Information & Ethics Committee on June 2nd, 2023

[Andrew Mitrovica]

Are you asking me?

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, sir.

[Andrew Mitrovica]

I made mention of this in an article. Chrystia Freeland stood beside Jair Bolosonaro, the former president of Brazil, and tried to overthrow a duly elected government in Venezuela. The columnists and reporters in Canada praised her for injecting Canada directly into the sovereignty of a sovereign country. When we do it, it's to be applauded. When another, bad actor does it, it's to be condemned. There is an inherent hypocrisy in that attitude that I think needs to be at least acknowledged, although it's not going to be accepted by, I suspect, several members of this committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Mr. Mitrovica.

Thank you, Mr. Green.

That concludes our first panel.

On behalf of the committee, and on behalf of Canadians, I want to thank all our witnesses for appearing today.

We're going to suspend for a couple of minutes to set up for our next panel. We'll be back likely in five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

We are resuming our meeting with our second panel.

I would like to welcome our witnesses for the second hour today. As individuals, we have Dr. Dyane Adam, former vice-chair of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation board of directors; Dr. Ginger Gibson, director of The Firelight Group; and Madeleine Redfern.

Dr. Gibson, I see, is on Zoom.

Dr. Adam, the floor is yours for a five-minute opening statement. Please go ahead. Thank you.

[Dr. Dyane Adam, Former Vice-Chair of the Pierre-Elliott Trudeau Foundation Board of directors, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Returning to testify before a parliamentary committee takes me back to some very good times I had on Parliament Hill, not as a member of Parliament, like you, but as an officer of Parliament, specifically as the Commissioner of Official Languages, a position I held from 1999 to 2006.

This morning, I will spend the few minutes you've given me to present a brief history of my journey with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. I have had ties with the foundation since 2008, when I was appointed as a mentor to two doctoral candidates who are now full professors at Quebec universities.

I then continued my involvement in the foundation's alumni network. I was vice-president of the network until 2015. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation then asked me to sit on the selection committee for the president and CEO in 2018. That committee was chaired by the chair of the board of directors at the time, John McCall MacBain. Pascale Fournier, who I believe you've already met, is the candidate the committee selected.

I subsequently had the privilege of sitting on the advisory committee on the review of the strategic plan, which was led by Dr. Fournier. The result of this exercise, which was colossal, I must say, spread across the country. It really set the foundation's programs and operations on a completely new path focused on servant leadership, inclusion and diversity.

In May 2020, the chair of the board of directors at the time, Patrick Pichette, invited me to join the board of directors. I was appointed vice-chair of the board of directors in March 2021 and a member of the foundation's executive committee. At that time, I also sat on the strategic advisory committee charged with selecting the scientific cycles for the 2021 cohort, the “Language, Culture and Identity” cycle; for the 2022 cohort, the “Global Economies” cycle; and, more recently, for the 2023 cohort, the “Canada in the World: The Future of Foreign Policy” cycle.

I was also appointed to the governance committee responsible for policy and good governance. In addition, I sat on the mentor and fellow selection committee for 2022 and 2023.

That was an overview of my involvement with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation over the past 15 years.

In closing, I'd like to say that I fully support the mission and values of the foundation, particularly since the program review and management policies developed under Pascale Fournier's outstanding leadership.

I regret that a governance crisis has precipitated her and the chief financial officer's resignation, as well as my own resignation from the board of directors and that of seven other colleagues and board members. However, I remain a member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation because of my status as a former mentor.

Thank you for your time. To the best of my ability, I'm prepared to answer any questions you may have on the subject your committee is currently studying.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Dr. Adam.

The next witness will be Dr. Ginger Gibson, who is joining us on Zoom.

Dr. Gibson, you have five minutes to address the committee. Please go ahead.

[Dr. Ginger Gibson, Director, The Firelight Group, As an Individual]

Thank you, everyone.

I'm coming to you this morning from Treaty 6 territory.

My name is Dr. Ginger Gibson. As my colleague just did, I want to give you some context of who I am.

I was very fortunate to be a scholar in 2003. I was selected by the Trudeau Foundation as a scholar to complete my Ph.D. research. I completed that and then years later, I became a director. It was requested that I become a director and a board member. I served on the Trudeau Foundation as a board member and a director for three years.

