Craig Kielburger

Tuesday March 16, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 16, 2021

Kielburgers accuse MPs of holding political trial during testy committee hearing

September 11, 2020

Craig and Marc Kielburger accused a parliamentary committee on Monday of engaging in a political trial as its members grilled the brothers over WE Charity’s operations, including its cancelled deal to run a federal program for student volunteers.

The heated exchange saw the Kielburgers accuse political parties of trying to score points at the expense of children around the world — even as they faced pointed questions from members of the House of Commons ethics committee about their own activities.

Marc Kielburger set the tone by forcefully defending the various WE operations set up over the years — a mix of philanthropic and for-profit entities that he suggested were established in response to outdated restrictions on how Canadian charities can operate.

Friday July 31, 2020

“Let us be clear — this hearing is a trial and a public one at that,” Marc Kielburger said during his opening statement to the committee. “Without recognizing our right to present our own evidence, this committee is trying WE Charity in the court of public opinion and forcing testimony.”

He blasted NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus in particular for having asked the RCMP and the Canada Revenue Agency to look into the organization’s operations, and then publicly posting those requests on social media.

He also took aim at the Conservatives and the Liberal government, which he accused of hiding “behind a children’s charity by letting it take the fall for their political decisions — and the opposition allowed them.”

Throughout the meeting, MPs questioned how the Liberal government and WE agreed to put the charity in charge of a multimillion-dollar program designed to cover the education costs of students who volunteer during the COVID-19 pandemic. They also asked questions about the state of WE today.

The brothers were asked to add up the fees they’ve paid to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of his family to speak at different WE events over the years, and to respond to allegations that WE engaged in questionable lobbying and fundraising activities

Ethics commissioner Mario Dion is now investigating Trudeau and Morneau for a potential conflict of interest. Both have apologized for not having recused themselves from cabinet discussions of the WE contract.

“We didn’t advise the prime minister and Mr. Morneau not to recuse themselves,” Marc Kielburger said, arguing that WE was not responsible for political choices.

“We never prorogued Parliament. We were not involved in the decision to filibuster this committee last fall. This is a political scandal for the government, not for WE Charity.”

Liberal MP Francesco Sorbara in turn accused the Kielburgers of not taking responsibility for their own actions. “You want to throw blame on everyone else and not take responsibility for things that have happened within your control,” he said. (Continued: CBC)

Sketch of three rich kids with a lot of rich adult defenders

 

Friday September 11, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday September 11, 2020

WE Charity closing Canadian operations, Kielburgers leaving organization

WE Charity is shuttering its Canadian operations and the group’s founders, Craig and Marc Kielburger, will leave the organization entirely, in a dramatic reversal of fortune for the two brothers.

July 30, 2020

The surprise announcement came Wednesday. In a statement, the charity said it would sell its assets to establish an endowment fund for existing international humanitarian programs and to digitize its education resources in Canada.

The statement attributed the decision to the disruptions caused by the COVID-19pandemic and the continued fallout from its cancelled contract with the federal government to administer a student volunteer program. The agreement to administer the Canada Student Service Grant was first announced in June but was cancelled in July amid growing questions about the group’s connections to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s family and his former finance minister.

The controversy has “placed the charity in the middle of political battles and misinformation that a charity is ill-equipped to fight,” the statement said. “As a result, the financial math for the charity’s future is clear.”

July 24, 2020

Rather than preventing further damage, the decision to scuttle the government contract marked only the beginning. In the past two months, the charity’s founders, senior staff and former board chair have all testified before parliamentary committees. The affair has led to ethics investigations into Mr. Trudeau and his ex-colleague Bill Morneau, who resigned in August. It also brought to light questions about the organization’s governance, work environment and unregistered lobbyingof the federal government.

Since winning government in 2015, Mr. Trudeau has regularly attended WE events. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister’s Office said it had no comment on WE’s plans to close its Canadian operations.

In July, the charity announced that it would indefinitely postpone its WE Day events for students, restructure its programs, clarify the roles of its charitable and for-profit arms and conduct an internal review. Less than two months later, it’s taking much more drastic steps.

The double whammy of the pandemic and political firestorm has led to significant financial pressures and a loss of sponsors, the statement said. It also places blame for a lack of future revenue on the continued controversy in Ottawa, which has an indeterminate length. It adds that continuing to operate would consume savings that are “essential to establishing the endowment fund.” (Globe & Mail) 

Thursday July 30, 2020

July 30, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday July 30, 2020

The Kielburgers boys’ self-described ‘labyrinth’ organizational structure is still murky

July 24, 2020

WE Charity. ME to WE Foundation. ME to WE Social Enterprise. WEllbeing Foundation. Imagine1day. WE 365 LP, and at least two other entities that sound like the prototype numbers for do-gooder androids. There is such a long list of entities in the WE umbrella that the former chair of WE Charity’s board, Michelle Douglas, wasn’t confident enough to say how many.

The brothers clarified that they need to incorporate in every country where they operate. And under Canada Revenue Agency rules, charities can’t operate as businesses in the administration of “social enterprise,” said Craig. So they had to “build a labyrinth to adhere to Canadian laws and regulations.”

Marc later explained the two started the charity when they were children. He said it’s like building a house. “You add a wing, and add a skylight, and add a swimming pool for your kids,” he said. “This wasn’t out of malice.” A global consulting firm, Korn Ferry, has been hired to help streamline the structure.

