Well, this year’s Canada Day celebrations have come and gone.
It was a different one for sure, with all the new rules and regulations obstructing all but the most determined of revellers. With any luck, the citizens of the Pontiac are still . . .
walking around with the same number of eyes and fingers as they were before the holiday (let he who has never drunkenly injured himself with fireworks/accelerants cast the first stone).
However, despite the massive change to the annual holiday for the rest of us, the federal government managed to deliver with one of the most Canadian political blunders of their five years in power.
It’s Canadian in that it’s slightly boring but displays an incredible lack of self-awareness on the part of our top officials.
In late June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the WE Charity would be administering nearly a billion dollars of federal funding for the Canada Student Service Grant. The aim was to give up to $5,000 to students for volunteer work, with the charity pocketing close to $20 million in administration fees. Trudeau went so far as to say that the WE organization was the “only one… capable of networking and organizing and delivering this program on the scale that we needed it…”.
The gargantuan non-profit group, which started out in 1995 under the name “Free the Children” was founded by two brothers, Craig and Marc Kielburger. Though they now resemble televangelists in both their attire and demeanour, the brothers have appeared genuine in their aim to help people, but that doesn’t mean that they’re best positioned to administer a massive federal program.
There’s also the personal connection to the prime minister and his family that’s troubling.
Yes, Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau is a “WE ambassador” and also produces a podcast for the group, but so what? It’s not like WE has received several million in grant funding and sole-sourced contracts since the Liberals took power (oh wait, they have). Mr. Dressup himself has also appeared at numerous WE Day rallies over the years, making his last appearance in 2017.
On Tuesday, the National Post uncovered a video of Marc Kielburger from June 12 in which the WE co-founder stated that the Prime Minister’s office had called the organization directly back in April to help implement the program, a statement he later tried to walk back.
The media firestorm that ignited proved to be too hot to handle, as the Kielburgers announced on Friday that they would be pulling out of the program’s implementation and the government said that the public service would be taking over in their stead.
Nonetheless, this whole debacle prompted Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion to look into the situation, the third such investigation his office has conducted on the Prime Minister since 2015 (NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus referred to it as a hat trick).
How glaringly obvious is it that our public officials shouldn’t be doling out sole sourced contracts to organizations they’re particularly chummy with? To double down and say that they’re the “only ones” that can handle this scale of project is completely dishonest, but that’s not the most offensive part of this whole debacle. What’s truly ridiculous is that our prime minister believed that this kind of blatant favouritism wouldn’t receive close scrutiny.
With all kinds of money flowing out of Ottawa to soften the body-blow that COVID has dealt to the economy, this is likely not the only carelessly managed program that’s been rolled out. Now more than ever, Canadians need to keep a watchful eye on public officials at all levels of government. It’s the patriotic thing to do.
Caleb Nickerson
