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.
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Founder, WE Charity
We certainly haven't. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no formal communications.
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
You are discussing the repayment of the funds, though, so there must be some communications with government.
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Founder, WE Charity
That's physically done with ESDC and the civil service at ESDC, sir.
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Okay.
Have you deleted any emails, text messages or other written communications regarding all this since March?
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Conservative
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Conservative
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
June? Ever? Have you ever deleted any communications?
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
All right.
Since March 1, have you dialed into the government's conference call line?
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Founder, WE Charity
Yes, of course, as part of ESDC contract initiatives, absolutely.
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Could you provide details of when that call took place?
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Founder, WE Charity
We had many conversations with ESDC during that time, dozens of phone calls, sir, with ESDC on the government's—
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
That's great. Any Zoom calls? Did you use any other conferencing technology with any MP, minister or ministerial staff member since March 1?
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Founder, WE Charity
I can speak with relative certainty that the only thing we could have used was a Teams bridge or a phone call bridge. But to the best of my knowledge, no Zoom or other...BlueJeans, etc.
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Did you keep recordings of either of those phone calls or those video calls?
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
Do you have direct email, cell, instant communication contact with Prime Minister Trudeau or Finance Minister Morneau?
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Founder, WE Charity
We do not have an email or phone number for the Prime Minister, and never have. We do have a cellphone for.... We must, because we had the trip information, so we have to have all the information for Morneau in our database: email, phone, emergency phone, as part of hosting.
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Conservative
Marty Morantz Conservative Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley, MB
On Sunday, July 12, you started to lay off 450 people whom you'd hire to deliver the Canada student service grant. On what date did you begin the process to hire these people?
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Founder, WE Charity
Sir, that information is actually not correct, in terms of the number of layoffs. At that point, from our understanding, the charity laid off 283 people, of whom we still had [Inaudible—Editor] on the team. We'll get you that exact information, but that's not a correct statement, sir.