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.
Founder, WE Charity
There was no research.... Oh, sorry, for the April 9.... Forgive me.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
Yes, there are two proposals here. There are two proposals we're talking about. I'm asking you in the aggregate.
Founder, WE Charity
The April 9 one was a pre-existing proposal that we already had, sir. That one was stretched over, gosh, months. For two years we've been trying to get a social entrepreneurship proposal like that off the ground.
Conservative
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
No, just the number with respect to the second proposal.
Founder, WE Charity
Sir, it would have been a handful of hours. It's hard to guess.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
There you go.
We have Mr. Fraser, followed by Mr. Cumming, and then on to Ms. Koutrakis.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start by just saying how frustrating it's been to be a part of this committee meeting. I am glad that we have ample time, thankfully. The inability of members to remain silent when it's not their turn to speak is deeply discouraging. I find it disrespectful. These are the kinds of things that we learned how to do in elementary school.
With respect, I know there was some controversy over the point made by Mr. Angus about how much money had gone. This is a thing the NDP has been pushing for weeks now. I note that the leader of the NDP has put out a false tweet suggesting that the Prime Minister has given $900 million to his well-connected friends at WE. These are the kinds of things that we deal with and you kind of roll your eyes over.
The fact is, there's actually something that I want to kind of figure out here, because there's a legitimate issue going on. We've already had the issue discussed today about the fact that the Prime Minister's mother is a well-known mental health advocate, but when I first saw that there was, in fact, a payment that went to her and that the government, of which her son is the Prime Minister, awarded a significant piece of work to have the student grant administered, I thought, “Okay, let's look into this” when the opposition pitched the study, and I won't prejudge what answers I hear.
I do have a couple of questions about those payments and whether they were in the ordinary course of things for an organization like yours. What I'm really curious about.... Is this a kind of thing you do often? You said there were other speakers who had comparable rates. Who are they? How much did they get paid? Was it on a similar scale to what Madame Trudeau was paid or was it much different? How are you arriving at these rates?
What I'm trying to figure out here.... If there's a habit of the organization to give significant grants exclusively to the governing party of the country, then I think there's something we have to look into. If this is the kind of thing where you take notable speakers with expertise in different areas and it was more or less par for the course, I'm also interested in knowing that.
If you could give me some answers on how much your other speakers were paid, who they were and the nature of how those relationships evolved, I would be very interested.
Founder, WE Charity
Sir, thank you for the question.
It was par for the course. Once again, not just for the WE Day stage—we get people who want to do that—but it was the ancillary events. We have a number of speakers who have done that over the years. We've done 137 WE Days since we started. When we ask for individuals to come and give their time, usually one or two ancillary days outside of the WE Day, we need some support for that process. It's not just for the WE Day piece, to be really, really clear. It's the ancillary events.
We do need to be respectful to the other speakers, but we can confirm very much that this has been in the regular course of business, and Madame Trudeau has been on the lower end of some of those payments. She came not because she was Madame Trudeau; she came because mental health is a very important aspect of our work and—I just want to say that over and over again—as a remarkable mental health advocate, she helps us fulfill our mission.
Founder, WE Charity
Just to build on that, we create educational content. We do these types of events. We do literally thousands of events a year, in big and small communities. We have breakfast with teachers, events, outreach, all these things that we do in any given year. We had a massive events team, prior to COVID-19's impact, hosting these very events, broadcast TV specials on ABC and CTV, millions who follow us on social media, billions of total social media impressions.
Creating [Inaudible—Editor] content is a huge part of what we do, and it's part of our mission mandate.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Okay, if I may, one of the aspects of my question.... I threw a lot at you there, but I would like you to give an example. Are there other speakers you can share with us who have been paid for their services at the auxiliary events around WE Day?
Founder, WE Charity
Yes, sir, absolutely. Again, we just would like to respectfully ask the permission of those speakers to share their names, but I want to confirm, absolutely, sir. They come from all walks of life, sir, and they're very well-known Canadians, as you would imagine.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
Okay, thank you very much.
Mr. Chair, I'm probably quite close to the end of my time. Is that right?
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I hinted at this earlier on in one of my questions. I just want to know.... You mentioned you'd been working on the previous student service proposal that you had developed over the course of a couple of years. Had you submitted things like that before 2015, when we arrived in office as a government? Had you actually submitted informal, unsolicited proposals to previous governments or our government before this instance?
Founder, WE Charity
Yes. We would do this in the regular course of business. We didn't engage frequently with the federal government, but in conversations, whether it be.... We were honoured. These are great men, people like Tony Clement and Minister Flaherty, great men.
Founder, WE Charity
I remember sitting down with Minister Moore, talking about [Inaudible—Editor]. He gave us a lecture in his office on the topic.
We would—
Founder, WE Charity
We would, sir. We would submit ideas for how we could work with government.
Let me clarify, sir, to everyone: We run a charity. When I say “we”, we're founders of the charity; we now have an executive director who runs it. Fundamentally, we do this in a manner to work in partnership to fulfill social objectives with government. We will do our best, always.
You said something at the beginning, if I may go back to it, about tweets that have gone out with inaccurate statements and dollar amounts, and people thinking that hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into the coffers of the charity or real estate...things that just drive me up a wall because it's factually inaccurate. This has had a devastating impact on our charity. It's impossible to fully articulate that these messages...because they're coming from credible individuals who are putting out false information, and it is just absolutely devastating to a Canadian charity and to our ability to fulfill our mission and mandate as a result.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Wayne Easter
Okay, I am going to end it there.
Mr. Cumming, you're on deck, and you will be followed by Mr. Fragiskatos.
Conservative
James Cumming Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Can you tell me what expertise Sacha Trudeau brought that you would pay him to be a speaker?
Founder, WE Charity
He is an environmentalist, sir, a documentary filmmaker, and he was a well-known individual in his own right when he spoke.
In those particular ones, we brought him in partially because Margaret—Madame Trudeau—was not able to...in that case. We were seeking to fill an urgent need, so we worked with him on that particular year. He was with us for one year and one year only.