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

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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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International

Trudeau, Biden agree to end ‘loophole’ in Safe Third Country Agreement: sources

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A family of asylum seekers from Colombia is met by RCMP officers after crossing the border at Roxham Road into Canada Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, in Champlain, New York. Canada and the United States are on the cusp of agreeing to designate all 8,900 km of their shared border as an official crossing under the Safe Third Country Agreement.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

By Mia Rabson and Laura Osman in Ottawa

Canada and the United States have agreed to have asylum seekers turned back at irregular border crossings across the border, including Roxham Road in Quebec.

The U.S. will agree to extend a bilateral treaty known as the Safe Third Country Agreement to apply along the 8,900 kilometres of the shared border, according to an official with the administration of President Joe Biden, who arrived in Ottawa Thursday evening.

In exchange, Canada will agree to welcome an additional 15,000 migrants from across the Western Hemisphere over the next year on a humanitarian basis, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A Canadian government official with knowledge of the talks, granted anonymity to discuss matters not yet made public, also said Thursday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Biden would discuss the issue during a bilateral meeting Friday.

The official said details were still being negotiated, but the leaders agreed in principle.

The agreement follows talks between Trudeau and Biden at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles last June, a migration-heavy meeting where Canada agreed to admit just 4,000 more migrants by 2028.

Such a deal would not physically close off the Roxham Road unofficial crossing in Quebec, where thousands of migrants have entered Canada so they can make an asylum claim.

But it would effectively end its time as a viable route to Canada, as migrants who continue to cross there, or at any other unofficial crossing, would be treated as if they crossed at an official border checkpoint and be returned to the United States to make an asylum claim there.

Those travelling into the U.S. from Canada at unofficial crossings would likewise be returned north of the border by American authorities.

Under the Safe Third Country Agreement, first signed between the U.S. and Canada in 2004, asylum seekers must make their claim in whichever country they arrive first. That currently applies only to official border crossings.

But increasing numbers of migrants are opting to get around that rule by crossing at unofficial locations, such as Roxham Road, 50 kilometres south of Montreal. Taking this route means they can stay in Canada while waiting for a hearing, or for their case to be decided.

Last year, 39,000 people claimed asylum after crossing the unofficial border point into Quebec.

A lawyer for Amnesty International called the move to expand the provisions of the agreement “unconscionable,” from a human rights perspective.

“It’ll just push people to more remote areas, more dangerous crossings,” said Julia Sande, a lawyer for the organization.

“If they’re not going to be offered protection in the United States, they’ll do what they need to do to get here, and that will just push people into dangerous situations.”

The organization is one of three that are challenging the constitutionality of the Safe Third Country Agreement in the Supreme Court, arguing that the United States can’t be counted on to carry out Canada’s obligations to refugees under international law.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Niagara Falls, Ont., expressed relief that Canada and the U.S. appear to have made a tentative decision on the border crossing.

The federal government began transferring asylum claimants to various cities in Ontario, including Niagara Falls, after the Quebec government voiced concerns the migrants were placing pressure on publicly funded services.

Mayor Jim Diodati said 2,000 hotel rooms have been booked by the federal government for the asylum seekers and he found out Thursday that 500 more rooms were reserved for another group arriving on buses from the country road.

“That’s a lot of people in our community, considering (the) population is about 95,000 people,” he said in a phone interview. “That’s a huge, immediate impact to our community.”

The federal immigration minister’s office would not comment on the details and status of the Canada-U.S. negotiations on Thursday.

At a press conference Wednesday, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser would only say his department was working on a solution that would go beyond the politics of the president’s visit and “provide an actual lasting solution” to irregular border crossings.

Fraser said there has been no need for “horse trading” in the negotiations with the U.S. on the issue.

“This is something that both Canada and the United States believe in, is having an orderly policy at all of our borders, but also welcoming immigration policies for those who are fleeing violence, war, or persecution,” he said.

There are larger-scale issues that must also be addressed, he said, including capacity to address the root causes of migration from countries people are fleeing from in the first place.