July 11, 2020

The Kielburgers said the government was fully briefed on the fact they planned to use a separate nonprofit entity, the WE Charity Foundation—which had been set up to help limit liability—as a party to the contribution agreement. (In the agreement, WE agreed to full liability for participants in the program.)

Former board chair Michelle Douglas, in her testimony, described concerns around the executive team’s refusal to provide substantial financial records that would allow the board to fulfill its functions.

“I did not resign as a routine matter or as part of a planned board transition. I resigned because I could not do my job. I could not discharge my governance duties,” she said in an opening statement.

February 18, 2004

She described in March, the executive—including Marc and Craig—had not fulfilled requests for evidence, reports or data that could support their rationale for laying employees off during the pandemic. In a March 25 phone call, she alleged that Craig asked for her resignation. She gave it. Most of the rest of the board left the organization shortly thereafter, although Craig claimed in committee that this could be explained by an existing “renewal” process.

Douglas said she had also raised concerns, in early 2018, about the WE Charity Foundation. “The board was never satisfied that the operation of this foundation was in the best interests of the charity or its various stakeholders,” she said, adding her understanding at the time was that the organization was intended to hold property. In their testimony, the Kielburgers dismissed the real estate claim as an inaccuracy, saying there were “multitudes of purposes” for such an entity.

Although Douglas said nothing in the organization’s operations caused her “deep concern,” she described a climate characteristic of “founder-led” organizations: “We were always striving to get greater insight into the work.” (Maclean’s)



 

Friday July 24, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday July 24, 2020

Is the WE Charity affair Justin Trudeau’s sponsorship scandal?

With each new revelation in the rapidly snowballing scandal surrounding Ottawa’s aborted plan to contract out a multimillion-dollar student volunteer program to WE Charity, it gets harder to know whether to be more outraged, disgusted or flabbergasted – or some measure of all three.

July 9, 2020

Outraged that, in the middle of a pandemic that has left millions of Canadians out of work and Ottawa digging a deficit hole for the ages, our federal government somehow thought it urgent and appropriate to spend nearly $1-billion on a program that appeared to serve no one’s interest more than its own and those of the organization chosen to run it.

Disgusted that, as average Canadians struggle to set aside a few dollars every month to donate to their local church or food bank, the federal government would reward a charity that defiles the notion of do-gooding by offering “complimentary” trips across the globe to their rich donor friends in high places, absorbing funds that might otherwise have gone to actually doing good rather than just generating good PR.

December 14, 2016

Flabbergasted that, after already twice being entangled in ethics investigations due to his own disregard for the basic rules of conduct, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finds himself at the centre of yet another such inquiry owing to what can only be described as his own hubris and gall for having the nerve to think that no one would notice.

We knew before this scandal erupted that Mr. Trudeau and WE Charity had for years formed a sort of mutual-admiration society. No other major political leader has appeared at more WE Day events or been greeted with more ebullient praise by the organization’s co-founders, Craig and Marc Kielburger. It had become hard to distinguish between WE Charity’s stated goal of “inspiring a generation of leaders and change-makers” and the blatant politics and campaign-style atmosphere that such forums provided Mr. Trudeau.

July 11, 2020

We learned a bit more about the incestuousness of this relationship when Mr. Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, tested positive for COVID-19 shortly after participating in a WE Day event in London alongside Formula One superstar Lewis Hamilton and actor Idris Elba. A picture posted on her Instagram account shows the trio with their arms around each other, along with Ms. Grégoire Trudeau’s mother-in-law, Margaret Trudeau, and sister-in-law Alicia Kemper. WE Days had become a family affair for the Trudeau clan.

September 22, 2017

We have since learned that Margaret Trudeau was paid more than $300,000 to speak at several WE Day events, which, no matter how much you admire her, should strike you as unsettling. Ms. Trudeau may be her own person, but nothing she does now can be considered separate from her son’s political career. That can be a double-edged sword for Mr. Trudeau, but not in the context of a WE Day event.

Now it appears that much of the apparatus of government jumped through hoops between April and June to drum up a program, the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG), that – go figure – not a single federal department or agency or private-sector organization had the wherewithal to administer. None, that is, except for WE Charity, which just happens to have been facing financial disaster as the pandemic dragged on.

April 8, 2004

The closer you look, the more this situation resembles the sponsorship scandal of the late 1990s that tarnished the Liberal brand for more than a decade until Mr. Trudeau revived it.

The sponsorship program, concocted by then-prime minister Jean Chrétien’s government, involved doling out bogus contracts to Liberal-friendly advertising companies under the auspices of promoting federalism after the 1995 Quebec referendum. Then-auditor-general Sheila Fraser concluded that Ottawa “broke just about every rule in the book” in awarding such contracts, which lined the pockets of Liberal donors.

February 9, 2005

That scandal, which eventually spawned a public inquiry, led to criminal charges. And though there is no evidence of criminal activity in the awarding of the CSSG contract to WE Charity, there is a certain similarity in the absence of checks and balances in the procedures followed in outsourcing the grant program. The proposal appeared to sail through cabinet. If any ministers raised red flags about the appearance of conflicts of interest or lack of due diligence regarding WE Charity, we have yet to hear about it.

The sponsorship scandal started off small. The entire program did not involve large sums of money, given the overall size of the government. The program was peripheral to Ottawa’s primary missions, which made it seem kind of innocuous at first.

The WE Charity scandal is starting to look eerily similar. It’s an afterthought in the context of the current crisis Canada faces – yet it’s too rotten-smelling to ignore. (Konrad Yakabuski – The Globe & Mail)