Must not annoy the paymasters.
So @davidakin scolded me for speaking to Parliament: it would harm ~Journalism~ and the right-thinking people of the CDN press agreed.
Of course, Steve Paikin testified in 2010. Paul Wells in 2017.
Nobody balked, no precedent set.
Just turf-protection by #cdnpoli press club. pic.twitter.com/iRBmKotKit
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) July 23, 2020
This thing just gets better and better.
Prime Minister Justice Trudeau’s government awarded the contract to run the $912-million student volunteer program to a foundation that only received charity status last year and whose stated purpose was to “hold real estate,” newly released records show.
Both a government and charity official confirmed the controversial Canada Student Service Grant contract was not with WE Charity, as Trudeau announced.
Rather, the government gave the contract to the WE Charity Foundation, which is a distinct charity with no track record.
As an aside — am I the only one who thinks Trudeau was setting up Kielburger as a political successor?
Update. On, the small matter of a $41,000 oversight.
.@Bill_Morneau says he wrote a $41K cheque to WE today for expenses related to his family's trips with WE. “I had expected & always had intended to pay the full cost of these trips… not doing so, even unknowingly, is not appropriate. I want to apologize for this error,” he said pic.twitter.com/BPEoD6zY0B
— Power & Politics (@PnPCBC) July 22, 2020
Another oddity in the Kielburger/WE real estate world is how often properties trade hands among family members and insiders. The home at 212 Carlton was sold by Mingze Li to Yutain Qi, another WE employee, and again it sold more than $250,000 below the assessed value.
The family has traded some pieces of real estate multiple times before transferring them to a numbered company for what is recorded as a $0 transaction.
One accountant, who was asked to review documents related to these and other sales, said questions do arise out of what is public but added more background documents would be required to know if these transactions were more than simply strange.
Roxanne Joyal, CEO of ME to WE and also wife to Marc Kielburger, owned 1792 Lakeshore Blvd E., which overlooks Woodbine Beach, for seven years, starting in 2007.
She sold it to Victor Li and his wife in 2014 for $1.56 million. Li sold it to Fred and Theresa Kielburger in 2016 for $1.62 million.
In November 2018, the Kielburgers transferred the property to a numbered company owned by Kelly Hall-Holland, Craig Kielburger’s mother-in-law, for $0. The home is assessed at more than $1.7 million.
Related: Property Brothers.
No link, it’s just a great cartoon.
When the pandemic began, WE Charity promptly laid off the majority of its workforce. Media reports assumed that this was a direct result of COVID-19, with its obvious impacts on donations and live events.
But in an interview with Canadaland, CI’s Managing Director Kate Bahen shares information from WE’s own audited financial statements that tells a different story – one of an organization that appeared to already be in crisis and making strange financial transactions when COVID hit, to anyone who bothered to look.
A full two weeks after we noticed her at SDA…
As I posted yesterday (re: Kielburger call):
The senior bureaucrat who "recommended" #WECharity for $912M sole-source contract was Rachel Wernick: the sister of Michael Wernick (ex-PCO Clerk).Does throwing yourself under the bus for PMJT run in the Wernick family?#LavScam https://t.co/PU2LemFd5N
— Sen. Denise Batters (@denisebatters) July 16, 2020
In 2012, Craig Kielburger challenged school kids across the country to help change the world with the smallest of donations, the penny.
“There is nothing more impactful I can see the penny doing,” Kielburger told the crowd at the We Day in Toronto. Sharing the stage that day with celebrities such as Martin Sheen, Al Gore and Justin Trudeau, Kielburger asked young people to save their change to save the world.
By the end of the 2013 school year, $1.4 million was raised from more than 3,000 schools across the country. They were told they would be helping to give people clean drinking water; I wonder how those children would feel knowing they were donating to a charity that was about to become a major player in real estate.
And more… For 2 months between October and December 2019, Teresa Tam and the Public Health Agency of Canada hired WE Charity for unspecified services, in a sole-source contract, totalling $25,000.
Cashing in on empty voluntourism;
In 2012, I was in Rajasthan, India alongside a group of other keen young Canadians, ready to change the world with Me To We. Although our group was sponsored by a corporation, the three-week trip would have normally cost around $5,000 per participant.
We were told that we’d be contributing to the building of a school in a rural community. In reality, we spent the first week moving a pile of bricks from one side of the work site to the other, the second week moving them back, and the third week painting some walls the wrong colour. […]When I came home from India, Me to We seemed less concerned with me going forward and pursuing more impactful change than they were in getting me to spend more money. I was soon emailed about purchasing another volunteer trip.
