We don't know, as my colleague Mr. McCauley says. However, I think “we” may actually know, because it was the WE Charity scandal. Perhaps the former minister of finance, at that time, was far too concerned about getting nearly a billion dollars—$900-plus million—to his friends at WE Charity and giving them hundreds of millions of dollars. Perhaps finance was more preoccupied with enriching friends of the Liberal Party.
It may shock Canadians. They may have forgotten this or may have blocked it from their minds, but members of the Prime Minister's family were actually being paid by the WE organization to give speeches. It was paying members of the Prime Minister's own family to give speeches, and then, lo and behold, it gets a nearly $1-billion contract from the government to encourage Canadians to volunteer.
I always find it interesting that it costs a billion dollars for folks to volunteer. I know we all have great organizations in our ridings through which people volunteer each and every day without a billion dollars from His Majesty's government, but obviously that's the Liberal way.
To the point at hand, while the Department of Finance should have been focused on putting proper guardrails and proper guidelines in place for this program, it was dealing with the massive fallout from the We Charity scandal. While I noted that the Prime Minister's immediate family members were being paid by the WE organization, something came out, as well, in an ethics report—and a damning ethics report, I might add—from the Ethics Commissioner. It was found that Bill Morneau, the minister of finance at that time, broke the ethics law, because he also had a close family member who was employed by the WE organization.
I might add that Bill Morneau actually just plumb forgot about, I believe, a $40,000 trip that he took courtesy of the WE organization. It was a $40,000 trip, and he just plumb forgot. Former minister Bill Morneau is also the one who plumb forgot about that French villa that he owned.
I sometimes forget where I put my car keys, but I can't imagine forgetting a French villa.