Mike's Musings - On the "WE Scandal"

While most of the world is besot with the challenge of dealing with COVID and a collapsing economy, those of us who pay attention to politics in Canada are focused on what is known as the “WE scandal” that is now engulfing Prime Minister Trudeau and his government.  And in typical Canadian fashion this scandal lacks in sex or drama and turns on the appropriateness of a procurement mechanism. 
Yeah, I know … boring, but nevertheless, quite important. 

For those who have not been paying attention – and really, who can blame you? – indulge me a moment as I try to explain: 

1.       The PM wanted to launch a $910 million program to encourage youth to “volunteer”.  (The disconnect between paying people less than minimum wage to volunteer is beyond me to explain and would force this column well past my word limit, so I’ll move on.)

2.       Instead of managing the program using existing government of Canada resources the Prime Minister’s Office decided that this program’s administration should be outsourced.  (Who can blame him?  There are “only” 275,000 federal civil servants beavering away in perfect efficiency.  It would be hard to find any that weren’t already occupied in making our lives better everyday …)

3.       To expedite things, the government went one step further and directed the contract to the WE Charity – formerly known as Free the Children. (The wisdom of directing $910 million to be spent on encouraging volunteerism in Canada to be administered by a charity that focuses on development overseas is, again, beyond me, but who am I to question?) WE was supposed to receive $19.5 million – or maybe it was $46 million? … hard to know, since no one has seen the contract – for the trouble of administering the program.  5% administration cost – that’s good, isn’t it?  (Anyone who has ever run a business:  It’s not.)

4.       Turns out that some of the PM’s family have close ties to the WE Charity, including quite hefty appearance fees for his family that don’t seem to be available to other speakers.  Remember, it was at an event in London, England that Sophie Gregoire Trudeau contracted COVID a few months ago.  Who paid her expenses to get to London? (By the way, I would never think to charge an appearance fee if I was asked to show up at a charity event. I’ve been doing it wrong all these years. When I’m invited to a charity event, I usually show up with a cheque. Guess I’m the chump.)

5.       WE Charity, despite being a charity that is prohibited by law from engaging in political activism, tends to flout that law and engage in political activism with some slick vid’s featuring our rather photogenic Prime Minister … https://twitter.com/i/status/1281662656131338241

6.       And finally, in typical fashion, all of the above has been in turn denied, obfuscated and then apologized for.  (How you can apologize for something one day that you denied existing two days before is also beyond me but, again, would take too many words to explain, so I’ll move on.)

So, yeah, it’s a bit of a boring story, especially considering some of the crazy stuff happening in the world today, but it’s an important story and worth paying attention to.  But even with all that to chew on, I don’t really think we’re looking at the right parts of this story.  I think it’s actually worse than all of the above.

The really interesting thing – the really scandalous thing - to me is how this all started and why.  Why did the PM and his government decide that spending almost $1 billion to encourage volunteerism in the midst of a pandemic and economic crisis was a top priority?  Why did it decide that a new program of this kind was the right mechanism?  Why WE?

For me, the real scandal of this story is that the government is virtually ignoring the plight of thousands of charities that are struggling to keep their doors open today.  The Ontario Not-for-Profit Network, representing 58,000 not-for-profit enterprises, charities, arts organizations and the like, estimates that at least one fifth! of all their members have closed their doors.  75% have seen a significant decline in revenues and half of them have been forced to cut staff.  93% have cut programming and services to our communities. The ONN estimates that to make charities viable, they need $680 million … and I, for one, think they should get that support from government. 

So, what has the federal government done in response?  They’ve said to charities: “here’s the wage subsidy; do the best you can … but what we’re really going to do is create a whole new program to find volunteers to show up and work at your closed charities, art galleries and community programs.”  How does that make any sense?  (And why is no one else asking this question?)

In my mind, a much better use of this $900 million would have been to directly help charities and not-for-profits across Canada.  My friends at Cardus – a think tank based in Hamilton – have proposed that government could best support charities by matching all private donations that came into charities between April 1 and July 1, in order to keep these charities whole and make up for their lost revenues.  They estimate this would cost the taxpayer $1.25 billion – so, in the ballpark of the money allocated to the WE program.  Such a program would keep hundreds of thousands of people who work at charities employed, would have kept much needed community programming alive, and frankly would have saved thousands of great charities across Canada from going bankrupt.  It would have kept the doors of charities open so that volunteers would have a place to volunteer their time. 

Common sense, right?

A much better investment of your tax dollars, don’t you think?  

Government is all about choices.  The PM made the choice to launch a shiny new program that would give him maximum political benefit, and result in lots of fawning press coverage, but offer only marginal benefit to charity in Canada. The far better choice, in my mind, would have been to cut a cheque to Canadian charities to help them survive.  

WE to ME, indeed …

Mike Ras is a keen observer of public policy, politics and media. For his day job, he’s director of government relations with a prominent Canadian financial institution. A resident of Mississauga, part-time “professor” in the Government Relations program at Seneca College and an active volunteer with a number of local charities.

Connect with him on Twitter here.