SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 188

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 1, 2023 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 188 - May/1/23
Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)
  • May/1/23 6:47:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak about the Trudeau Foundation. The Trudeau Foundation is the talk of the town in many ways, so it is important to review what the foundation actually is because the Trudeau Foundation is a curious beast. As far as its structure and its governance goes, it is kind of a chameleon, conveniently identifying as a charity some of the time and as a government institution at other times. Similarly, the Prime Minister identifies as sort of involved and sort of not involved. These blurred lines make the Trudeau Foundation and, through it, the government, highly vulnerable to foreign interference. Let me explain. The Trudeau Foundation was created as a family foundation with a protected role in its governance for members of the Trudeau family. However, the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, through minister Allan Rock, decided to give the foundation $125 million of taxpayers' money without actually changing the role of the Trudeau family in its governance. It became government-funded and, in law, a government institution, according to the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act, but it retained a protected role in its governance for members of one family, making it a government-funded government institution, which is also a family foundation with a protected role in its governance for one family. I think that this is incredibly bizarre in a free, democratic and egalitarian nation. Giving members of one family privileged control of a government-funded government institution is not consistent with the idea of a just society. The Trudeau Foundation is controlled by 30 members. Up to four of those members are appointed by the Trudeau family, and six are appointed by the Minister of Industry. In its governance, the Trudeau Foundation directly fuses the intellectual estate of the Trudeau family with the Government of Canada, and that is just wrong. The Prime Minister himself, incredibly, is and remains a member of the Trudeau Foundation. He has professed repeatedly, and seems to want us to take at face value, the claim that he is not involved, not at all involved, in the Trudeau Foundation, that he has not been involved for years. That is wrong. He is involved. He is involved in a number of ways. First, the Prime Minister of Canada is necessarily involved, by virtue of the fact that he appoints the Minister of Industry, who appoints six members. He is involved because his brother is a member of the foundation and his half-sister is on the board of directors, and he is involved because he himself is a member of the foundation. He has not resigned. He remains a member of the foundation. It bears his name. Whether he goes to the meetings, the membership that he retains matters for effective control, should he choose to exercise it at any point. It demonstrates his deep, personal investment in the Trudeau Foundation. The personal investment is precisely why a foreign government has sought to curry favour with him through funnelling money to the Trudeau Foundation. The system is clearly broken and the worn-out talking points the government is using clearly do not hold water. The structure is quite evidently broken, even before we start talking about the issue of what happened in this instance of foreign interference because it is this crude hybrid between a family foundation and a government institution. Its charitable face elicits direct donations from foreign entities, while its government face sits by and smiles. The Prime Minister, known, by the way, for wearing many faces, smiles all the more. Canada Post would not collect money from foreign political parties nor would it allow members of a former prime minister's family to have a locked-in role in its leadership. That is because Canada Post is part of the government. The Canadian Cancer Society would potentially get donations from abroad, but it likely would not be a target for foreign interference because it is not closely tied to the government and does not bear the Prime Minister's name. It is purely a charity. One has roles for a government institution, and one has roles for a charity. The problem is that the Trudeau Foundation is trying to have its cake and eat it too. It is trying to be both. The vulnerabilities are not only obvious, they are built into the structure of this organization, and members of the Trudeau family exploited those vulnerabilities to take the foreign money. After attending a cash-for-access fundraiser with thePrime Minister—
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Context: House Hansard - 188 - May/1/23
Mr. Garnett Genuis
  • May/1/23 6:55:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, very simply, I laid out, in my previous comments, the governance of the foundation and the problems with it, the way the governance of the foundation integrates government with control by the Trudeau family of this public institution. The member opposite asks why we do not take his word for it that the Prime Minister has not been involved and is not involved. Does he know why I do not take his word for it? It is because I read the annual report. It is not a conspiracy. It is not off somewhere on a web forum; it is in the annual report. Any member of the public watching can go to the annual report and look at who the members of the foundation are. They will see the name of the current Prime Minister listed in the annual report as a member of the foundation. He retains his position, which he has never resigned from, as do multiple other members of his family. They are members or members of the board of directors. This is the governing structure of this institution. The Prime Minister's Minister of Industry appoints six members. He is clearly involved.
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