Evidence of meeting #70 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was donation.
A video is available from Parliament.
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
They would report to the board once the donation got through the screens of the donation policy—
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
It depended on the donation, because a lot of donations were never reported to the board. We would learn about them in the newsletter if they were significant.
NDP
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
Not day by day.... Look, we were—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Not day by day but quarter by quarter. Surely at a board meeting as sophisticated as the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation's, you would have reports from the staff to the board outlining donations. Surely your testimony today isn't that you would hear about it in newsletters.
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
The newsletter was circulated to all the board members, but no, we were a board who met twice a year for three hours.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Okay, I'll accept that, but in your time.... You shared with me that you have a political background. You had political experience prior, and we don't have to get into that, but I think you would appreciate the nature.... I think you referenced it in your remarks. You referenced political attacks, given the nature of the foundation and reputational risks to the foundation, given the namesake.
What policies did you have in place to safeguard the foundation from reputational risks or political attacks?
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
I can't recall the precise wording of the donations policy of that day, but we had senior people on our staff of excellent good judgment, and that, I believe, would be an important check on—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Mr. Johnson, I'm going to put to you, sir, that this is now the second time I've heard this line. The other one was from Mr. Rosenberg, this idea that you had excellent people and to just trust them and take their word for it. Unfortunately, in my opinion, it's what has landed us here, sir.
Having served in other capacities, just basic local NGOs, the level of reporting, the level of detail and the level of reputation risk, particularly relating to government money, not to mention $125 million of it, I would hope would require a higher level of diligence in reporting.
I want to give you the opportunity to reply to one of the issues that were put by Ms. Fournier, and it is around this notion of recusal, which was, I'm sure, in the testimony by her that you would have reviewed. Recusal was an issue she brought up. At any time, did she ask you to recuse yourself from the oversight?
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
Of...?
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Of the review committee. You had mentioned that you wanted to chair—
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
No, I had told her that I should not be involved in the oversight.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
But you were involved in the committee that decided how the oversight was going to happen.
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
No. We never got to that, frankly.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I'm sorry. Let me rephrase it.
Were you chairing the meeting in which the terms of reference of the review committee were discussed, and did she ask you to recuse yourself from that committee?
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
I wasn't asked to recuse myself from it, because it would have been the full board, but it didn't review the terms of reference of the inquiry or the review—
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Pascale Fournier stated that the mandate she wanted to pursue in the scope of the independent review created friction on the board. You'll know that she has agreed to submit to us, on an in camera basis, documents supporting information that she believes will substantiate some of her claims. Would you agree that there were instances when Ms. Fournier was personally attacked while you were chairing the board meeting?
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
No. I saw none of that. I did see some tough questions, but they were questions that she had invited.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
She stated that the mandate she wanted to pursue with the friction.... Did you have any concerns regarding the scope or the way in which she wanted to do the review? You alluded to this, I think, in previous testimony.
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
I don't recall having specific concerns. I think we've—
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
No, it is not.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You have a $145-million endowment that is now brought before the ethics committee under allegations of foreign interference based on a national news outlet reporting on a CSIS link, and you have not continued with a thorough review and investigation of this matter.
Chair of the Board of the Foundation, Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
I have not been involved, but I know that my two colleagues, who remain on the board, are working assiduously to try to move that process forward, but we're hampered by the fact that we don't have independent directors who fit my definition of independence. Therefore, some other mechanism has to be sought for oversight of the thing.
Bear in mind that the full board resigned just a few weeks ago. It was a matter of going back to square one then, having no independent directors—independent in the sense of not involved in any way at the time in 2014 to 2017. We had none of those directors, so it becomes—