I apologize for not being there in person today. I had a loss in the family this week. With existing commitments and that loss, it was impossible for me to travel. I mean no disrespect. I'm very grateful to have been called and I'm eager for your questions.

I hold the Trudeau Foundation in the highest respect. I served on two of the student selection committees for the past two years. In 2022 and 2021, I was on the panel that selected the scholars who would be studying and receiving scholarships for those years.

During my time at the foundation—for all the years I was there, from 2020 to 2023—I worked alongside the other directors and I observed the work of Dr. Fournier, whom you've seen. I hold her in the highest respect. Her work was—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Excuse me, Dr. Gibson. I apologize. You're just going to have to move the mike up a bit. I did stop your time.

You have three and a half minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Dr. Ginger Gibson]

Thank you.

I did serve on those two panels and selected scholars from across Canada and elsewhere. The foundation is quite remarkable. The work of the foundation is amazing.

I want to comment on the leadership of Dr. Fournier, who led the foundation as president and brought in a scientific cycle that was unique. It allowed us to bring forward and celebrate Ph.D. students from across Canada and worldwide who are going to serve this country. All of the people who were selected in my cohort are now leaders across the country, and I expect the same of the scholars who are being selected now.

I saw no concerns in governance or leadership while Dr. Fournier was serving. I do consider there has been some effort to create some sense that she was not leading well. This was not the case in my experience. I left the foundation at the same time as Dyane Adam and the other seven colleagues who were involved. I was also involved in attempting to bring a motion forward to have conflict of interest declared of directors. When I found there was no path through, and a governance tangle and entanglement, I resigned.

That's the end of my statement.

Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Dr. Gibson.

I'd like to express, on behalf of the committee, our sincere condolences for your loss this week. We do appreciate your being here under these circumstances, so thank you.

Next, we have Madeleine Redfern.

You have five minutes to address the committee. Please go ahead.

[Madeleine Redfern, As an Individual]

Good morning. My name is Madeleine Redfern. I am an Inuk from the South Baffin region of Nunavut.

My work, past and present, is quite varied, stemming from business, law, politics and non-governmental organizations at the national, regional and local level. That includes the Indspire board, the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, previously on the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, the Canadian Arctic Innovation Association, Inuit Business Council and more.

Canada's national security matters. Our democratic institutions matter. My journey into security issues truly began when I was the mayor of Iqaluit. I did two terms for Nunavut's capital city. While I was mayor, I was confronted with a lot of security issues, on a municipal, territorial and national level. Security is a multi-layered issue in Canada's Arctic. For us northerners, security issues are not just military or even just democracy. We have military infrastructure such as the forward operating location and military personnel in our communities.

In my first year as mayor, Telesat's satellite went down. Iqaluit and the entire northern part of Canada—from Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut to the northern parts of the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec—had no telecommunications services. No one could call in. No one could call out. The Internet was down. You couldn't pay for your groceries or gas. You couldn't go to the bank; you couldn't get money from the ATMs. Planes were grounded, except for a few, which had to fly, of course, due to medical reasons.

Weeks prior to that, I read a report that stated that Canada's northern telecommunications system was at risk and that the situation was so dire it was deemed critical. Thankfully, Anik F2 was able to be brought back online within 22 hours. However, it heightened how vulnerable we are in the north when it comes to telecommunications.

In our communities, we are also dealing with energy insecurity. Several of our power generators are well past their 40-year operating life. As mayor, my community faced regular power outages. Power prices increased by 30% in those two years of my first term. The generators in some of our Nunavut communities have failed or been completely lost due to fire in the dead of winter, when temperatures can go down to -50°C. This happened to Pangnirtung, when it burned down to the ground in the spring—by your standards, still winter.

In Nunavut, we are dealing with over 80% of our water infrastructure in poor to bad condition. Our communities cannot build the much-needed housing or other buildings until the water systems are fixed or replaced.

My first water crisis happened in the first year of my term, when the water main broke in February. The city's senior administrative officer and the director of public works knocked on my door at 4 a.m. to inform me that, despite best efforts, for many hours, our staff and contractors had been struggling to fix the broken pipe. They were standing in rushing waste water in extremely cold temperatures, trying desperately to fix the pipe to save our precious water. We rely on a small nearby lake for our water reservoir, and the water we have in that lake in November has to last for the entire winter and spring.

