Madam Speaker, to continue, these are the committee's words from the report:
It was, rather, her and Mr. Craig Kielburger’s 19 April 2020 call with Ms. Wernick that prompted her team to build a proposal based on Ms. Wernick’s directives.
[The minister] did not recall any instances of the term “volunteer” being used during the 17 April 2020 call, but the term “service opportunities” was used. [The minister] told the Committee that at the time of that call she was unaware that the Prime Minister would make an announcement regarding youth programming five days later, on 22 April 2020.
[The minister] was provided a briefing note concerning the call, which has since been disclosed, but she did not take notes during the call. After that meeting she asked her team to follow up with other federal officials regarding WE Charity’s proposal. She later stated that she never considered the entrepreneurship proposal, but that it was important for other officials “to be aware of it and to make sure they look into it and consider its merits.” [She] explained that she did not mention her 17 April 2020 call with WE Charity to the Finance Committee because they did not discuss the CSSG during that call.
The ethics committee offers a damning conclusion about this evidence at paragraph 224:
The Committee notes that when [the minister] spoke at Finance committee she failed to disclose her 17 April 2020 meeting with Mr. Craig Kielburger. In follow-up testimony before this Committee, she failed to disclose that those discussions included discussions about giving the WE Group the heads up that a “separate service stream” was in consideration. [The minister] failed in her obligation to be accurate with a committee and potentially impeded our work.
It is important for me to give further context and to unpack that a bit. Obviously it is tremendously concerning.
The troubling exchange that I referenced at the finance committee of July 16, 2020, occurred when I asked the minister, at page 11 of the evidence, “Did you discuss the program with anyone at WE before discussing it at cabinet?” The minister answered, “I did not discuss this program, the CSSG program, with anyone at WE.” If I may, I would say that the cartoon stink line started coming off of that answer just a couple of hours after the minister left the committee, when Rachel Wernick, a senior assistant deputy minister with the Department of Employment and Social Development, made reference, at page 25 of the evidence, to approving a briefing note for the minister in connection with a meeting with WE Charity.
Days after this finance committee meeting, the Toronto Star confirmed that on July 20, 2020, the minister had indeed met with WE Charity's Craig Kielburger on April 17, 2020, just days prior to the Prime Minister's launch of the Canada student service grant. Then, when Marc and Craig Kielburger appeared before the finance committee on July 28, 2020, they confirmed under oath that there had been a mid-April 2020 telephone conversation with the minister.
We can see that the ethics committee's second report offers a reasonable summary of the evidence given. It speaks to the point that the minister misled two parliamentary committees. It does not, however, adequately convey the real flavour of the minister's conduct at the committee, which is to say, the prevarication she displayed. I will quote a couple of sample exchanges of the minister's August 11, 2020, appearance at the ethics committee in order to give the Chair and the House a better sense of how the testimony had to be extracted from her.
First, there is my exchange with the minister, at page 19 of the evidence. I asked the minister:
At the finance committee I had the opportunity to ask you some questions, Minister. There was a disparity between my question to you and your response. I asked if you had spoken with the WE organization about the CSSG, and you responded that no, you hadn't, but you had spoken to them, we later learned, in the time period in question. I believe the date was April 17.
In that call, what details did you discuss with this organization? Was it about anything that would later appear in the proposal for the CSSG?
The minister answered:
Madam Chair, just to make sure it is on the record, on December 10, I appeared at WE Day in Ottawa after I had become Minister of Youth. That was to talk to an auditorium full of youth at the National Arts Centre.
The second time I interacted with WE Charity, Craig Kielburger personally, was over the phone on April 17, 2020. I had a phone call with him as well as another member of his team at 11:00 in the morning. That phone call lasted just over 30 minutes. We spoke about an unsolicited program in regard to youth entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and something that had been shared. As it was not something that I was not considering, I referred it to officials.
That phone call on April 17 was not in regard to the Canada student service grant at all. I did not comment on that.
This led my colleague, the member for Carleton, to try a different angle in getting the minister to give a full testimony to the committee. This exchange is at page 25 of the evidence. The member for Carleton asked, “Did the word 'volunteer' ever get spoken in your 30-minute meeting with Mr. Kielburger?” The minister answered, “Madam Chair, off the top of my head, it was more of a listening exercise than....” Here my colleague then prompted for an answer by saying, “Was it spoken, yes or no?” The minister then said, “Not that I'm aware of. I can't say that I said it.”
