The History Method: Explaining the WE Charity Scandal
Justin Trudeau, the Kielburger Brothers, and Canadian celebrity activism
This is a post that I’ve been working on since the WE Charity scandal broke in late June. I’ve been putting my thoughts together to explain how Justin Trudeau and his government fell into such an obvious scandal. This is also my first post using what I’m going to call the History Method, where I use the historians’ approach to analyze current events. The history of the relationship between Trudeau and the Kielburger brothers since the 1990s and the Liberal government’s repeated ethical lapses inform, I think, how we should view the scandal. Please subscribe to see more content like this.
On July 30, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified before the House of Commons finance committee on his involvement in the deal between WE Charity and the federal government to administer the Canada Student Service Grant program. Following his opening statement, where Trudeau stated that after he first learned of the deal on May 22, he pushed back on the civil service to “make sure that everything was done exactly right,” Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre and NDP MP Charlie Angus led the questioning.
It was Poilievre who struck first, when, on his opening question, he got Trudeau to admit that he didn’t know how much his family had received from WE Charity. But it was Angus who asked the more substantive questions.
Angus began his questioning by noting that the WE scandal “comes down, fundamentally, to a question of” Trudeau’s judgment. “You’ve been found guilt twice of breaking the conflict of interest act,” he remarked, questioning how Trudeau could have again fallen into “such an obvious conflict of interest” with WE Charity. “You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Prime Minister, that the conflict of interest applies to you,” he concluded.
Angus also summarized the conflict of interest accusations against Trudeau and his government and the intentions of WE Charity:
“The fact is the Kielburger brothers carefully cultivated their relationship with you and your brand. After you became prime minister, they put you on the stadium circuit, they hired your family members to the tune of half-a-million dollars, they hired the finance minister’s daughter, they flew him around the world, they even made their staff go to his parties. You think that’s not a conflict of interest, yes or no?”
Angus’s questions reveal the extent to which Trudeau, his government, and WE Charity view themselves as leaders of a progressive, youth movement, above the partisan fray and ethical conundrums of traditional politics and conflict of interest laws, a belief rooted in a culture of celebrity youth activism that Trudeau and WE Charity founders Craig and Marc Kielburger emerged from in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
WE Charity, formerly known as Free the Children, was founded in 1995 by 12-year-old Craig Kielburger. Moved by the murder of Pakistani child factory worker and activist Iqbal Masih in April 1995, Kielburger formed the charity with a group of friends to fight against child slavery across the world. Kielburger himself embarked on a fact-finding tour of Bangladesh, Thailand, Nepal, India and Pakistan, culminating in a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and an appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes.
After writing a book about his experiences, Craig and his brother Marc Kielburger used their new-found fame to gather support for the organization, traveling across the country giving speeches, meeting politicians, and using their motivational story to encourage kids to become involved in human rights causes.
WE Charity’s most well-known event, WE Day - an annual event first held in Toronto in 2007 and expanded to 17 cities across Canada, the US, and the UK, before being placed on hold during the fallout from the WE deal scandal - is a celebration of the impact that WE Charity’s student volunteers have made on global issues, meant to encourage young people to “change the world.” Featuring prominent speakers and performers - from political leaders like former Vice President and environmental activist Al Gore and former Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, Olympians like Mark Tewksbury and Andre de Grasse, and celebrity artists from Selena Gomez to Nelly Furtado - the event closely links volunteering and activism with large crowds, flashy celebrities, and attention-seeking.
While WE Charity and the Kielburgers have certainly drawn attention to worth causes - the organization claims to have fostered 40 million youth volunteer hours, helping 1 million people gain access to clean water and 200,000 children access to education - their public persona, forged by a well-publicized global tour, motivational speeches, and an annual event with thousands of screaming attendees, suggests that they are more concerned with image, with getting to be in front of cheering crowds and mingling with celebrities, than the substance of running a volunteer organization.
Another young Canadian celebrity was Justin Trudeau. After spending the late 1990s working as a teacher in Vancouver, Trudeau came to public prominence after delivering a well-received eulogy at his father’s state funeral in October 2000 and became involved in a number of activist causes.
Trudeau helped found the Kokanee Glacier Alpine Campaign in 2000, an initiative to raise money for avalanche safety in the wake of his brother’s death in an avalanche in 1998. The young Trudeau also served on the board of the Canadian Avalanche Foundation and he was the chair of Katimavik, a charity founded by a family friend that organizes volunteer opportunities for Canadian youth, from 2002 to 2006.
