president and chief executive officer, could get to the bottom of the situation and fulfill my duty—giving the board members all the information available to me, so that they could perform their fiduciary role properly.

I would say that we, at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, spent February, March and April managing a major internal crisis.

Mr. Chair, I am available to answer the committee's questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Ms. Fournier.

We're going to start with our first six-minute round of questioning.

Mr. Barrett, please begin.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Professor, for joining us today.

Does the company, Millennium Gold Eagle, which actually made the donation of $140,000, seem like a real company, with ongoing business operations, or is there something peculiar about this business, based on your observations?

[Pascale Fournier]

In the process, in order for me to understand the past, my first reaction was to find the charity tax receipt that had been submitted at the time.

Two receipts were signed and issued by my predecessor, Morris Rosenberg. As soon as I learned of the two receipts, a number of questions came to mind.

The first receipt mentions an address in China, with the name of that company, but without the names of the two donors who were mentioned in the contract that was signed on behalf of these two donors—on behalf of the foundation by Alexandre Trudeau, and on behalf of Université de Montréal. The names of these two donors do not appear in 2016 on the receipt issued by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and signed by Morris Rosenberg, and the address was in China.

The second receipt in 2017 is different from the first one. The name of the company is there. The address is in Quebec, and the names of the donors are there.

I immediately started to ask questions about why we would have two receipts that were so different. One seemed to be international, with money that seemed to come from China, and the other one had an address in Quebec. The CFO, Caroline Lin, was working with me on that file. We tried to understand what was sent to the government.

There are two considerations. First, when receipts like that are issued, they obviously have to go to the Canada Revenue Agency, or CRA. My first response was to figure out what had been sent and what was different in this particular case.

Second, there were the annual reports from 2016 and 2017. The foundation is required by the federal government to submit reports. Annual reports have to be approved by the board, posted on our website and submitted to our partner, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or ISED.

In putting the pieces of the puzzle together, I realized that, in the 2016 and 2017 annual reports, which are publicly available, the company's name didn't appear but the two donors' names did. That means information was reported publicly, but it differed from the information on the receipt provided to the CRA.

I dug deeper, and I came across emails dated before I joined the foundation that were from an association in China. The association was asking staff at the foundation to put certain information on the tax receipts issued to the association.

The association said, “Please don't put the names of the donor. Please put that address in China,” and so on.

It's very important to clarify that I wasn't there then and I wasn't the president. As you can appreciate, I had access to only some of the information.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I would just like to ask you a couple of quick questions. I'm running short on time, but I appreciate your precision on that issue.

You made mention of documents. I'm going to ask up front. If there are documents, emails, notes, meeting minutes, receipts, any materials of that nature, or other material that is germane to our discussions today with respect to our investigation on foreign interference and the attempt at foreign influence by the organizations you've mentioned today, would you undertake to provide those to this committee as part of your testimony today?

[Pascale Fournier]

Look, as I mentioned at the beginning of my opening remarks, I have a duty of loyalty and confidentiality to my former employer, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, so my inclination would be to say no. If you are adamant about obtaining certain documents from me, that is your prerogative. There is nothing I can do about it. That is your right, and parliamentary privilege would then override my duty of confidentiality. Being a lawyer, I will, of course, co‑operate. My initial response is to not provide those documents, but if you insist on obtaining them and you pursue that option, naturally, I will co‑operate.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Thank you.

I have about 30 seconds left.

You talked about how the donation was reported in your annual report, and how the receipts were made for the Canada Revenue Agency.

Is it your contention that if the donations were not received from the individuals who were named in the foundation's filing with CRA, the foundation lied to Canadians in what was reported in its annual report?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Give a very quick response, please.

[Pascale Fournier]

What I can tell you is that I planned to ask lawyers to get to the bottom of the matter. In my capacity as president, I had asked what I should do. Should I reach out to the federal government, through ISED, to flag that the annual report contained inaccurate information? If incorrect information had been sent to the CRA, I wanted to know what my obligations were, as president.

Do I have to do a voluntary disclosure? What do I have to say to CRA and what do I have to say to ISED? I sought legal advice and guidance in order to correct the information that was made public to Canadians.

Again, remember that this is public money—not the donations, but the foundation's money.

It was my duty.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Ms. Fournier.

Thank you, Madame Fournier.

We went over on that time, so I'm going to keep that in mind for this first round and for the other members of the committee as well.

