It seems like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just can’t stay out of trouble.
His latest gaffe involves the WE charity – an organization that has rallies to motivate young people to get out and do good and think about issues from a global perspective, but also has close ties to the Trudeau family.
This mess started when the prime minister came out with his decision to enlist WE to administer a $900 million student volunteer program to pay young people who assist with initiatives related to COVID-19 recovery efforts. There’s something contradictory about paying people to volunteer, but hey, since the Liberals have been spending money on virtually everything, why not pay young people to volunteer?
The plot thickened when Trudeau said the WE charity was the only one suited to administer the program, even though the federal civil service has been administering all of these other programs introduced by the feds.
Since then, we’ve learned more about the close connections between Trudeau and the WE charity. We’ve found out that both Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau voted for the aid package despite conflicts of interest with WE, and we’re seeing that Trudeau is now the subject of another ethics probe, his third in less than five years in power.
This was a pretty straightforward conflict of interest case. Trudeau’s family has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in honourariums from WE. Trudeau pushed forward a program that would be administered by WE. As for Morneau, his daughter has been employed by WE.
They should have taken the simple step – one that even rookie politicians understand – and declared a conflict of interest.
It’s inexplicable that this is the third time Trudeau is under investigation for an ethics breach. The first one – the Christmas holiday spent on the Aha Khan’s island – wasn’t the worst thing he could have done, but somebody should have explained to him why it wasn’t the right thing to do.
The second, his botched handling of the SNC-Lavalin Affair, should have cost him his job as prime minister.
This time around, it leaves you wondering why it’s happening again. It’s arrogance and/or recklessness on his part, or he really hasn’t grasped some of the fundamentals of the job in his time as prime minister, or as an MP for that matter.
The opposition Conservative Party is calling for a police investigation into the mess. It likely won’t go anywhere. What Trudeau did with the WE charity was indefensible, unethical and a conflict of interest, but just because it was wrong from a political perspective doesn’t mean it was wrong from a legal perspective.
It’s unlikely that this latest scandal will have any lasting negative consequences on Trudeau. It certainly won’t tarnish his image like the SNC-Lavalin scandal did. It will likely have far greater implications for WE, now that it’s come out how much they paid the Trudeaus to be part of their event. (Previously, they said they haven’t paid honourariums to the Trudeaus).
Those who were told by WE that the charity doesn’t pay for appearances have every right to be furious. And the charity won’t have much credibility if they say again they don’t pay for appearances.
It also won’t help their cause that their close ties to Trudeau and the federal Liberals have been exposed.
It’s too bad, because WE actually has done a lot of good in the world, and they have motivated young people to make a difference in their communities and to think beyond their own borders. Now, though, when a lot of people think of WE, they’ll think of Trudeau and shady dealings.
Trudeau needs a wakeup call and has to realize that as prime minister, he has to do things differently. Hopefully this will be it.
If not, then the Liberals need to get tough on him. If he’s not capable of being the leader Canadians need him to be, or if he doesn’t want to be that leader, then they need to give him the boot.
After all, there’s a far more capable leader waiting in the deputy prime minister’s role.