Biden arrived in Canada Thursday night for a 27-hour state visit, his first formal trip to Canada since being sworn in as the U.S. president in January 2021. Trudeau and Biden are to meet for a formal bilateral discussion in Trudeau’s Parliament Hill office Friday morning.

Canada and the United States have been discussing how to improve the Safe Third Country Agreement for nearly five years.

In Canada, there are political divisions about what to do, with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre calling for Canada to just “close” Roxham Road.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, for his part, wants the Safe Third Country Agreement suspended, allowing any migrant to make a claim in Canada regardless of how they get here.

“We believe that would give dignity to people that are already fleeing serious threats to their lives,” Singh told reporters Thursday, though he said he’s open to other solutions.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2023.

— With files from Fakiha Baig in Toronto and James McCarten in Washington.

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Justice

Boy who killed two officers previously apprehended under Mental Health Act: police

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Deputy Chief Devin Laforce speaks about the details of the shooting that killed two police officers during a press conference in Edmonton, Friday, March 17, 2023. Edmonton police say a 16-year-old boy who shot and killed two officers on March 16 had been apprehended in November under the Mental Health Act and was taken to hospital for assessment. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

By Ritika Dubey in Edmonton

EDMONTON — A 16-year-old boy who fatally shot two officers at an apartment complex one week ago had been apprehended in November under the Mental Health Act and was taken to hospital for assessment, Edmonton police said Thursday.

Police also said the boy’s gun was the same weapon used in another shooting days before at a nearby restaurant that left a man injured. Deputy Chief Devin Laforce said a bullet casing recovered from the Pizza Hut was forensically matched to the gun recovered from the apartment, and the teen is a suspect in both cases.

“Both events have been served by robust investigations that have followed all lines of inquiry,” Laforce said. “All tips and other investigative avenues were pursued exhaustively by the investigating teams.”

Investigators are working to trace the origins of the gun and how it came to be in the boy’s possession, Laforce said. He said other people could face charges.

“Whoever he got that gun from probably faces some criminal jeopardy,” he said.

The gun has not been linked to any other crimes, Laforce said, and police were not ready to confirm details about the firearm.

The Pizza Hut employee who was shot on March 12 remains in hospital in stable but critical condition, he added.

Constables Brett Ryan, 30, and Travis Jordan, 35, were responding to a family dispute at the apartment complex in the northwestern part of the city on March 16 when they were shot by the teen multiple times.

Police have said the boy also shot and wounded his mother during a struggle for the gun before shooting and killing himself. Laforce said multiple shots were fired at the woman. An autopsy conducted by the Edmonton Medical Examiner on Wednesday confirmed the shooter’s cause of death was a single gunshot wound consistent with being self-inflicted. He said no one else fired shots.

The mother remains in hospital. She is unable to speak but has been able to communicate through writing, Laforce said, and police plan to interview her once she is released. He said all families affected by the shooting have been co-operating with police.

Laforce said investigators continue to believe the boy’s parents, police dispatch and the responding officers were unaware there was a firearm in the home.

“There are many remaining questions about what took place last Thursday,” he said.

Police said they are investigating the youth’s phone and computer. They are also waiting on toxicology results.

Supt. Shane Perka said police could not provide details on the outcome of the youth’s mental health assessment nor any other medical information.

“We don’t have access to that information at this point but it’s certainly things that in the coming days and weeks we will be following up on,” he said.

A spokesperson with Alberta Health Services said any information about what care the boy may have received in hospital could not be publicly released due to privacy rules.

Perka added it is unclear whether Ryan and Jordan knew the teen had been apprehended under the Mental Health Act, although information that police had previously responded to a mental health complaint at the apartment would have been available to them.

Laforce and Perka said police are not releasing the youth’s name at this time to maintain the integrity of ongoing investigations, including into the origins of the firearm.

“The premature release of information complicates our efforts,” Perka said. “We also speak in the interests of multiple families whose lives have been irreparably altered by these events.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2023.

— With files from Emily Blake in Yellowknife.

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

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