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

What We Know About Trudeau’s Latest Ethics Scandal

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.

Related Topics:#BlaineCalkins #WeScandal #WETrudeau feature Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Red Deer - Lacombe MP Blaine Calkins WE scandal

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Federal government’s GHG reduction plan will impose massive costs on Canadians

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Economy

Federal government’s GHG reduction plan will impose massive costs on Canadians

Published on July 26, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Ross McKitrick

Many Canadians are unhappy about the carbon tax. Proponents argue it’s the cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which is true, but the problem for the government is that even as the tax hits the upper limit of what people are willing to pay, emissions haven’t fallen nearly enough to meet the federal target of at least 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Indeed, since the temporary 2020 COVID-era drop, national GHG emissions have been rising, in part due to rapid population growth.

The carbon tax, however, is only part of the federal GHG plan. In a new study published by the Fraser Institute, I present a detailed discussion of the Trudeau government’s proposed Emission Reduction Plan (ERP), including its economic impacts and the likely GHG reduction effects. The bottom line is that the package as a whole is so harmful to the economy it’s unlikely to be implemented, and it still wouldn’t reach the GHG goal even if it were.

Simply put, the government has failed to provide a detailed economic assessment of its ERP, offering instead only a superficial and flawed rationale that overstates the benefits and waives away the costs. My study presents a comprehensive analysis of the proposed policy package and uses a peer-reviewed macroeconomic model to estimate its economic and environmental effects.

The Emissions Reduction Plan can be broken down into three components: the carbon tax, the Clean Fuels Regulation (CFR) and the regulatory measures. The latter category includes a long list including the electric vehicle mandate, carbon capture system tax credits, restrictions on fertilizer use in agriculture, methane reduction targets and an overall emissions cap in the oil and gas industry, new emission limits for the electricity sector, new building and motor vehicle energy efficiency mandates and many other such instruments. The regulatory measures tend to have high upfront costs and limited short-term effects so they carry relatively high marginal costs of emission reductions.

The cheapest part of the package is the carbon tax. I estimate it will get 2030 emissions down by about 18 per cent compared to where they otherwise would be, returning them approximately to 2020 levels. The CFR brings them down a further 6 per cent relative to their base case levels and the regulatory measures bring them down another 2.5 per cent, for a cumulative reduction of 26.5 per cent below the base case 2030 level, which is just under 60 per cent of the way to the government’s target.

However, the costs of the various components are not the same.

The carbon tax reduces emissions at an initial average cost of about $290 per tonne, falling to just under $230 per tonne by 2030. This is on par with the federal government’s estimate of the social costs of GHG emissions, which rise from about $250 to $290 per tonne over the present decade. While I argue that these social cost estimates are exaggerated, even if we take them at face value, they imply that while the carbon tax policy passes a cost-benefit test the rest of the ERP does not because the per-tonne abatement costs are much higher. The CFR roughly doubles the cost per tonne of GHG reductions; adding in the regulatory measures approximately triples them.

The economic impacts are easiest to understand by translating these costs into per-worker terms. I estimate that the annual cost per worker of the carbon-pricing system net of rebates, accounting for indirect effects such as higher consumer costs and lower real wages, works out to $1,302 as of 2030. Adding in the government’s Clean Fuels Regulations more than doubles that to $3,550 and adding in the other regulatory measures increases it further to $6,700.

The policy package also reduces total employment. The carbon tax results in an estimated 57,000 fewer jobs as of 2030, the Clean Fuels Regulation increases job losses to 94,000 and the regulatory measures increases losses to 164,000 jobs. Claims by the federal government that the ERP presents new opportunities for jobs and employment in Canada are unsupported by proper analysis.

The regional impacts vary. While the energy-producing provinces (especially Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick) fare poorly, Ontario ends up bearing the largest relative costs. Ontario is a large energy user, and the CFR and other regulatory measures have strongly negative impacts on Ontario’s manufacturing base and consumer wellbeing.

Canada’s stagnant income and output levels are matters of serious policy concern. The Trudeau government has signalled it wants to fix this, but its climate plan will make the situation worse. Unfortunately, rather than seeking a proper mandate for the ERP by giving the public an honest account of the costs, the government has instead offered vague and unsupported claims that the decarbonization agenda will benefit the economy. This is untrue. And as the real costs become more and more apparent, I think it unlikely Canadians will tolerate the plan’s continued implementation.

Author:

Ross McKitrick

Professor of Economics, University of Guelph

Alberta

Alberta awash in corporate welfare

Published on July 26, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

To understand Ottawa’s negative impact on Alberta’s economy and living standards, juxtapose two recent pieces of data.

First, in July the Trudeau government made three separate “economic development” spending announcements in Alberta, totalling more than $80 million and affecting 37 different projects related to the “green economy,” clean technology and agriculture. And second, as noted in a new essay by Fraser Institute senior fellow Kenneth Green, inflation-adjusted business investment (excluding residential structures) in Canada’s extraction sector (mining, quarrying, oil and gas) fell 51.2 per cent from 2014 to 2022.

The productivity gains that raise living standards and improve economic conditions rely on business investment. But business investment in Canada has declined over the past decade and total economic growth per person (inflation-adjusted) from Q3-2015 through to Q1-2024 has been less than 1 per cent versus robust growth of nearly 16 per cent in the United States over the same period.

For Canada’s extraction sector, as Green documents, federal policies—new fuel regulations, extended review processes on major infrastructure projects, an effective ban on oil shipments on British Columbia’s northern coast, a hard greenhouse gas emissions cap targeting oil and gas, and other regulatory initiatives—are largely to blame for the massive decline in investment.

Meanwhile, as Ottawa impedes private investment, its latest bundle of economic development announcements underscores its strategy to have government take the lead in allocating economic resources, whether for infrastructure and public institutions or for corporate welfare to private companies.

Consider these federally-subsidized projects.

A gas cloud imaging company received $4.1 million from taxpayers to expand marketing, operations and product development. The Battery Metals Association of Canada received $850,000 to “support growth of the battery metals sector in Western Canada by enhancing collaboration and education stakeholders.” A food manufacturer in Lethbridge received $5.2 million to increase production of plant-based protein products. Ermineskin Cree Nation received nearly $400,000 for a feasibility study for a new solar farm. The Town of Coronation received almost $900,000 to renovate and retrofit two buildings into a business incubator. The Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada received $400,000 for marketing and other support to help boost clean technology product exports. And so on.

When the Trudeau government announced all this corporate welfare and spending, it naturally claimed it create economic growth and good jobs. But corporate welfare doesn’t create growth and good jobs, it only directs resources (including labour) to subsidized sectors and businesses and away from sectors and businesses that must be more heavily taxed to support the subsidies. The effect of government initiatives that reduce private investment and replace it with government spending is a net economic loss.

As 20th-century business and economics journalist Henry Hazlitt put it, the case for government directing investment (instead of the private sector) relies on politicians and bureaucrats—who did not earn the money and to whom the money does not belong—investing that money wisely and with almost perfect foresight. Of course, that’s preposterous.

Alas, this replacement of private-sector investment with public spending is happening not only in Alberta but across Canada today due to the Trudeau government’s fiscal policies. Lower productivity and lower living standards, the data show, are the unhappy results.