Though the last time the WE Charity saga was discussed in these columns was only a few short weeks ago, so much has changed.
What originally looked like your run-of-the-mill bit of favouritism towards a charity group that provided a substantial stage to the current prime minister in the run up to his election has erupted in . . .
the press over the past month like Mount Vesuvius.
Every day it seemed like there was a new revelation or angle to the story.
It was originally reported that WE would be pocketing a $19.5 million administration fee for running the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG), which turned out to be only the amount allocated for the initial cohort of students, the fees could have risen as high as $43.5 million.
Even more intriguing, the money was not directed to the WE Charity directly, but rather the WE Charity Foundation, a shell company they use to hold their vast amount of real estate.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau is now under investigation by the Ethics Commissioner, alongside Trudeau, after it was revealed two of his daughters have close ties to the charity. He disclosed a few days after the investigation was announced that he had reimbursed the charity for more than $41,000 in travel expenses that he and his family had incurred.
To many Pontiacers, that kind of money is close to a year’s salary. To these people, it’s a sum insignificant enough to be forgotten.
This week saw testimony before parliament’s finance committee from the main parties involved: WE’s co-founders the Kielburger brothers, the former chair of the charity’s board as well as the prime minister and his chief of staff.
During their four hour grilling on July 28, the Kielburgers were characteristically defensive of their “social enterprise” empire, bristling with indignation at any questions about the irregularity with which their constellation of companies operates.
They sidestepped the testimony of Michelle Douglas, the former chair of WE’s board of directors, who said that the brothers had refused to disclose financial information regarding enormous layoffs at the charity. She and a large proportion of her fellow board members subsequently resigned en masse in March.
Prime Minister Trudeau and his right hand Katie Telford appeared before the committee on Thursday, and their testimonies were somehow even less forthcoming.
Not only was the PM sorry the project was allowed to happen, he allegedly tried to push back on the pitch from the nameless, faceless bureaucrats he blames for coming up with the idea. He even had the chutzpah to claim that he didn’t have a clue that WE was being considered for the program until May 8, two weeks after it was announced.
He also rejected the NDP’s framing of the payments made to “volunteers” as a way to circumvent minimum wage laws.
These extensive hearings did more to muddy the waters around this deal than they have to further expose any wrongdoing.
Partisan hacks from the Liberals tried to stymie the questions from other members of the committee. Opposition attack dogs like Pierre Polièvre got to deliver their made-for-primetime-TV snippits. All very lively theatre, but it didn’t address the real problem with this company.
The WE movement is a modern, secular response to the tent revivals of old. A whole lot of well-meaning folks enthralled by slick charlatans onstage selling a story of redemption. For just a small fee they could travel overseas and offer their unskilled labour to build a school or dig a well, with the hope that it will be some small atonement for the gilded lifestyle that most North Americans have accepted as normal. That’s the business model of the Kielburgers’ for-profit company, Me to WE, given the sickening moniker “volun-tourism”.
That’s just one of the products being sold during their hugely popular social justice rallies, dubbed “WE Days”. Sure, encouraging volunteering among young people is important, but why does it necessitate a stadium tour complete with ads from Allstate Insurance and speeches from Trudeau’s mother?
Laundering the image of their corporate sponsors by dazzling impressionable children is another service they offer. Internal documents obtained by Vice News’ Justin Ling show that the “halo effect” the WE imparts on the companies it partners with is very real, and likely worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars that they charge.
Finally, they’ve done a huge amount of work to build the Trudeau brand, putting him in front of tens of thousands of future voters over the years, right up until 2017.
It’s genuinely hard to say which is the more lucrative revenue stream: selling make-work student trips to the third world, putting a candy paint job on corporate brands or sidling up to elected officials, from the school boards to federal cabinet (all without registering a single lobbyist to their cause).
What started out as a charity to free children from slavery around the globe has morphed into something antithetical to that cause. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Caleb Nickerson
