Front Burner - The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation controversy, explained

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation has been pulled into the ongoing controversy surrounding allegations of Chinese meddling in Canadian elections. Last week, the foundation’s president and board of directors resigned en masse, saying in a media statement that “the circumstances created by the politicization of the foundation have made it impossible to continue with the status quo.” Today, Catherine Cullen explains how a $140,000 donation to the foundation in 2016 led to these resignations, the implications of the ongoing controversy, and the calls for further investigation. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Over the past little while, you might have been hearing about a controversy involving a charitable foundation that bears Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's father's name, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. There have been headlines about a suspicious $140,000 donation, about mass resignations on the foundation's board, and about the foundation's place in another bigger controversy in Canadian politics right now,

surrounding allegations of Chinese meddling in our elections with the intention of benefiting the Liberal Party. This whole thing can be kind of confusing, to be honest. So today I've got Catherine Cullen with me, host of CBC's political podcast, The House, to help bring us up to speed on how this charitable foundation became embroiled in the foreign interference saga. Catherine, hi. It's always a pleasure.

So happy to be with you today, Jamie. provide scholarships and mentorship. And just briefly, tell me a bit more about it. Like, how does he get its money? And what is the current prime minister's relationship with this charity over the years? Yeah, Justin Trudeau's relationship with the foundation is in a lot of ways what this whole debacle is about. But let's start with actually understanding the foundation. It was set up after Pierre Elliott Trudeau had passed. It was set up with $125 million from the government, which was liberal at the time. And that money is essentially what keeps it going, though it does also accept private donations. And that is a huge part of this story. So at the time, Justin Trudeau and his brother, Alexander or Sasha, initially both very much involved. But by the time that Justin Trudeau really gets involved in politics, he makes the decision to distance himself. So we should say this is after he becomes liberal leader. That's in 2013. In 2014, he distances himself. from any of my family-related responsibilities shortly after having gotten elected in order to

demonstrate that there is a tremendous separation there. And indeed, in 2015, he becomes prime minister. All right. And then now we're going to pick up in 2016. The foundation accepts a private donation of 140,000 bucks. And at the time, what was known about who the donation was from? Yeah, so this story was actually a big deal in 2016, a few months after the foundation receives the donation. At the time, it was understood that a big sum of money was given both to the foundation and to other groups to honor Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Now, it purportedly came from wealthy Chinese businessman Jian Bing, a political advisor to the Chinese government, also president of the state-approved China Cultural Industry Association, also came from another fellow billionaire, Niu Gensheng.

Okay. And you mentioned this was the thing in 2016. I remember it was part of this larger controversy that critics called Cash for Access, the Cash for Access scandal. And just really briefly, what was the Cash for Access scandal broadly? So it was a scandal at the time. There can't be consumption selling influence to billionaire Chinese commun time. There can't be himself from selling influence to billionaire Chinese communists. How can Canadians trust any of his ethical standards? Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister promised

he would be open and transparent, and it seems like he's only open if you pay the $1,500 cash for access entry fee, but if you can't do that, you can always kick in a bunch of cash to the Trudeau Foundation. The decisions I take in government are ones based on what is right for Canadians and not on what an individual in a fundraiser might say.

The idea was the Prime Minister was attending these events, fundraising events, so $1,500, that was about the max that you could give at the time people would pay to have dinner with the Prime Minister, and it started to become clear that some of these people wanted something from the Prime minister. So even if they didn't get it, and that's certainly the case that the liberals made, the optics of it are, you know, not great. It's not such a great look that somebody who wants you to approve, you know, a permit for this

or a request for that is paying to get some one-on-one time with you. And then, oh, hey, if the permit gets approved later, even if nothing untoward happened, again, it's not a great look. Now, in fact, the ethics commissioner, Mary Dawson at the time, did look into it. She concluded that it didn't contravene the Conflict of Interest Act. But the thing about Justin Trudeau, Jimmy, if we remember, you know, 2015, sunny ways, everything was going to be better. He said that it had to be clear, transparent, that nothing bad was happening. And so ultimately, the Liberals did decide to change the rules around this because, frankly, it looked a little stinky.

Promising a new law to make sure all the events are held in places accessible to the public, advertised so anyone can attend, and reported to the public in a timely manner. Okay, so we've got this scandal involving various groups, various people who pay these sums of monies to have dinner or drinks or whatever, these events with the Prime Minister and other cabinet ministers. And just explain to me how the donation to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation from this wealthy Chinese businessman fit into that cash for access scandal. Well, if you're playing along at home, you might have guessed that one of the people at one of those events is one of the donors or purported donors for this check. So there was an event in May 2016. It was in Toronto, hosted by the chair of the Chinese Business Chamber of Canada, attended by Justin Trudeau,

some wealthy Chinese Canadian nationals, including Zhang Bin. Now, what is interesting about that is that it was reported in 2016 that the big donations in honor of Pierre Elliott Trudeau came weeks after the fundraiser. You know, the conservative leader at the time was Ronna Ambrose. She said it's not a coincidence that these billionaires that the prime minister meets with actually want something from him. Everybody knows they're not writing these checks out of the goodness of their hearts because they've only started doing it since he became the prime minister to buy access to him. Mr. Speaker, will the prime minister do the right thing and instruct the Trudeau Foundation to stop this practice immediately? And I just will say for clarity, I know this donation was initially going to be 200K to the foundation, but then they ended up coming through with 140k and that the money was actually part of a much larger donation, right, to some other places too? It was supposed

to be in total a million dollars. So a big chunk of it to the Trudeau Foundation, as you said, another big chunk of it to the Université de Montréal, where Pierre Elliott Trudeau used to teach. Also, I should say that according to some of the reporting we're now seeing, the university didn't get all of that money either. And it too is asking some questions about what's up here. All right. So that is what happened way back in 2016. I know that there's been some pretty scathing criticisms recently about why the board of the Trudeau Foundation at the time would have ever accepted this donation, considering how it was embroiled in the cash for access scandal, considering that the opposition was criticizing it in the House of Commons.

But things do die down. They obviously did accept it and things do die down. And then the controversy, I guess it's fair to say it gets to second life after the Globe and Mail and Global News start breaking all these stories that detail an alleged influence campaign mounted by the Chinese government to influence the 2019 and 2021 elections. A big allegation here is that the Chinese government wanted a minority liberal government in 2021 and to see some conservative candidates defeated. You and I have talked about this on the podcast before, and we've also talked about how there's been reporting that this influence campaign began well before the 2019 elections. So there is this renewed scrutiny of the $140,000 donation to the Trudeau Foundation. And the Globe starts linking the donation to the

wider alleged Chinese government influence campaign. And just flesh that out for me a little bit more. How do they do that? Yeah, well, what it comes down to is new allegations about what motivated that donation. And you've got to think, right, both for the foundation and for the liberal government in 2016, this thing is this massive headache. And then all of a sudden, like the beast is back. Oh my goodness, it gets worse. Because according to this reporting in the Globe and Mail, and you referenced it before, