Finance Committee on July 16th, 2020

[Paula Speevak]

Received calls from who...?

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Did a member of the government contact you to ask you to administer the $900-million program?

[Paula Speevak]

No.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Had you been contacted to do the same work as WE Charity, would you have been able to do it?

[Paula Speevak]

There are two parts to my answer.

First, about the philosophical issues I raised, our organization feels strongly about that and would have wanted to ensure that the program design respected the philosophy of volunteering and was also meeting a real need within the non-profit sector for help.

Second, did we have the capacity, and do we? As mentioned with regard to the various components, we have not worked directly with students ourselves as an organization, nor have we administered financial assistance. Those two components have not been things that our organization has done in the past. Our expertise is with volunteer engagement and creating the pan-Canadian volunteer matching platform, which has the capacity for individuals to—

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Has Volunteer Canada ever managed a budget of that scale in partnership with other organizations, to administer an initiative or deliver other services, say?

[Paula Speevak]

Yes. Volunteer Canada has been involved in a number of large-scale projects that have been carried out in collaboration with others.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, both.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Would you have been able to administer the program, in partnership with other organizations?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Sorry, Mr. Fortin. We're over time.

We'll go to Mr. Julian next. Then we'll go to Mr. Cooper and Ms. Koutrakis. I believe Ms. Gaudreau wants in, and then Mr. Fragiskatos. We'll close after that.

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, Ms. Speevak—

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

The interpreter can't hear you clearly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

It's no wonder. I have my mike up on top of my head, hidden all amongst my hair.

Mr. Julian.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

We like to hear you loud and clear, Mr. Chair.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you for that, Mr. Chair. My right ear will take some time to recover, I think.

Ms. Speevak, thank you for your very detailed presentation. I wish the minister had been as forthright in laying out the timelines for the course of the last few months. It's very useful.

Of course, we hope that you and your family will continue to be safe and healthy in this pandemic.

We've learned a lot of things from this first meeting. We've learned that WE would be getting, as part of its benefits, up to $43 million out of this program. That's something that people were unaware of before this meeting. We've also heard that the proposal from WE came in exactly the same day as the Prime Minister made the announcement of the student grant program, even though public servants admitted they didn't have the details of the announcement. These are facts that we're going to have to delve into more deeply.

As you pointed out, Ms. Speevak, the alternative would have been to put more money into the Canada summer jobs programs, and of course the number of positions has been reduced, and that's something the government is going to have to answer. Why did it divert money that should have gone to providing jobs around the country through the Canada summer jobs program, which has had a massive funding shortage during this pandemic, instead of into this program that obviously is extremely controversial?

You mentioned earlier in your testimony your concerns about the volunteer provisions—the paid volunteerism and the fact these salaries or wages are actually below minimum wage right across the country. Is part of your concern the liability issue? We're not talking about volunteers. We're talking about students who are being paid less than minimum wage, which brings with it a whole range potentially of liability issues.

[Paula Speevak]

We have heard from individual non-profit organizations about their concern with engaging students in this program because of that, and some of them have been consulting with getting legal advice and also exploring their own philosophical views on the matter. There are also issues related to insurance and confusion about whether a volunteer is covered as an employee and how that works. We certainly have heard feedback on that.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Yes, I come out of the non-profit sector myself, and you can't simply run roughshod over labour laws or liability issues. There is no doubt this is half-baked at best, and those concerns don't seem to have been dealt with.

You mentioned that your first contact was on April 24. Just to clarify for the record, during the previous days when ministry officials were apparently reaching out to give advice before the Prime Minister made his announcement, at no point were you contacted by any government officials prior to April 22. Is that true?

[Paula Speevak]

That is true. We learned of the program at the announcement.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Even though you had put forward very legitimate concerns or suggestions about how to configure the program, both in a way that wouldn't be legally dicey and wouldn't put organizations at risk of liability issues, from what I understand, at no point, either in your discussions with the ministry from April 27 to May 19 or in your discussions with WE from May 25 to June 3, were your suggestions incorporated into the plan. Is that correct?

[Paula Speevak]

My impression from my conversations with the senior staff at the ministry was that there was an appreciation for our bringing those issues forward. Again, because it was confidential, I was not given information about whether or not they would be incorporated into the program design, but I had the impression that the advice and input was well received.

Similarly, in my discussions with WE Charity, there was an appreciation and understanding for the issues we were raising. In fact, I would say that the initial design of having learning and community exploration as part of the program seemed to have been incorporated.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

At no point when you spoke with the ministry officials did they mention...?

I ask because we heard in previous testimony that there needed to be a network across the country, both rural and urban. Of course, your organization has contacts across the country, and so does the impartial public service, which is how the Canada summer jobs program is administered. At no point did they raise concerns about whether or not, with this sole-source contribution agreement, overall federal laws around bilingual service, for example, or ethics, the Auditor General, and issues of privacy....

At no point were any of these things raised. Is that correct?

[Paula Speevak]

Those are not things that we discussed in my conversations either with WE Charity or the minister's office.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Okay.

You were offered—just so I understand, because I may have misheard it—a flat fee contract of $100,000?

[Paula Speevak]

Yes.

My understanding is that they had created a budget for a number of organizations that were being called “strategic partners”, who would be of assistance in different ways. That was the amount that was suggested. When that was suggested to us, again as we were exploring what the elements of the program were, we suggested that we get a better understanding of what role and the tasks we would be performing so that we could cost it out and see what was feasible in terms of compensation. That was the amount that was mentioned to us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We are going to have to end it there.