Ms. Hepfner, you have six minutes. Please go ahead.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Fournier, thank you for being here this morning. I know you didn't have a choice, but we appreciate it nonetheless.

You weren't there in 2001, when—

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

On a point of order, there is no English interpretation.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay. I've stopped the time.

There is no English interpretation. We're going to work on that right now.

Maybe we can test it....

Okay. We're good right now.

Ms. Hepfner, your time was stopped. Please continue.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you.

I was saying that you weren't there in 2001, when the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation was created.

Can you tell us how and why the foundation was created? What was its original mandate? How has the foundation changed over the past 22 years?

[Pascale Fournier]

In 2002, the federal government endowed the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation with the advanced research in the humanities and human science fund of $125 million. The foundation is living off the interest, so we cannot spend that $125 million. We invest it, and we use it to fund Ph.D. students from Canada and across the world who do innovative research around four themes: human rights and dignity, responsible citizenship, Canada and the world, and people and their natural environment.

The foundation is committed to leadership. How do we appoint mentors and fellows? Mentors come from different sectors. They are former Supreme Court justices, people in the business sector, movies, artists and so on.

They were were the cream of the crop from across the country.

The fellows are university professors who are also experts around these themes that should interest all Canadians. The role of the foundation is to bring impact and leadership training for these Ph.D. students.

I was a scholar for the first three years of the foundation. It had a tremendous effect on my life, my vision of research and the necessity to democratize knowledge, disseminate knowledge and make it accessible to Canadians across the country and around the world.

The foundation has been around a long time. In fact, it marked its 20‑year anniversary. In recent years, we were working to extend our reach internationally. For instance, I developed partnerships with France. Representatives of the foundation were in Spain, back in January.

The Ph.D. students are absolutely brilliant, obviously. We choose 12 or 13 people out of 500 applicants, which is a lot. The selection process is very demanding, and the bar is quite high. We want to make sure that their work has a real impact on the world. That means democratizing knowledge and making it more accessible.

In academia, which is the world I'm from, a world I love, students are highly specialized. When you're working on your Ph.D., you're dealing with a subquestion of a subquestion of a subdiscipline. What the foundation does is help the person to broaden their focus from a single tree to the forest.

How can you make your research accessible and go to the public sector, governments, NGOs and outside the university world to address the most complex issues that should interest all Canadians?

It is the extraordinary generosity of mentors and fellows that made that possible. Under our public interaction program, cohorts of scholars and mentors would go out in the field, whether it be cities in Canada or certain other countries, to explore high-level scientific issues and make that expertise accessible. We would equip them with the tools they needed to democratize their knowledge. It's a colossal undertaking, and we were able to offer them an extraordinary amount of support.

I can speak to my first three years at the foundation, which were incredible, and the last five years, which were equally incredible. In November, we celebrated the foundation's 20th anniversary, and more than 200 people attended. There were about 450 alumni as well as people with very impressive careers who had worked with the scholars.

I, myself, did a Ph.D. That can be a very solitary path. It's just you staring at a blank sheet, writing your thesis on your own with a small committee of supervisors to turn to. Then, all of a sudden, you have the support of the foundation, and it's like this caring family putting its loving arms around you.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

That's a fantastic answer. I occasionally like to listen to the Peter Mansbridge podcast during my commute, and I think this topic came up during one discussion. Chantal Hébert, a very respected, long-time journalist, talked about her experience. She disclosed that she participated in the program, and she saw how much good it did.

What other sorts of people would you say are involved in these programs? Perhaps you can reflect a bit more on it, because you said it really changed your life as a researcher. I'd like to hear more about that impact.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Can you do it in about 45 seconds, please?

[Pascale Fournier]

In 45 seconds, that will be hard.

I did my Ph.D. on issues of human rights and women's rights in the Middle East. It allowed me to go into the field to teach women's rights in Iran, for instance, which was thanks to the foundation, but taking risks, and serious risks, going there and building relationships and partnerships, I would say, with different groups, in order to understand that despite our differences as human beings all over the world, there's a lot that we have in common. If we work with good faith and good intentions, together we can do great things. The foundation allowed me to dream big and to build an ethical platform for the future, when I became a university professor and taught the Canadian charter, accessibility to justice and so on.

I was very proud and privileged to bring that back to the foundation, and to make sure we had a strategic plan that would protect the foundation and policies that would ensure that governance was good governance, and that we could correct the past, whether something happened or not. I am a firm believer in transparency.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you. One of the worst jobs in being chair is having to cut people off.

