Evidence of meeting #45 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sir.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michelle Douglas  Former Chair of the Board of Directors, WE Charity, As an Individual
Clerk of the Committee  Ms. Caroline Bosc
Marc Kielburger  Founder, WE Charity
Craig Kielburger  Founder, WE Charity

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Mr. Poilievre, we will allow an answer to this question, go to your next one, and then we'll soon move on.

One of the Kielburgers.

4:50 p.m.

Founder, WE Charity

Craig Kielburger

Any allegation and false claim that we would have financially benefited as individuals from this is simply that: false. No institution, no charity listed here, pays us a salary or any form of financial, period. Sir, it's incredibly insulting that you will not accept our answer on this.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Back to Mr. Poilievre.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

Because I haven't got one. The question was whether there was anything in the contribution agreement that would ban you from receiving any salary. You still haven't answered. I'm not going to ask it again, because you've had two tries and you refused both times.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Okay, your last question.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

What astonishes me is that you never thought it was an issue to pay the Trudeau family close to half a million dollars, when your organizations deal directly with the government, and when the Prime Minister is involved in a contribution to your organization of almost half a billion dollars.

Do you not see a conflict of interest in the fact that the Prime Minister has received close to half a million dollars from your organizations and is giving you funds at the same time?

4:50 p.m.

Founder, WE Charity

Marc Kielburger

Mr. Chair, the translation we got was that we were paying the Prime Minister half a billion dollars through the contribution agreement, and I'm assuming that was an incorrect message.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

It might have been.

Basically, the premise of the question was that money would be going to the Prime Minister's family, and a half a billion dollars going to your organization. Do you not see the connection?

4:50 p.m.

Founder, WE Charity

Craig Kielburger

Sir, we respect that the Government of Canada has its processes on conflict of interest, and we respect that you're looking into those. As it relates to our role as a charity, on this matter we followed proper laws. We engaged someone through a speaking bureau to give talks on mental health. Many organizations do this. There was nothing improper in these actions.

Frankly, sir, we understand what you're asking us, and we recognize that. Frankly, I wish it weren't a sole-sourced contract. I wish we could have competed with others. I wish that different decisions had been made in the final decision-making on all of these matters. That was not ours to decide. We were asked to be of assistance at a time of a national pandemic, and we did our best with it. Simply, that's the case.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

On May—

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Thank you.

We're out of time, Mr. Poilievre. You will have another round if you're taking the next slot.

We have Mr. McLeod, Mr. Poilievre and Ms. Koutrakis.

Mr. McLeod. go ahead.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

Michael McLeod Liberal Northwest Territories, NT

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to the witnesses for patiently answering all of the questions.

4:50 p.m.

Founder, WE Charity

Craig Kielburger

We are losing that bathroom break. Rather urgently, Marc has whispered that twice now, so please continue. I'll continue without him; I can do this without him.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

Michael McLeod Liberal Northwest Territories, NT

This whole CSSG contract and the incident around it has received a lot of media attention. There's a lot of fallout on all sides from it, I think. Your organization has taken a loss. It has taken some monetary hit, but maybe and even bigger credibility hit.

The government and all the committees will probably be dealing with this for the rest of the summer. We may have up with to three committees investigating it, so it's going to consume us for probably the next month or so, if not longer.

What we're not hearing about is what this whole initiative was focused on, and that's the youth. That's what concerns me the most. We know youth now are facing a real loss of opportunity, and there may be no replacement program. I haven't seen it yet.

Could you talk about what shutting down this whole initiative, this program, is going to cost the youth? There were a lot of youth who were interested in this.

4:55 p.m.

Founder, WE Charity

Craig Kielburger

Thank you, sir. A question we have never been asked by any journalist or anyone here today is what was lost when it came to young people in this process.

We had an extraordinary service opportunity lined up with Rotary and others to link young people to seniors to help document their lives to help overcome the reality of dementia, with so many seniors being in social isolation.

We had a beautiful program lined up with hospital networks, where there would have been support for nurses and their kids at home to make sure that they had digital mentors so that the nurses could take care of us and not be afraid.

We had a beautiful partnership lined up with Tim Horton's Foundation camps and others because all of the other camps had stopped over the summer, and young Canadians would have provided digital camp coaching experiences to these youth to help mentor and support them in this process.

All of this good was lost. All of these extraordinary service opportunities were lost. The fallout has been that young people are not earning income to support their tuition. I know it was criticized, but these teachers put up their hand over the summer to support 20,000 youth with direct supervision.

For WE Charity, to your comments, sir, the $5 million that we incurred in expenses is not the real issue here. This false information that's been circulated has been devastating to the charity. The charity got tagged “the WE Charity scandal” on this, when, in fact, the charity didn't make the final decision and wasn't involved in the process of declaring whether there was a conflict. All media have carried this around the world as the WE Charity scandal. It's been devastating to a Canadian charity through this whole process.

Frankly, there are days when we wish we had never answered the phone on April 19 when Rachel Wernick called asking for us to help.

It is incredibly unfortunate that the people who are bearing the worst cost in all of this are young people who don't have their summer placements. Because of the harm caused to WE Charity, for so many of the young people and children in Canada whom we served, we won't be able to provide the same programs in the years ahead.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

I am going to let it end there, Mr. McLeod.

4:55 p.m.

McLeod

Thank you.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

We have four minutes for the last four speakers. Thank you for that question and answer.

Mr. Poilievre, there's a four-minute round for you, and then we'll end with Ms. Koutrakis.

Mr. Poilievre, are you there?

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

Section 5.1 of the contribution agreement allowed your organization to be compensated for salary, but expressly said that your organization would not have to keep time sheets. Why did you think it was important not to provide time sheets to show work hours for which your group would be compensated?

4:55 p.m.

Founder, WE Charity

Marc Kielburger

If anybody in the media or anyone in the public would like to look at it, we've sent out a version of the contract with very specific, very detailed notes. The reason, specifically, is that the provision that we would not be required to maintain time sheets and record keeping reflected the fact that WE staff had begun to work immediately on the project in advance of the final funding—

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

That wasn't the question. It's not even related.

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. It's not even related to my question now.

4:55 p.m.

Founder, WE Charity

Marc Kielburger

It is, sir.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON

The question I'm asking is, why they didn't want to have time sheets to show the work done, and he is telling me about the story of genesis, to the beginning of time. It's not related.

4:55 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter

Mr. Poilievre, I think he is giving you an explanation of why they didn't have time sheets, why they weren't required. I will let him respond to that and then we'll go to your next question.

4:55 p.m.

Founder, WE Charity

Marc Kielburger

Sir, the vast majority of staff who were working on the program were working 100% of the time.