Like the Kielburgers, Trudeau’s activism provided plenty of opportunities to get in front of a crowd and speak at events and conferences across the country. He also participated in a number of media roles, including as a panelist for CBC Radio’s Canada Reads series from 2002–2003, as the host of Giller Prize for literature gala, and in a starring role in a 2007 CBC miniseries in Canada’s participation in the First World War.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it was WE Day that brought Trudeau and the Kielburgers together. As a prominent youth advocate and media figure, Trudeau has appeared at the numerous WE Days since the first event in 2007 and has participated many other WE Charity events.
As Angus pointed out, since Trudeau was elected prime minister in 2015, WE Charity and the Trudeaus have done much to closely tie their brands. Trudeau himself has appeared at six WE Day events since becoming prime minister. His wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is an “ambassador and ally” for WE Charity and hosts a podcast on mental health in association with the organization. Between 2016 and 2020, Trudeau’s mother Margaret Trudeau spoke at 28 WE Charity events and was paid $250,000 in honoraria, and his brother Alexandre has received $32,000. As Trudeau said at the beginning of the scandal:
“I have worked with WE in the past because I believe strongly in promoting opportunities for young people… I will continue to do so, as will my family.”
In a sense, Trudeau and the Kielburgers were a perfect fit, attractive celebrity activists with a cool, youthful public image. While it is perhaps unfair to suggest that they are more concerned with their own image than with promoting activism and youth causes, the attention both Trudeau and WE Charity have received for their public image, and the fact that they seem to revel in speaking in front of cheering crowds and getting attention, seem to mask a concern for style over the substance of leading well-run organizations. Indeed, the poorly conceived WE partnership shows that they were more concerned with announcing a cool idea than designing a program that would actually work.
The poorly conceived CSSG program had all the markers of style over substance - a flashy announcement, showing a progressive prime minister working with a well-known volunteer organization to help students contribute to public service during unprecedented times. The substantive details of how the program would have actually worked, however, were a mess.
The $900 million grant program announced on June 25 proposed to pay post-secondary students $1000 per 100 volunteer hours, up to $5000 or 500 hours, for volunteering in the fight against COVID-19 during the summer. The charity sector was quick to question the ethics of paying students for doing volunteer work and replacing paid employment with volunteer opportunities. Critics pointed out that $1000 per 100 hours worked out to $10 per hour, below the minimum wage in all Canadian jurisdictions. Student volunteers also would have missed out on other employment compensation and benefits such as the Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance. The program also would have strangely paid teachers $12,000 each to recruit and mentor students.
The grant program was also announced at the end of June, after students had already been out of class for two months, and was to last until October 31, two months after students would go back to university.
Shortly after announcing the WE deal, Trudeau told reporters that “the WE organization is the only organization in Canada that has the scale and the ability to deliver volunteer opportunities for young people right across the country at all levels of organizations.” This assertion apparently came from the civil service, who told Trudeau that it was a choice between working with WE Charity or not having a program. Experts from the charity sector, however, argued that there were other Canadian organizations that were in a much better position to administer the program. One expert told CBC News that such a grant program would require extensive networking with other charities and non-profits to find positions for students. WE Charity, focused on promoting youth volunteering and making social action look cool, “does not have those kinds of relationships with other non-profit organizations and charities.”
Trudeau and the Kielburgers got their flashy announcement, but the program quickly fell apart.
The culture of celebrity activism that made Trudeau and WE Charity also reveals a history of entitlement, where ethics and labour laws don’t apply as long as you advocate for just causes and stand for the right things.
For Trudeau, the sense of entitlement is most outwardly revealed by his habit of appearing in questionable dress. Trudeau was widely mocked in 2018 for appearing in traditional Indian clothing with his family during a visit to India. During the 2019 election campaign, three images of Trudeau in black and brown face from the 1990s and early 2000s came to light. Since Trudeau views himself and his movement as supporters of multiculturalism and racial justice, it’s okay for him to dress in ways that are widely considered racist and offensive.
