Thank you, Chair.
I think we have quite a significant problem here. I'm starting to perceive what is perhaps the diabolical genius behind this Frankenstein structure of an organization.
To be clear, the reason that this committee is interested in the Trudeau foundation is not in terms of some private charitable organization that may have some problems. The public is interested in the Trudeau foundation because it is a public institution. It's subject to ATIP. It's subject to various statutes, including the Federal Accountability Act.
However, it is not, in a sense, a purely public institution. It has many features of a public institution, including a massive injection of public money, but it also receives private donations in a way that makes it susceptible to foreign influence. Foreign interference comes through external donations to the Trudeau foundation at the same time as it's able to use public money.
It also benefits from the fact that it shares the name of the Prime Minister, and within the foundation there is also a privileged position of power and influence for the Trudeau family, so you have this odd organizational amalgam of a family foundation with influence protected by the Prime Minister's family, a public institution with public money in it and the ability to receive foreign private donations.
This makes it opaque and hard to investigate. This also makes it at much greater risk, I think, of foreign influence, as I have spoken about before.
This is evident as we try to get to the bottom here of what happened. The foundation said that they wanted the Auditor General to investigate. Initially people on this committee said that they wanted the Auditor General to investigate. The Auditor General said no, they can't investigate, because they can investigate when public dollars are spent but they don't investigate when private donations are spent.
Then we said, “Okay; well, let's have the CRA investigate. Let's ask the CRA to investigate.”
However, what you're telling us is that you can't give us any information, basically, about what's going on. You can't tell us whether you're auditing it. You can't tell us any of these details. You can't report to us unless you have come to specific conclusions, and there's no opportunity for public scrutiny.
Because of the way that this foundation was set up by a previous Liberal government, we have an opaqueness and an inability to ask who's investigating, whether they are investigating and what their timelines and results are going to be for that investigation.
I would put to you that this is a significant problem for the level of accountability that we would expect of a public foundation with protected influence by members of the Prime Minister's family. Again, you're not able to respond to the things that we're asking.
I do want to ask you this.
You spoke about “when we get a lead” that can inform what you do. How responsive would you be in general to a parliamentary committee saying that we think it's important for CRA to look at this, if the House of Commons were to concur in the report from this committee and to vote that we're asking the CRA to look at it?
Generally, the way the Auditor General does it is that if a request comes, she preserves her independence, but she takes seriously recommendations that come from Parliament.
If Parliament votes to say that they think the Trudeau foundation needs to be audited, is that something you would take into consideration? Let's say it's any foundation. Would you take that into consideration, or would you say, “Too bad. We're going to make our own decisions. We're going to do whatever we want.”?