Iqaluit is now in its sixth year of a local state of emergency because of the lack of adequate water. We're watching and living the collapse of our existing water infrastructure with continuous pipe breakages. Only two years ago, the city also faced an additional local state of emergency when our water was contaminated by fuel and the military was called in to assist.

Our northern leaders must deal with security issues from the local level to the national level. That's part of the work we do. You learn quickly to adopt a security mindset. I established a pretty good relationship with the police force, the Canadian Rangers and the military, including Joint Task Force North. I had to scale up my knowledge on disaster risk prevention and response.

Most of our vulnerabilities and security threats come from inadequate government policies and the lack of appropriate investment in our communities' infrastructure. What I also learned is that the type of infrastructure we need is the same as what is needed in the mines and by our military: telecommunications, energy and transportation.

I have made it my life's work to work on the intersection of sustainable development and security in the Arctic region and to understand the transformative potential of new technologies. Unfortunately, too often, government policies, programs and investment decisions for decades have contributed to our very real vulnerabilities, not just with respect to infrastructure but also our economic vulnerabilities.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Ms. Redfern, we're 40 seconds over five minutes. I'm giving you extra time because the other witnesses were short.

Can you conclude?

[Madeleine Redfern]

Yes. I will conclude.

As mayor, I was offered free trips to China. I saw other Canadian leaders, business people, indigenous and municipal leaders, take those free trips. I'm concerned about their independence and the implications of foreign investment, especially in critical infrastructure and critical mines.

There remains fundamental risk to Canada's Arctic security due to government policies, funding programs and inadequate investments, often made by transient or distant bureaucracy, that put our national security at risk even at the local level.

We must do better. We need Canada to invest and seek to develop an Arctic strategy that attracts Canadian private sector and pension funds investment to redirect the billions of dollars that are invested in China into our north. We are a good investment.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Thank you, Ms. Redfern.

One of the jobs I hate as committee chair is cutting people off, but we are dealing with a time crunch.

For the benefit of the members, we should be able to get through two rounds of five minutes and then two and a half minutes, similar to the first panel.

We're going to start with Mr. Barrett for six minutes.

Go ahead, Mr. Barrett.

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

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you to the three witnesses who joined us today. I appreciate that it's an imposition accepting the invitation of the committee with all that life has to offer. Of course, I echo the chair's sympathies to our witness who is joining us online.

Dr. Adam, I'd like to ask you about the March 20 information meeting of the board, where Mr. Alexandre Trudeau spoke about the $140,000 donation. I'd like to know if Mr. Trudeau indicated his knowledge that the China Cultural Industry Association was involved in that donation.

[Dr. Dyane Adam]

As I recall—I'm trying to go back in time—he did speak to the effect that he was directly involved in that particular donation and that he was aware of the implication of this association and also the donors. We had proof of that in the sense that there were photos of him with the particular donors. That's what I can recall from that time.

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

Do you recall why there was a strong reaction to that?

[Dr. Dyane Adam]

First of all, I can speak for myself. I think that's the best. We were online, which makes it difficult to see the reactions, as you know. I remember that, first of all, I had questions as to why Mr. Trudeau signed that particular donation, because normally—according to the policy—it would have been the CFO who should have done that.

Let's say it was too close for comfort, in the sense that already we had the name of Trudeau in our foundation, even though it's public funds, even though this foundation is not partisan. As you know, our current Prime Minister is the son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and so is Alexandre. In a context like that, I felt that we were in a situation where we had to mitigate the risk, because it's not the best position to be in for a foundation to be perceived as having issues like links to politics or the government.

I personally felt uncomfortable with that.

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

Are you aware of the existence of any recordings that contextualized fallout from this event that any members of the board were in possession of?

[Dr. Dyane Adam]

Recordings? I'm not sure if that meeting was recorded, I must say.

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

Were there recordings of conversations following the meeting?

[Dr. Dyane Adam]

Not for that meeting, no.

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

Thank you.

Were there issues raised about Mr. Alexandre Trudeau's vacations to the Aga Khan's private estate and the subsequent fallout or follow-ups that occurred with the board?

[Dr. Dyane Adam]

This was never addressed at any meetings.