As Angus pointed out at the finance committee, Trudeau has also been found guilty of violating the Conflict of Interest Act on two occasions. The first time was in 2017 after it was revealed that Trudeau accepted a family vacation to the Aga Khan’s private island in the Bahamas during the 2016 Christmas holidays. It seemed obvious that a free vacation for Trudeau and his family from the Aga Khan - the founder and chair of the Aga Khan Development Network and the Aga Khan Foundation Canada, organizations that have received some $330 million from the Canadian government and are registered to lobby the Prime Minister’s Office - was inappropriate. But to Trudeau, the Aga Khan was a long-time family friend and a follow celebrity activist using fame and wealth to make the world a better place, not a potential conflict of interest and political problem.
Trudeau was found guilty of a second violation of the Conflict of Interest Act in August 2019 for pressuring then Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to approve a deferred prosecution agreement in the SNC-Lavalin affair. Given Wilson-Raybould’s position in Trudeau’s cabinet, this second charge is not as clear-cut as the Aga Khan affair, but again shows that Trudeau is not overly concerned with making sure he follows ethics laws when he thinks he’s doing the right thing.
As Angus told Trudeau:
“You seem to have this, you give an impression… that you don’t believe that the laws that define what a politician can and cannot do applies to you.”
For WE Charity, information revealed in the wake of the WE scandal suggests a similar cultural of entitlement. The Kielburgers appear to believe that since they head an inspiring and cool volunteer organization and support trendy social causes, labour and financial regulations don’t apply to them.
In early July, former WE Charity employee Amanda Maitland accused the charity of altering a speech she wrote on her experiences as a Black woman without her consent. Maitland charged WE Charity with creating a culture of fear, where workers were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements and pressured to avoid criticizing the organization and its decisions. Marc and Craig Kielburger issued apologies shortly after.
CBC News also reported that in the months before the scandal the chairs of WE Charity’s Canadian and United States boards of directors had resigned and that most board members had either resigned or been replaced. The move was apparently related to the pandemic, and it was also reported that all board members’ terms were to end on August 31.
We didn’t learn why management clashed with the board until the former chair of the Canadian board Michelle Douglas testified before the finance committee. Douglas told the committee that she left the board shortly before the WE scandal broke because the charity’s management wouldn’t provide the board with financial information justifying the laying off hundreds of workers in response to the pandemic. She testified that management also refused to give the board access to WE Charity’s chief financial officer.
In other testimony, Charity Intelligence Canada told the finance committee that their investigation of WE Charity’s financial data raised a number of red flags, “including that WE Charity has breached a financial covenant on millions of dollars in bank debt.” Charity Intelligence also claimed that, “Craig and Marc Kielburger are listed as co-founders of the organization — not directors — which allows them to avoid fiduciary responsibility and disclosure requirements.”
The WE Charity scandal has its roots in the culture of Canadian celebrity activism of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Trudeau and the Kielburgers emerged as celebrity activists, bringing attention to youth causes with speeches and events across the country and appearances in the media and in front of packed crowds at WE Day events. They reveled in being at the forefront of a progressive volunteer movement, more concerned with style than the substance of running national organizations.
On June 25, Trudeau announced the that Liberal government and WE Charity would be working together to help Canadian students through the Canada Student Service Grant program, but they hadn’t done the substantive work to create a program that would actually work. The scandal that followed reveals a sense of entitlement within the culture of celebrity activism. As long as Trudeau leads a progressive government, it’s okay to have conflicts of interests with his famous friends and fellow activists, and as long as WE Charity is a cool youth organization working to make the world better, it’s okay to silence workers and hide financial information.
So when Angus told Trudeau during his testimony before the finance committee, “you tell us that WE Charity was the only game in town, well they were in your world,” he was correct. For Trudeau and his fellow celebrity activists - the Kielburgers, the Aga Khan, and other famous speakers at WE Day events - flashy, attention seeking volunteer organizations are in their orbit, but those who do the hard work of actually organizing volunteers and competently running programs are not.
The sad part is that Trudeau and the Kielburgers are telling the truth. They really didn’t see it coming. There was no conspiracy to give Trudeau’s friends $43.53 million to administer a program that the government could have done itself. Just two organizations, the Trudeau government and WE Charity, obsessed with image and unable to see how they are perceived and the contradictions between how they talk and act.
For WE Charity, it’s too late. The charity announced on September 9 that it is shutting down its Canadian operations and the Kielburger brothers will be leaving the organization. Perhaps this time the Trudeau government learn its lesson, but a history of entitlement, conflicts of interest, flashy announcements, and unfulfilled promises suggests otherwise. As Angus remarked to Trudeau, “to be a champion of youth is to do more than a high five with Craig Kielburger.”
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