The WE charity scandal has exposed “memory flaws’’ or arrogance of ethics by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau. We don’t know which and likely never will.
The prime minister failed to recuse himself from voting on the proposal to give the WE charity a sole source $500 million federal contract to pay students for summer volunteering and get them some money for the fall tuition.
That contract would have given WE $43.5 million to administer the program.
Morneau accepted $41,000 in travel from WE without repaying the amount, but in the same breath donated $50,000. As a former Bay Street businessman, he might have thought his actions put WE ahead and paid for the gift of travel but he failed on the ethics factor. He also failed to recuse.
This was Morneau’s third public breach of ethics — an indication he has been slow to move from the less monitored ethics of Bay Street to the detailed ethics scrutiny that is supposed to operate in federal politics.
Trudeau’s family members were paid almost $300,000 in fees and expenses by WE in his third public breach of ethics.
In our daily lives it matters not if we choose to do business with friends or family or people who have been generous to us. Politicians are bound by ethics laws to avoid any actions that may favour friends or family.
Those laws are the holes that generations of politicians have dug themselves into.
Despite the ethics commissioner’s investigation and investigations by two Parliamentary committees, voters won’t know what happened. The ethics commissioner’s investigation is too narrow. Both Parliamentary committee investigations are politically motivated with the usual stream of lies spouted in them.
Only a national public inquiry will come close to getting to the bottom of this scandal.
For the Liberal government the WE scandal is the sixth in office since 2015.
In nine years, the previous Conservative government had no less than a dozen scandals from Bev Oda’s $16 glass of orange juice to who cut Sen. Mike Duffy a $90,000 hush money cheque? And did Prime Minister Harper know about it?
The takeaway by voters from this record of scandals can only be more disdain for politicians, less belief in their utterings, and an erosion of belief in democracy.
The real losers are politicians whose credibility falls below that of used car sales persons.
The losers are many on the WE charity scandals. Thousands of student volunteers who looked forward to the federal pandemic program won’t have the money to pay for fall tuition and books.
The charity has fallen from grace with substantial donors departing to distance their companies from becoming enmeshed in the mess.
Only 25 years old, the WE charity, run by the Kielburger Brothers, has done so much for the needy. The charity has pulled up one million young people in poverty with programs for better education and health care, as well as being involved with 18,000 schools around the globe.
Donations hit a record $63 million last year.
The charity may not exist in a few years as the blowback from the scandal continues and as the spotlight shines on the complex WE structure built by the brothers to support the operations.
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My piece on the mobile app that connects farm gate meat sellers with customers drew a lot of attention. The app is called Meatocracy.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
