Could you repeat the question?
Evidence of meeting #49 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was charities.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #49 for Finance in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was charities.
A video is available from Parliament.
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
How many hours would the Charity Intelligence group have spent on the research that produced the publications you did on WE Charity in the last year?
1:30 p.m.
Managing Director, Charity Intelligence Canada
Just to do the update on July 6, or whatever the date was, July 2020, it would have been about two days, so maybe 16 hours. But since then, with all the media, and before then, it has been pretty much.... A lot [Technical difficulty—Editor] last month.
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Sorry, just to clarify, prior to June of this year, let's say, how many hours would Charity Intelligence have spent researching the information that you published on WE in this calendar year?
1:30 p.m.
Managing Director, Charity Intelligence Canada
On the research report, it wouldn't be much, maybe a day or two.
Greg, the big work was on the impact analysts' side. How many hours do you think the analysts spent on it?
1:30 p.m.
Director of Research, Charity Intelligence Canada
They spent probably an additional two days on the impact assessment, so—
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
1:30 p.m.
Director of Research, Charity Intelligence Canada
That was back in September 2019, I believe.
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
It's just extraordinary that in three or four days of work, with three or four employees in total, you were able to produce all of this information, when the Prime Minister's own department, the Privy Council Office, which literally has a thousand employees, was not able to produce the same information in a two-week period, during which the Prime Minister himself, the head of government, had supposedly asked for due diligence and scrutiny to occur. “Due diligence” and “scrutiny” were words he used in his own testimony.
Here is my final question.
Today, we are learning that WE Charity asked NATIONAL for help in implementing the program in question, which shows that WE Charity was not able to do so itself.
From your research on WE's activities, have you previously seen examples where WE might have run a program with 40,000 volunteers and was planning salaries to pay those same volunteers? Had it previously operated a program of the scale of what was proposed in the contribution agreement between WE and the Government of Canada?
1:30 p.m.
Managing Director, Charity Intelligence Canada
No, just to give you context, for the Fort McMurray fires, the Canadian Red Cross deployed about 2,800 volunteers. That would have been people in their network. On the number of volunteers, the 40,000, maybe that's a better question for Volunteer Canada, because they would have better context for that number.
1:30 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Carleton, ON
Mr. Chair, could I just clarify that?
I just want to see if there was any evidence in your research on this organization that it had, in the past, deployed 40,000 youth volunteers and coordinated them, and compensated them with honorariums.
1:30 p.m.
Managing Director, Charity Intelligence Canada
We were looking at the WE Days and we were looking at the WE Schools program—so not a service volunteer program like this.
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Thank you very much.
I just have a quick question. Members of the opposition have said that you provide valuable information, that you do good work. Some have called it excellent work. It's impressive analysis that you provide.
I have a question for you. What do Habitat for Humanity, Oxfam, the YWCA, the YMCA and the Canadian Hearing Society all have in common?
1:35 p.m.
Managing Director, Charity Intelligence Canada
They're all organizations. It would be similar to, what does—
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
No, I asked the question, what do they have in common based on your ratings?
1:35 p.m.
Managing Director, Charity Intelligence Canada
They are organizations fundraising for Canadians who are trying to make a decision about which charity they can donate to, and that's it. At the end of the day, a donor has $100—
1:35 p.m.
Liberal
Adam Vaughan Liberal Spadina—Fort York, ON
Fair enough. That's a fair answer, but are you aware that they have also scored lower than WE Canada on virtually every one of your charts? Therefore, based on what the opposition is saying, Habitat for Humanity, YWCA both in Vancouver and Toronto, Oxfam, and the Canadian Hearing Society are all more of a risk to donate to than WE Charity, based on the research the opposition has declared as valuable, excellent and impressive.
