Senator Gold, it probably does not come as a surprise to you that my question will be around the WE scandal.

Leader, on June 25, the Prime Minister announced that a $912 million Canada Student Service Grant would be administered by the WE Charity, which has paid members of his own family over $300,000. This organization was in breach of its bank covenants and had much of its board resign this spring, leader.

In fact, the Trudeau government signed the sole-source deal with WE Charity Foundation, a real estate holding company, which received charitable status last year, has a budget of just $150,000 and zero experience delivering programs. This holding company would have had to mobilize 40,000 to 50,000 volunteers in short order. Even if it was successful, at $5,000 per volunteer, that still would not have accounted for anywhere near the full amount of this billion-dollar deal.

Leader, did your government sign a billion-dollar agreement with a shell company? Where would the unused hundreds of millions of dollars have gone? Has the RCMP contacted any member of your government about WE?

Thank you for your questions. With regard to your last question, I am not aware of any contact from the RCMP to the government.

With regard to your first question, the public service worked diligently to find the best possible delivery method for this program in order to get students grants to do the volunteer work that we continue to hope they will do. This work and the negotiations were done at the level of departmental officials.

Regrettably, the program did not unfold as intended, but the government will continue to support students and, indeed, all Canadians throughout this difficult time.

I think, in fact, the Canadian public is lucky it didn’t unfold the way the government intended it to unfold.

On the very same day, the Minister of Finance testified before committee last week that he miraculously remembered, to his great surprise, that he and his family received over $41,000 in travel and expenses from WE. Minister Morneau told the committee he had always meant to repay these expenses, but hours later, WE contradicted the minister and said the travel had, in fact, been complimentary. This is the second time the Minister of Finance has broken the ethics law after forgetting to disclose his French villa to the Ethics Commissioner in 2017.

Leader, given his numerous ongoing and serious ethical violations, why is Minister Morneau still the Minister of Finance? Why should Canadians have any confidence in him whatsoever? Can you tell us if the RCMP has been in contact with the minister or any members of his office or department regarding WE?

Thank you for your question. With regard to the last part of your question, I’m not aware of any such contact.

The Minister of Finance, as we all know, testified before the committee. He was open. He was transparent about his family’s engagement with WE and about his role in the development of the Canada Student Service Grant. Furthermore, the Finance Minister acknowledged that he should have recused himself from deliberations around the organization. Moreover, he was open and transparent and apologized for his mistakes in all matters, and has pledged to commit to work with the Ethics Commissioner on this issue.

With regard to your central question, the government continues to have full confidence in the Minister of Finance. He has steered us, along with the public service and his colleagues, through a most difficult time. He’s ensured that Canadians were able to pay their rent, put bread on the table for the benefit of their families and to help the economy have sufficient support to weather this storm, in the hope that we can, and the expectation that the economy can return in strength as we transition out of this pandemic.

Leader, I guess I will respectfully disagree about the growing confidence in the Finance Minister. In fact, it’s the opposite of that, especially when in this chamber, when he tweets the night before about helping small businesses, making them wait again when they had already been waiting for months for his support.

I’m not saying his department isn’t working, but at the same time I’m just questioning the minister’s priorities. In fact, when he appeared before the house committee that very day, he remembered the $41,000 he had received from WE, just hours before the committee appearance.

These are all very clear examples of why we are losing trust in the Finance Minister. At a recent press conference the Prime Minister said:

We’re still making determinations about what further openness we can show.

My question, leader, is every mandate letter from the Prime Minister to his cabinet says they’re expected to raise the bar on openness, effectiveness and transparency in government. When it comes to the WE contract, why is your government choosing secrecy and stonewalling?

Thank you for your question. I respectfully disagree with the premise of your question.

The Prime Minister and the Finance Minister quickly acknowledged the mistake that they made with regard to recusal and as this chamber knows, and as the government has stated on numerous occasions, in order to address the crisis that overtook us in this country, the government did everything it could to provide support to Canadians as quickly as possible. As the government acknowledged and as we have dealt with in this chamber on a number of occasions, that’s required adjustments; that speed rather than perfection had to be the order of the day. I think Canadians have benefited from the speed with which this government addressed the crisis into which we plummeted.

So this government remains committed to transparency and openness. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance are cooperating fully with the Ethics Commissioner. The Ethics Commissioner has the tools and the credibility to look into this matter, and this chamber should remain confident that the proper procedures will be followed by the Ethics Commissioner and that the government will continue to cooperate in these matters.

That’s actually a perfect segue to my supplementary which relates to the report which found the Prime Minister had broken the Conflict of Interest Act in relation to SNC-Lavalin scandal. The Ethics Commissioner stated “witnesses were constrained in their ability to provide evidence” due to the government’s decision to deny his office access to cabinet confidences.

Leader, for this year’s investigation by the Ethics Commissioner into the Prime Minister’s conduct — and you yourself just said that they are absolutely committed to openness and transparency — will your government provide true openness and transparency and commit to waiving all cabinet confidences in relation to the contribution agreement awarded to the WE Charity Foundation?

Thank you for your question. I’m not in a position to give that undertaking in response to your question. But I do repeat that the government is committed to working in an open and transparent fashion with the Ethics Commissioner, and indeed with the three committees in the House of Commons that are inquiring into this matter. Indeed, I was advised just today, as many of us assumed would be the case, that both the Prime Minister and his chief of staff have expressed their willingness to appear before the Finance Committee in the other place and to answer all questions.

I thank the senator for the question. The government’s goal with this program was and still is to assist youth and students, to help them volunteer at a time when, unfortunately, not just young people but many Canadian workers as well are seeing that the jobs they hoped for and were expecting may have disappeared.

The government’s goal was to put in place a program to help as many young people as possible, not to help the organization.

Thank you for the question. According to the information I have, which is already in the public domain, I was told that impartial public servants recommended a partnership agreement with WE. It is true that there are existing programs. However, the public service was overwhelmed because of the challenges of implementing and overseeing other programs that the government has put in place and which we, in the Senate, supported by passing several bills.