{"id":203049,"date":"2021-03-16T02:35:10","date_gmt":"2021-03-15T23:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/five-key-takeaways-from-the-kielburger-brothers-testimony\/"},"modified":"2021-03-16T02:35:10","modified_gmt":"2021-03-15T23:35:10","slug":"five-key-takeaways-from-the-kielburger-brothers-testimony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/five-key-takeaways-from-the-kielburger-brothers-testimony\/","title":{"rendered":"#Five key takeaways from the Kielburger brothers’ testimony"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Five key takeaways from the Kielburger brothers’ testimony<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n Craig and Marc Kielburger testified before the House of Commons ethics committee on Monday for the second time on the matter of the now-defunct $912-million summer student grant program their WE Charity had been tapp<\/a>ed to administer in the summer of 2020. The brothers\u00a0arrived with their lawyer in tow\u2014and on screen\u2014and their hands balled into rhetorical fists, telling the members of the committee, \u201cToday we are taking a stand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their comments were testy, frustrated, even grief-stricken about what the controversy surrounding the grant program had cost them, their organization and the work it does.<\/p>\n

Here are five things we learned from their appearance:<\/p>\n

1. How do you make a not-heart symbol with your hands on a hypothetical billboard? Whatever it is, that\u2019s how they feel toward the government right now.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The controversy around WE being tapped to administer the grant program is rooted in the opposition contention that the organization was overly chummy with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, former finance minister Bill Morneau and their families.\u00a0Trudeau and Morneau have both since conceded that they should have stepped back from any decisions involving WE given their connections to the organization.<\/p>\n

But based on Monday\u2019s testimony, there\u2019s little love lost between the WE founders and Liberal politicians now. WE was simply offering to help, as what charities do, Mark Kielburger said, but they are innocent bystanders in the political storm that followed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t advise the Prime Minister and Mr. Morneau not to recuse themselves. We never prorogued Parliament. We\u2019re not involved in the decision to filibuster the committee this fall,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a political scandal for the government, not WE Charity. The government hid behind a children\u2019s charity by letting it take the fall for their political decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. They would like the committee members to know they destroyed a children\u2019s charity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In September, WE Charity announced it was shutting down its Canadian operations and the Kielburger brothers would step down from their leadership roles, blaming the \u201cfallout\u201d from the Canadian Student Service Grant. Before the committee, Marc Kielburger said his charity\u00a0had been \u201cdestroyed by political crossfire,\u201d and he listed off the many good works his organization had put out into the world that would now be wiped out.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany good people are delivering these projects,\u201d he said. \u201cThey do not deserve to be political pawns.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, committee members had been building up the \u201cfalse narrative\u201d that the brothers had been reluctant to testify, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this was about us as individuals, we would have come here right away, to refute some of the very personal attacks on our integrity. But it\u2019s not that simple,\u201d he said. \u201cThis charity is more important than us and the charity\u2019s work must be carefully protected. You see, even as WE Charity winds down its Canadian activities because of politics, it continues to operate life-saving humanitarian programs.\u201d Kielburger delivered that single word\u2014\u201dpolitics\u201d\u2014the way you might pronounce the most toe-curling swear word you could dream up.<\/p>\n

3. The super-sized nature of the program was the government\u2019s doing and not WE\u2019s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conservative MP Jacques Gourde questioned the brothers about how the program evolved, clarifying a few times the initial size of the program that ultimately promised grants of up to $5,000 for 100,000 student volunteers.<\/p>\n

Craig Kielburger said the government originally asked his organization to design a program for 20,000 students, and for that, WE offered an initial price tag of $50 million.<\/p>\n

\n\u201cOver the time, they increased the numbers so exponentially, it grew to $543 million and 100,000 [students], but they contacted us originally for 20,000 [students],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He emphasized that the ballooning size of the program was driven by Employment and Social<\/a> Services Canada.\u00a0\u201cIt kept on changing at the request of the ESDC, and it kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger at the request of the government,\u201d he said. \u201cThis was not being requested by us, it was requested by ESDC.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n

4. They couldn\u2019t register as lobbyists because they are volunteers.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

At one point, NDP MP Charlie Angus asked the pair whether the lobbying commissioner had been in contact. Craig Kielburger did not answer directly, but said they had completed all paperwork \u201cout of an abundance of caution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brothers had said a number of times that the government approached them about the program rather than the other way around, but that\u2019s not true, Angus said, reading from an email Craig Kielburger had sent to Morneau and listing off other ministers they had met with. Angus asked whether they wouldn\u2019t have saved themselves a lot of grief if they had registered as lobbyists at the outset.<\/p>\n

Craig Kielburger responded that volunteers are not required to register as lobbyists. Angus was having none of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that you\u2019re a volunteer\u2014come on, Craig\u2014we\u2019re no dummies here. You guys run this organization,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re a volunteer that has a chief of staff who\u2019s paid for by the charity, that\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The WE co-founder did not quite respond to the substance of what Angus was arguing when he replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is actually not possible<\/em> for a volunteer to register to lobby,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is literally not possible. If you would like to change the law, I invite you to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

5. They and their families have faced threats.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Liberal MP Han Dong asked if the Kielburgers or their staff had been subjected to any threats as a result of their involvement in this controversy. Craig Kielburger answered emphatically that \u201cIt has been terrible<\/em>,\u201d with death threats coming into their office.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd on a personal note, my youngest isn\u2019t even one year old and he\u2019s already received death threats directed to him,\u201d he said, adding that their home addresses had been printed in news<\/a> outlets and they\u2019d had to call the police multiple times. \u201cMy three-and-a-half-year-old can\u2019t play outside anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day they announced the charity was closing its Canadian operations, \u201cwhen certain members of Parliament got on their social media accounts to inflame people,\u201d someone showed up at his house to confront his wife, Craig Kielburger said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been,\u201d he paused, grasping for the right phrase. \u201cBeyond words.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0
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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Five key takeaways from the Kielburger brothers’ testimony” Craig and Marc Kielburger testified before the House of Commons ethics committee on Monday for the second time on the matter of the now-defunct $912-million summer student grant program their WE Charity had been tapped to administer in the summer of 2020. The brothers\u00a0arrived with their lawyer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":203050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/CP218501-766x431.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[67806,67816,67827,67818],"class_list":["post-203049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-editors-picks","tag-justin-trudeau","tag-kielburgers","tag-we-charity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}