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Opinion

Red Deer – Lacombe MP Blaine Calkins calls on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign

Published

5 years ago

14 minute read

What We Know About Trudeau’s Latest Ethics Scandal

BLAINE CALKINS

 

Over the past several weeks Canadians have been shocked at the details coming to light regarding Justin Trudeau’s WE Scandal. Justin Trudeau and the Kielburgers have been happy to benefit from each other for years. While they are quick to downplay their relationship, the facts tell a different story. According to WE Charity, Justin Trudeau and his family have participated in over 50 WE Events where they have been able to share their political message with young Canadians.

In 2017 WE created a campaign style ad featuring Justin Trudeau for Canada 150 and even pressured employees to go to a political event for the Minister of Finance in his Toronto riding. The Kielburger brothers have donated to the Liberal Party in the past, and under the Trudeau government WE has received upwards of $5.5 million in government funding.

This reciprocal relationship is concerning all on its own, before even considering the current scandal regarding the Canada Student Service Grant, Justin Trudeau and WE. The twists and turns in the story can be difficult to track, but it is clear that Justin Trudeau and former Finance Minister Bill Morneau have once again failed to live up to their legal obligations laid out in Canada’s conflict of interest laws. Here is what we know so far.

In April, WE sent an unsolicited proposal for a youth entrepreneurship program to Minister Chagger and Minister Ng. Ten days later WE received a call from Rachel Wernick, a senior bureaucrat with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) about the yet to be announced Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG). When the program was announced to the public a few days later WE co-founder Craig Kielburger sent Ms. Wernick a proposal to administer the grant that same day.

According to the Kielburgers someone at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) contacted them the next day about delivering the program, which they later recanted claiming it was a public servant who contacted them. Ms. Wernick is credited as being the public servant who recommended that WE was the only organization that could deliver the program.

 

On June 25th WE Charity was announced as the partner for the $900 million CSSG program, and Canadians were told they would receive $19.5 million to administer it. When asked, Trudeau suggested there was no conflict of interest because he and his wife had never been paid by the organization. A few days later Conservatives asked the Auditor General to probe the deal since parliamentary oversight was hindered by the program being outsourced, and due to concern over the well documented relationship between Trudeau and the Kielburgers.

 

By July 3rd Mark and Craig Kielburger announced that WE would be giving up the contract to administer the CSSG. On the same day, the Ethics Commissioner confirmed that he would be starting an investigation into Justin Trudeau for the third time. Less than a week later WE confirmed that the Prime Minister’s Mother, Margaret Trudeau had been paid $312,000 for 28 appearances since 2016 and that his brother, Alexandre Trudeau, was paid $40,000 for 8 events in 2017-2018. They also acknowledged that the Prime Minister’s wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau had received $1,400 for an appearance in 2012.

We later found out that on top of those fees WE Charity also paid an additional $212,846 in expenses between the three members of the Trudeau family. This brings the total remuneration to over $566,000. This revelation, in part, led to the Conservatives writing to the Commissioner of the RCMP to request that they look into this matter as it pertains to potential criminal code violations.

 

The Prime Minister isn’t the only one with an apparent conflict of interest in this matter, with former Minister Morneau also having close family ties with WE. Like the Prime Minister, he did not recuse himself despite the fact that his one daughter works for WE and another has been a speaker in the past and received a book endorsement. This led to the Ethics Commissioner launching an investigation into former Minister Morneau as well.

At an appearance before the Finance Committee former Minister Morneau would later go on to acknowledge that he and his wife had recently made two large donations, roughly $50,0000 each, and that he had also just written a cheque for over $41,000 to reimburse WE for expenses he and his family incurred on two vacations to Africa and South America, where they visited WE projects. WE later confirmed that the complementary trip was offered to former Minister Morneau and his family because of their history of significant donations to similar programs. These revelations led to the Conservative caucus calling for the now former Minister to resign.

 

The Finance Committee and the Ethics Committee began to look into this latest scandal, and the testimony and information they have received has painted a confusing and troubling picture. They uncovered a number of very concerning details before the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament in order to shut down the committees.

· WE stood to collect $45.53 million in fees, over double what was initially stated.

· The program, originally announced at over $900 million, was actually contracted out at $544 million instead. Why the discrepancy?

· The Clerk of the Privy Council stated that there were no red flags when considering WE, but that the Public Service didn’t probe the organizations finances. This is quite odd.

· The President of the Public Service Alliance disputed that only WE could have delivered the CSSG, stating that to say the Public Service was unable to was insulting. He pointed to the various government grant programs, Canada Summer Jobs and the Canada Service Corps as comparable programs. The theory that only WE could handle the program was further dismantled when it turned out that they had to subcontract part of the program because they weren’t able to deliver it in French.

· The contract for the CSSG wasn’t actually with WE Charity, but with WE Charity Foundation, a shell foundation that had no previous experience in delivering these types of programs.

· The former Chair of the Board at WE Charity testified that she had been forced to resign by Craig Kielburger for requesting financial documents from WE Executives to justify the layoff of hundreds of employees.

