WE organization paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees to Trudeau's mother and brother: report

OTTAWA – Justin Trudeau’s mother and brother have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from the WE organization, contradicting an earlier claim by the organization that no member of the Trudeau family had been paid for their work.

According to a report by online outlet CANADALAND, WE paid $312,000 to Margaret Trudeau, the prime minister’s mother, for 28 speaking engagements since 2016. The organization told the outlet it also paid $40,000 for eight appearances to Trudeau’s bother, Alexandre “Sacha” Trudeau.

WE is the umbrella organization that covers WE Charity, which recently pulled out of a $900 million sole-source contract to administer a federal student volunteer grant program.

These payouts directly contradict previous statements by WE Charity claiming that no member of the Trudeau family had ever been paid for their work with the organization, minus the occasional travel expense offered to Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, the prime minister’s wife.

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National Post asked WE to confirm the information published by CANADALAND and explain the apparent contradiction with their previous statement, but did not receive an immediate response.

In response to a question asking why Trudeau had never revealed the honoraria paid to his relatives or corrected WE’s statement claiming they had never received payment, the prime minister’s office (PMO) said that he wasn’t involved in his family members’ business.

“The Prime Minister’s relatives engage with a variety of organizations and support many personal causes on their own accord. What is important to remember here is that this is about a charity supporting students. The Canada Student Service Grant program is about giving young people opportunities to contribute to their communities, not about benefits to anyone else,” wrote PMO spokesperson Ann-Clara Vaillancourt.

But Transparency International Canada Executive Director James Cohen says that explanation doesn’t cut it at all.

“No, you don’t get to put up ‘won’t someone please think of the children’ as a defence from ethics scrutiny,” Cohen reacted on social media Thursday.

“How on earth is there no one in the PMO who thought to advise the Prime Minister to recuse himself from discussions on this? How did the PMO, after Aga Khan and SNC-Lavalin, not think to recuse himself?” Cohen  tweeted.

In a statement, Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett said all of Trudeau’s Cabinet ministers must now admit if they knew Trudeau’s family had been paid by WE Charity before signing off on the Canada Student Service Grant deal.

“Today’s news is scandalous. We now know that Justin Trudeau handed almost a billion-dollar contract to a charity that not only had close ties to the Liberal Party, but which paid his family almost $300,000. Parliament must immediately be recalled so that we can get to the bottom of this,” Barrett wrote. “Canadians deserve answers and the Prime Minister and his government must be held accountable.”

The prime minister and WE Charity have been embroiled in controversy ever since Trudeau announced two weeks ago that the government was outsourcing the $900-million Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) to the Toronto-based organization.

At the time, he said the public service had decided WE Charity was the “best and only” organization able to run the program. To this day, bureaucrats have refused to disclose how many or which other groups were considered.

Beyond his mother and brother’s paid appearances at WE events, Justin Trudeau has regularly hosted “WE Day”, the organization’s stadium-sized youth rallies. His wife is currently a “WE ambassador and ally”, hosts a WE podcast and attended a “WE Day” event in London back in March.

One week after the announcement and multiple controversies later, WE Charity pulled out of the deal to run the CSSG.

National Post reported that WE co-founder Marc Kielburger told attendees of a private videoconference that the PMO had “called” WE Charity directly to ask for help implementing the grant program. Kielburger then said he “misspoke” and claimed it was in fact the public service that had called.

Since then, the federal Ethics Commissioner announced he would investigate Trudeau’s involvement in his government’s decision to outsource the program to WE Charity.

Then Wednesday, Trudeau admitted that it was Cabinet that ultimately decided to sign off on the outsourcing of the CSSG to WE Charity, and that he had not recused himself from the process.

Two parliamentary committees are also set to study how WE Charity received the contract for the CSSG, how much it cost taxpayers, and which other organizations — if any — were considered by the public service.