We extended in the first and second rounds, and I will continue that courtesy for Mr. Villemure and Mr. Green.

Mr. Villemure, you have six minutes, possibly a bit more. Go ahead.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Fournier, thank you for being here today.

Can you describe the circumstances of your resignation from your position as president and chief executive officer of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation?

[Pascale Fournier]

Yes. As I mentioned, the crisis hit. I read an article that appeared in The Globe and Mail on February 28 about possible interference and a donation to the foundation for reasons other than simply organizing conferences on China.

In response to the situation, I immediately called an emergency meeting of my executive committee, which represents the board. In our efforts to find a solution, one of the questions we asked was whether the money should be returned, and that's exactly what we recommended.

Keep in mind that this happened before my time as president of the foundation, so I had to try to piece together the puzzle.

I wanted to return the money. We sent a cheque signed by two members of the board, and they are still on the board. The cheque was sent back to us. After that, I kept digging, together with my chief operating officer, Caroline Lin, to figure out whether there was a problem.

The addresses seemed to be different and the receipts weren't the same, so I was trying to figure out what was going on.

In the course of my digging, I realized something that I had not been aware of for the first four years of my mandate, an association based in China had been in contact with foundation staff, and the correspondence wasn't about organizing conferences on China. From what I could gather—and I have to tell you, I didn't see everything—the association appeared to be giving clear instructions as to what should appear on the receipts issued by the foundation. That struck me as very odd and troubling.

As I said, I also realized that the address was in China, but the annual report indicated that the donation was made in Canada. The reality was that the tax receipt clearly indicated that the donation had come from China.

At that point, all kinds of things did not make sense to me. I wanted to get to the bottom of the matter and, above all, I wanted to know how I, as the foundation's president, should handle things with the federal government and the CRA. I had an obligation to report the inaccuracies and rectify the information that had been provided previously.

I brought in lawyers to ask them six questions that I had prepared in my capacity as the foundation's president. That's very important. I was going to stay another two years at the foundation. My term was ending on July 9, and I had already signed on for another two years, thanks to the tremendous confidence placed in me by the board.

I was prepared to stay provided that I be allowed to find out what happened and seek a special legal opinion that would be confidential. I wasn't planning on disclosing anything publicly, but I wanted to be able to shed light on all these things that didn't seem to add up and on the emails sent by the association based in China.

That's how I wanted to move forward, but it caused friction among the board members in terms of the type of mandate I should be given. I was looking for a broad mandate and the ability to examine six questions that would help me get to the bottom of things. The friction on the board, however, led to a breakdown in the relationship of trust, and eight people ended up resigning at the same time I did, on April 10, which was Easter Monday. The relationship of trust had broken down.

In conclusion, I would say that getting to the truth hinges on the independence of the investigative process. I wanted to seek the expertise of a law firm and an accounting firm. My chief operating officer, Caroline Lin, and I had uncovered a lot of information, and we just wanted to hand that information over to the lawyers and accountants, take ourselves out of the process and encourage the people who were on the committees at the time to recuse themselves. If they stayed on, even just to establish the parameters of the mandate, it could taint the very process. A reporter would have been able to say that the process wasn't completely independent.

I am here before you, before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

I wanted to protect the foundation, so that our investigative process could not be attacked by saying that people who were still on the board, including audit committee chairs and treasurers, should recuse themselves. I had obtained legal suggestions to ensure that this kind of recusal took place before we started the process. This was also the wish of the eight resigning board members. All the friction was around that process, both the scope of the term and who was to recuse themselves.

[René Villemure, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I have one last very brief question. Were you intimidated in the course of your duties or have you been threatened with legal action?

[Pascale Fournier]

There was no mention of any legal action being taken against me. The meetings we had on the board were very heated. There were some comments made about me that several board members and I felt were not justified. It was said that I may have been acting in bad faith in wanting to ensure that certain individuals recused themselves.

I am an attorney and I also received legal advice. I had nothing but good intentions to protect the foundation. I am an ethics specialist. As I mentioned to you, this year I did the podcast for the appointment of judges across the country, with two Court of Appeal judges, in this case in Quebec and Manitoba. I am very familiar with what is required. Often, more is required to make a process unassailable. Recusing yourself is very important. It protects the process and it protected me as well, because at that point, all I had to do with my operations manager, who resigned the same day I did...

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Ms. Fournier and Mr. Villemure.

Mr. Green, you're next, for probably about 23 minutes now.