· The Kielburger brothers testified, claiming that they were running the program as a favour to Canada, and that their organization was to be reimbursed for expenses, but not make money off of the program. In a leaked document, a draft budget dated May 4th outlined some expenses including for staff salary. This included 175 program managers at $30,0000 each for 4.5 months work, ten supervisors at $45,000 each for 5.5months work, five group leaders at $70,000 each for 6 months work, and two project leaders for $125,000 for eight months work.

· WE Charity started to incur eligible expenses on May 5th, despite Cabinet not approving the program until May 22nd. This was being done with the full knowledge of ESDC, and allegedly at the financial liability of WE.

· Trudeau testified that he only found out about WE’s involvement on May 8th, shortly before it was set to be discussed at Cabinet. He claims that he removed it from the agenda and asked the public service to complete additional due diligence given his family connection to WE. He did not contact the Ethics Commissioner despite the concerns. This additional due diligence did not unearth any of the problems disclosed by the former Chair of the Board. It is noteworthy that no Minister, prior to the Prime Minister making his claim, had a story that would corroborate this feeble explanation.

 

The Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff confirmed that a handful of employees in PMO were aware of WE’s involvement and had interactions with the organization in the lead up to the approval. This included an interaction on May 5th, the day WE started incurring eligible expenses. So far, every time someone has come forward to try and explain away the Liberal’s latest mess, Canadians are left with more questions than when they started. Canadians deserve answers, and my Conservative colleagues and I are committed to finding them using every tool at our disposal.

While the studies at committee may have been temporarily halted by Trudeau’s prorogation Conservatives will continue to investigate this matter, and pursue every whiff of corruption like when we called on the Elections Commissioner to look into the political benefits that the Liberals have been given by WE. While the Prime Minister may be attempting to prevent Canadians from knowing the truth, Members of the Finance committee received thousands of heavily redacted documents from the Liberal government on the same day that Trudeau prorogued Parliament. They paint a very different picture of how WE came to be selected for this program than the one that the Liberals have offered up.

These documents suggest that the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth told WE to develop a proposal for a summer service opportunity before the CSSG was even announced. They go on to claim that the former Minister of Finance was “besties” with WE and that senior members of the Prime Minister’s office were involved in the development of the program and were having conversations with WE from an early stage. You can see these documents for yourself at wedocuments.ca.

 

The timeline of Mr. Trudeau’s version of events simply doesn’t add up. The CSSG was announced on April 22nd. A member of PMO spoke with WE about their proposal on May 5th, the same day they started to charge expenses for administering the program, but Cabinet wouldn’t approve the program for two and a half weeks.

Why was a charity that had to recently lay off hundreds of employees due to financial hardship related to COVID-19 so willing to accept the liability of starting the program without approval? Why were they so sure they would be approved? Why were they told they could start charging expenses before approval?

To answer that, you only need to look at the cozy relationship between Justin Trudeau, former Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, the Liberal Party and WE. Now that the former Minister Bill Morneau has resigned and more than 5000 pages of documents have been released for review, Canadians are hungrier for that truth than ever before. The Liberals are banking on Canadians forgetting about this scandal during their prorogation and hoping that they can change the channel later this month with a new Throne Speech, but it isn’t going to work. Despite prorogation and all of the confusion and misdirection, one thing is absolutely clear – Justin Trudeau must resign for his part in this scandal.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Trust but verify: Why COVID-19 And Kamloops Claims Demand Scientific Scrutiny

Published on May 1, 2025

By

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Rodney Clifton

Senior Fellow Rodney Clifton calls for renewed scientific scrutiny of two major Canadian narratives: COVID-19 policies and the Kamloops residential school claims. He argues that both bypassed rigorous, evidence-based evaluation, favouring politicized consensus. Critics of pandemic measures, like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, were wrongly dismissed despite valid concerns. Similarly, the unverified mass grave claims in Kamloops were accepted without forensic proof. Clifton urges a return to the scientific principle of “trust but verify” to safeguard truth, public policy, and democracy.

COVID-19 and Kamloops claims dodged scrutiny – but the truth is catching up

Do we know the best way to decide if specific empirical claims are true?

Of course we do. The best way is by using the procedures of science.

Scientists critically examine the arguments and evidence in research studies to find weaknesses and fallacies. If there are no weaknesses or fallacies, the evidence enters the realm of science. But if there are weaknesses, the research has low or zero credibility, and the evidence does not become a building block of science.

In a historical context, seemingly good evidence may not remain as science because claims are continually evaluated by researchers. This scientific process is not failsafe, but it is far better than other procedures for determining the truth of empirical claims.

This powerful principle is often called “trust but verify,” and it is the idea behind the replication of scientific results.

Today, many such truth claims demand critical examination. At least two come readily to mind.

The first is the claim that the COVID-19 procedures and vaccines were safe and effective.

It is now abundantly clear that the procedures used during the COVID-19 pandemic bypassed time tested scientific protocols. Instead of open scientific debate and rigorous testing, government appointed “scientists” endorsed government-approved narratives. Canadians were told to social distance, wear masks and, most importantly, get vaccinated—often without transparent discussion of the evidence or risks.