Later the member for Carleton asked, “Did someone else say it?” The minister replied, “Madam Chair, this is a lengthier answer, but I recall the conversation in regard to their advancing and sharing their unsolicited proposal. I listened to it.” The member for Carleton persisted by saying, “No, that's not my question. My question is about whether the word 'volunteer' was spoken. Was youth service mentioned?” Again, the minister dodged the question by answering, “Youth service is top of line for me.”
After the member for Carleton attempted to press the point, the Chair, the member for Lethbridge, intervened saying, “Minister, thank you. I do understand that, but the question that has been asked of you is quite simple. It is really a yes or no question. You need to respect the member who's asking you that question and answer accordingly. Thank you. Minister, yes or no?” The minister relented by replying, “I would say that 'service opportunities' was said, yes.”
From this point, the member for Carleton asked, “Of course, that grant wasn't mentioned because it wasn't created at the time of your meeting, but did you speak about anything at all other than the Kielburgers' social entrepreneurship...[program], anything at all, yes or no?” The minister answered, “I would have definitely asked how the youth that they were working with were doing in the face of the pandemic.”
In documents originally provided to the finance committee in which the Clerk of the Privy Council in his appearance before the ethics committee, also on August 11, 2020, undertook to provide to the committee and recorded at page 2 of the evidence saying “it transpired” that the following information would come to light.
In an undated memo, but obviously predating April 17, 2020, the deputy minister for diversity and inclusion and youth wrote to the minister entitled “Meeting with WE Charity founder Craig Kielburger”. This can be found at page 4,203 of the Department of Employment and Social Development's documents deposited with the committees. The summary, in a big, bold box at the top of the first page, is what is interesting here. I would like to quote that.
The document states:
On April 17, 2020 at 11 am, you are expected to engage in a conversation with WE Charity founder, Craig Kielburger, on their proposal (Annex A) which explores how the organization could support the Canada Service Corps (CSC) program as well as other youth programming efforts. Given the situation with COVID19, he may raise ways in which WE Charity can engage more actively in the short term to work with CSC.
Do not forget that this meeting did not just happen out of the blue. As we saw from other documents, testimony and the Ethics Commissioner's report, discussions were already well under way in other corners of government about a youth program and about contacting WE Charity. It is no wonder the minister wanted to hedge in her answers to committee.
The next document of special interest is from April 20, 2020. It is an email from Sofia Marquez at WE Charity to Ritu Banerjee, the executive director of the Canada Service Corps. It starts at page 430 of the Department of Employment and Social Development document. It states:
I wanted to give you a quick note following our meeting with [the Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Youth] on Friday. Below the highlights:
...
[The Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Youth] expressed interest in exploring ways to adapt the entrepreneurship proposal we submitted to [the Minister of Small Business, Export Promotion and International Trade] and include a service component to it. She suggested that we should consider opening a service-stream for youth who are currently not well supported through virtual mentorship are looking for microgrants to advance their project. That effect, Craig reassured the Minister that if given the right policy objectives we could amend the proposal.
...
[The Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Youth] expressed her willingness, as next steps, to connect WE with her team and identify tangible ways to move this opportunity forward.
That sounds like a lot more engaged than a passive comment and the type that we heard from the minister when she said that she heard the term “service opportunities”.
There are three more documents I want to cite that all come from the morning of April 22, 2020, the Prime Minister's big launch of the Canada student service grant at Rideau Cottage.
First, we have Ms. Marquez' email to Alessia Avola, who was then the senior policy assistant to the small business minister at 9:02 a.m., found on page 2 of the documents deposited by the Department of Industry:
Allow me to share that we had the opportunity to connect with [the Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Youth] and her team on Friday. I have the chance to discuss the social entrepreneurship program proposal and we're happy to share it was a productive conversation—she's very enthusiastic about the idea of supporting young Canadians during COVID-19.
One of the main points that came out of our call was the suggestion we should consider developing a second stream of programming focused on providing digital service opportunities.... Please note that Craig will be sending an email to Jason and the Minister today with the same update.
Here, she put a large smile emoticon.
There is, in my opinion, a large gulf between being “very enthusiastic”, including suggesting the second stream and what the minister told the member for Carleton, that she had some passing concern about how youth might be doing.
Then there is Craig Kielburger's 11:30 a.m. email to the youth minister herself, found at page 50 of the Privy Council Office's documents—