Ethics commissioner clears Trudeau of WE charity conflict of interest, but not Morneau

Justin Trudeau has been cleared by the ethics commissioner who was asked to review whether Canada’s prime minister had been in a conflict of interest because of his involvement in funding of the WE charity.

Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner M​ario Dion released two reports on Thursday. In them, he finds Trudeau was not in conflict of interest, however, former finance minister Bill Morneau was.

The WE charity, which was founded by Marc and Craig Kielburger, was awarded funding for its Social Entrepreneurship program and chosen to be the administrator of the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG) in the spring of 2020.

Trudeau’s role in making those decisions raised concerns with two MPs — Michael Barrett, MP for Leeds–Grenville–Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes and Charlie Angus, MP for Timmins–James Bay. They brought their concerns about conflicts and preferential treatment to Dion.

Trudeau, his wife, his mother and his brother had been involved with the WE charity for years prior to these decisions.

The ethics commissioner looked specifically at contraventions of subsection 6(1) and sections 7 and 21 of the Conflict of Interest Act. Those subsections prohibit those holding public office from participating in decisions that would benefit their friends or family or giving preferential treatment to someone based on their identity.

They also set an expectation for those in public office to recuse themselves from any decision-making that would be a conflict of interest.

“Although the connection between Mr. Trudeau’s relatives and WE created the appearance of a conflict of interest, the appearance of conflict is insufficient to cause a contravention of the Act’s substantive rules,” said the office of the ethics commissioner in a news release.

“During the examination, I determined there was no friendship between Mr. Trudeau and the Kielburgers, nor was Mr. Trudeau involved in any discussions with them leading to the decisions,” Dion said in that same release.

However, he determined the relationship between Morneau and WE “included an unusually high degree of involvement between their representatives and afforded WE unfettered access to the Office of the Minister of Finance, which amounted to preferential treatment.”

He went on to determine that “preferential treatment was based on Mr. Morneau’s relationship with Mr. Craig Kielburger, the co-founder of WE. Not only was Mr. Kielburger a constituent, but Commissioner Dion also determined that he and Mr. Morneau were friends within the meaning of the Conflict of Interest Act.”

Morneau was found to have contravened the same subsections of the act that Trudeau was found to have not.

Morneau released a statement in response.

My statement on the Ethics Commissioners report // Ma déclaration sur le rapport du Commissaire à l’éthique pic.twitter.com/rksUf7Go3T

— Bill Morneau (@Bill_Morneau) May 13, 2021

In it, he says, ” When the government designed the Canada Student Service Grant, our goal was to help students gain meaningful work experience during one of the greatest economic challenges of our lifetime.

“As the report confirms, the decision to have WE charity administer the program was entirely based on the advice of the public service.

“As I have already stated, in retrospect, I should have recused myself from the discussion.”

The complaints about Morneau were brought forward by Barrett, Angus, Pierre Poilievre, MP for Carleton, and Michael Cooper, MP for St. Albert–Edmonton.

Dion said his office examined 40,000 pages of documents from Morneau, Trudeau, and 13 witnesses. It found the federal public service was struggling to determine how to “properly and rapidly align a volunteer and grant-based student program amidst the uncertainty of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic.”