Finance Committee on July 22nd, 2020

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Ms. Krause, there is no question that we need to get to the bottom of this, but some of the speculation injures parties, injures reputations. At this committee hearing, I want us to stick as close to fact....

I don't care whether it's the Liberal Party, the NDP, the Conservative Party or the Bloc Québécois, speculation is not what we want to see. We want to get close to the facts.

I'll turn to Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Vivian Krause]

May I make one more very important point?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Let's hear it.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, we're now delving into stuff not to do with our committee. These are side issues.

You asked a good question, but we need to allow the members to be asking questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

That is correct. Thank you, Charlie.

Mr. Fragiskatos, you have five minutes, followed by Ms. Gaudreau, I guess it was, but now Mr. Fortin—one or the other.

Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would just add that the advocacy that it gets covered here is interesting, trying to connect dots that don't exist. It's perfectly legitimate to ask questions, but when we are tying the advocacy around youth voting to the political machine of political parties in this country, that's reaching a bit far, to put it politely.

I do want to focus my questions on the Canadian Women's Foundation, though.

Ms. Senior, thank you very much for your testimony. Could you go once more into the nature of the contribution agreement that you have at the present time with the Government of Canada?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, it has been your practice that if a member of the committee makes a comment related to one of the witnesses, the witness gets the chance to respond. While Mr. Fragiskatos' question to the other witness should obviously get a response, Ms. Krause should have the chance to defend herself and at least respond to Mr. Fragiskatos' comment.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

We will let her in, following the response to where he directed the question. I usually do that.

Go ahead.

[Paulette Senior]

Thank you for the question.

As I said earlier, we've been provided with two separate agreements with the government in response to COVID. The first one, which was done in April, was $3 million. With the exception of Quebec, which was dealt with separately, we were able to distribute funds to sexual assault centres across the country, which was about $3 million to do that. We did that within three weeks.

The second one, as I said, was $10 million. We have several hundred organizations we've been distributing that to, and we've already done about two-thirds, or thereabouts, in terms of distribution across the country.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

As far—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Peter, I will let Ms. Krause have a 20-second response to what you suggested, as well.

Go ahead, Ms. Krause.

[Vivian Krause]

Something about the awarding of this billion-dollar contract to WE Charity just does not make sense. We need to find out why this was done. When one considers the Hollywood-style advertisements, the video promos of the Prime Minister, the elections, meetings, the vote stickers and all the other things, the question needs to be asked. Even if it's an uncomfortable one, it's a fair one.

Lastly, Mr. Easter, if I may mention, as an important point here, after I testified to your committee a year ago—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I am going back to Mr. Fragiskatos.

Go ahead, Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To Ms. Senior once again, can you tell me a bit about the process that led up to the signing of the contribution agreement? What was it about the Canadian Women's Foundation that you put forward in terms of the ability of the organization to be well positioned to carry out the contribution agreement, to reach out to the various organizations that you've been reaching out to throughout this experience of COVID-19? You must have an incredible network, an incredible reach as an organization.

My guess would be that this would be one of the key reasons behind your organization being chosen. Is that correct?

[Paulette Senior]

Yes, that's correct.

In fact, we did a couple of things. We realized the impact of the pandemic on the fundraising activities that would have been happening right there in the spring, so it was important for us to first reach out to our grantees and start gathering feedback: What was their experience?

I mentioned some of those, in terms of immediate decrease of their fundraising dollars, and also the inability to know whether or not they could keep going and how long they could keep going. We were able to turn that around very quickly to be able to share that with government.

We were able to then demonstrate that with 30 years of granting and building a network of women's organizations, we had the ability and capability and capacity to be able to put money right in the hands of women's organizations to support women in the country.

That's the reputation we've built over the years, and that's why the government decided to work with us on this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

This is the last question, Peter.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

I highlighted the phrase you used, that you were able to “pivot quickly” to provide funding to gender-based organizations across Canada—organizations dealing with gender-based violence, of course. That stood out.

Mr. Chair, I guess I'm running out of time, but I want to put something to Mr. Singh.

Mr. Singh, you said that charities—and I highlighted here specifically, writing it out—ought to, in your view, “deal directly with the public service”.

Is it unreasonable to perhaps suggest that COVID-19 is a particularly unique context that would allow for the consideration of contribution agreements? We've heard already from Ms. Senior about the efficacy of such contribution agreements.

When we have a public service that's seized with responding to COVID-19, doesn't it make sense to look at contribution agreements such as the ones that the government has signed with the Canadian Women's Foundation, the Red Cross, with Food Banks Canada? I know that no process is going to be perfect, but it's not unreasonable that we've seen the government go in this direction.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

To the question, Peter—

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

It's the question about the reasonability of using contribution agreements in a crisis situation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Singh.

[Rahul O. Singh]

You're not wrong in using the contribution agreements—that's fine—but you have to evaluate the efficacy of the contribution agreements.

Frankly, Peter, you've just proven my point. You've given Ms. Senior's group $13 million, $3 million of which she's programmed, and she just told you that she's two-thirds of the way through the $10 million. When you calculate the amount of time it's taken—and I'm sure she's done an effective job with it in getting aid to their network—it proves the point. It's going to their network; it's not going to outside agencies that may be doing really good work. So there are people on the outside looking in who are not getting those funds.

The other thing to consider now is that she's talking about $13 million. I'm talking about $350 million to three parties, as opposed to $13 million to one party. Respectfully, if we had gone with an approach to multiple parties to do multiple contribution agreements, perhaps regional, perhaps sectoral, I would say you'd have better value for money. The public service could have done that.

If you take the approach of using multiple ways of doing this, so contribution agreements plus innovative funds plus regional response funds—and this is all in the document I presented to you—you would have a better holistic approach to helping Canadians in need.

I'm not saying that what you've done is horrible. What you've done is good, but it could be better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay, we'll have to end it there.

I would like to get to five more questions. We'll start with Mr. Fortin and then Mr. Angus, Mr. Cumming, Mr. Bittle and Ms. May.

Mr. Fortin, you have three minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just want a little clarification about the testimony we have just heard. The interpreter was talking about $350 million to three different parties. Were you talking about three political parties or three third parties? What exactly were you referring to?

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

You're directing that to Mr. Singh, I assume—

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

Yes, that's right.