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OTTAWA – A House of Commons committee that reviewed the government’s unfortunate agreement with WE Charity examined the organization itself more deeply on Thursday, with party clashes around witnesses from a charity.
Charity Intelligence has already raised considerations about WE’s practices and has received complaints from WE and its co-founders, Craig and Marc Kielburger, who testified before the committee last week.
The controversy surrounding the grant program has raised questions about WE’s complex design and accounting mechanisms, its use of high-level sponsors and celebrities, and their culture.
The executive leader of Charity Intelligence, a small charity herself, told MPs that she had detected considerations after two days of reviewing WE’s monetary data, leading her to call for her control to ask questions.
“I hope that if someone made an investment of this size, the government would have felt confident in asking questions, picking up the phone and asking for explanations about anything they didn’t know,” Bahen said.
He spoke most sensiblely about the assembly’s need for charities suffering from a widespread drop in donations due to the pandemic, adding that the amount of cash that foundations have to pay to charitable causes is expanded.
He then stated that his organization had no party association and his contempt for partisanship itself, just before he took over the committee.
Liberal MPs questioned their group’s findings on WE and questioned why Charity Intelligence even on the committee if it cannot provide a review of the timeline of occasions surrounding WE and the volunteer student program that the liberal government had selected to administer.
“I have nothing you or the organization,” said liberal Peter Fragiskatos in Bahen.
But he wants: “It is difficult for me to perceive how a four-person organization can make a judgement on 250 organizations on a variety of criteria, deepen and offer a massive set of judgments, and for us, this as members of Parliament. it’s a challenge.”
Opposition MPs argued that the group’s findings, drawn from the public report review, raise new questions about how the Trudeau government will hand over the reins of the volunteer student program to WE Charity.
Absolutely due diligence has not been known regarding the myriad of problems, things that have been a red flag and things that, for any other charity in the country, would have meant that surely there was no option that could be considered for funds. said new Democrat Peter Julian.
The we agreement up to $43.5 million for one of its foundations to administer a grant program designed to inspire academics to enroll in voluntary paintings similar to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ottawa budgeted $912 million for the program and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau billed it that way, but the deal with WE$543 million. “We expected him to charge maybe part of that amount,” those in Kielburger said, noting that they only hoped to distribute the cash and cover their administrative expenses.
In a post-meeting publication, WE said its multi-entity design is partly due to its operations in many countries, in part to a “small number of sub-entities to meet donors’ wishes or the operational facility to allocate funds” and partly to manage liability risks.
We had a base without another activity that signed the agreement with the government “to comply with the Canadian government’s request to take over up to 40,000 young participants and nonprofits during a global fitness pandemic,” he said.
The controversy has been on low heat since last June over the exclusive nature of the deal and the charity’s ties to Trudeau and his family.
Trudeau has been a guest speaker on six occasions on WE Day since he elected the Prime Minister, and his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau presents a podcast for the group, for which they and WE say they were not paid. However, Trudeau’s mother and brother were paid approximately $300,000 to appear on WE occasions over the years and were reimbursed about $200,000 in expenses.
Trudeau’s wife had her expenses covered.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau also worried about his family circle’s ties to the group, and about his popularity last month that reimbursed WE for about $41,000 on sponsored trips for him and his family circle to see the association’s humanitarian projects in Ecuador and Kenya in 2017.
Both Trudeau and Morneau apologized for refraining from the Cabinet’s resolution to entrust WE Charity with the management of the scholarships.
Opposition parties expect the imminent publication of government documents to yield further details on how the agreement was awarded. The government has until Saturday to register with the committee all memores, briefing notes, correspondence and other documents similar to the now cancelled agreement.
“There have been so many contradictions through this that I think it’s fair to say that the documents will hopefully start giving us answers,” Julian said in an interview on Wednesday.
“I think with respect to the next witnesses to get answers, the documents will move us in the right direction.”
The committee will also hear WE Charity’s CHIEF Financial Officer, Victor Li, and Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough.
Another movement approved by the committee seeks witnesses familiar with WE’s activities and grants parliamentary privileges as a shield opposed to imaginable legal action.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 6, 2020.
Jordan Press, The Canadian Press