Madam Speaker, the member rightly points out all the political involvement, whether it was that minister from Waterloo, who is not a public servant but a politician; whether it was the two PMO staffers I just mentioned, whose fingerprints are all over the set-up of this program; or whether it is Amitpal Singh, who then worked for Bill Morneau. I guess to keep him quiet they moved him into the office of the Deputy Prime Minister after Bill Morneau became Bill “no more”.
We have an email transaction from him, an email from Amitpal Singh to Michelle Kovacevic, who is a public servant. We were all told the public servants were just leading the charge to set up this program.
This political staffer wrote about connecting them with Sofia, from WE, and about speaking that day about the Canada student service grant and the work ahead of on the national file. In other words, hint hint, nudge nudge, get to work and get these people their money. That is a message from a political staffer. No wonder the bureaucrats at finance said that WE was “besties” with the finance minister at that time.