Those who questioned the procedures, vaccines or official explanations were dismissed as “deniers” and, in some cases, ridiculed. Perhaps the most notable example is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Stanford epidemiologist and economist who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration. Despite being vilified during the pandemic, Dr. Bhattacharya is now the head of the U.S. National Institute of Health.

Five years after the pandemic began, it is clear that Dr. Bhattacharya—and many other so-called deniers—were raising legitimate concerns. Contrary to the portrayal of these scientists as conspiracy theorists or extremists, they were doing exactly what good scientists should do: trusting but verifying empirical claims. Their skepticism was warranted, particularly regarding both the severity of the virus and the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

The second claim concerns the allegation that Indigenous children died or were murdered and buried in unmarked graves at the Kamloops Residential School.

In 2021, the Kamloops Indigenous Band claimed that 215 children’s bodies had been discovered in the schoolyard. The legacy media swiftly labelled anyone who questioned the claim as a “denier.” Despite millions of dollars allocated for excavations, no bodies have been exhumed. Meanwhile, other bands have made similar claims, likely encouraged by federal government incentives tied to funding.

To date, this claim has not faced normal scientific scrutiny. The debate remains lopsided, with one side citing the memories of unnamed elders—referred to as “knowledge-keepers”—while the other side calls for forensic evidence before accepting the claim.

The allegation of mass graves was not only embraced by the media but also by Parliament. Members of the House of Commons passed a motion by NDP MP Leah Gazan declaring that Indigenous children were subjected to genocide in residential schools. Disturbingly, this motion passed without any demand for forensic or corroborating evidence.

Truth claims must always be open to scrutiny. Those who challenge prevailing narratives should not be disparaged but rather respected, even if they are later proven wrong, because they are upholding the essential principle of science. It is time to reaffirm the vital importance of verifying evidence to resolve empirical questions.

We still need a robust debate about COVID-19 procedures, the virus itself, the vaccines and the claims of mass graves at residential schools. More broadly, we need open, evidence-based debates on many pressing empirical claims. Preserving our democracy and creating sound public policy depend on it because verifiable evidence is the cornerstone of decision-making that serves all Canadians.

Rodney A. Clifton is a professor emeritus at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Along with Mark DeWolf, he is the editor of From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, which can be ordered from Amazon.ca or the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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International

Javier Millei declassifies 1850+ files on Nazi leaders in Argentina

Published on April 30, 2025

By

MXM logo MxM News

Quick Hit:

Argentine President Javier Milei has ordered the declassification of over 1,850 historical documents detailing the presence and activities of Nazi officials in Argentina following World War II. The move grants global public access to once-restricted files on high-profile Nazi figures, including Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann.

Key Details:

  • The files are now publicly available online through an Argentine government portal.
  • Notable entries document the postwar movements and false identities of infamous Nazi war criminals, such as Mengele and Eichmann.
  • The declassified material was delivered to the Simon Wiesenthal Center to assist ongoing investigations into postwar Nazi financial networks.

Diving Deeper:

The decision by President Milei to declassify over 1,850 official records regarding Nazi officials in Argentina is a historic act of governmental transparency, and one that sheds further light on Argentina’s role as a haven for some of history’s most reviled war criminals.

Among the most chilling revelations are detailed police and immigration records concerning Josef Mengele, the SS doctor known as the “Angel of Death.” The files show Mengele arrived in Argentina in June 1949 using a falsified Italian identity under the name “Gregor Helmut,” facilitated by a passport issued by the International Red Cross. He successfully obtained Argentine legal status with help from the German embassy and remained in the country for years under official cover. Reports describe his profession as “manufacturer” and his later attempts to travel to both Chile and West Germany, supported by certificates of good conduct issued by local authorities.

Another document confirms that West Germany had requested Mengele’s extradition to face a life sentence, yet Argentina denied the request, citing procedural technicalities and taking no action—a decision that allowed Mengele to continue living in freedom in South America until his death in Brazil in 1979.

The files also include information on Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust’s “Final Solution,” who lived in Argentina until his dramatic capture by Israeli Mossad agents in 1960. Additionally, declassified material references Martin Bormann, Hitler’s personal secretary, and Walter Kutschmann, a Gestapo officer responsible for mass atrocities in Poland who lived under an alias in Miramar.

The Argentine government stated that these files were compiled through investigations by the Foreign Affairs Directorate of the Federal Police, the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE), and the National Gendarmerie from the 1950s through the 1980s. Until this release, the information could only be viewed in a tightly controlled section of Argentina’s General Archive of the Nation.

The newly declassified files were also handed over to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, supporting its research into financial ties between Nazi officials and institutions like the Swiss-based Credit Suisse. The decision follows a February agreement between President Milei and representatives of the center.

Chief of Staff Guillermo Francos made it clear that this release was at the personal direction of Milei, noting in March, “President Milei gave the instruction to release all documentation [on Nazis who fled to Argentina after World War II] that exists in any State agency, because there is no reason to continue safeguarding that information.”

(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

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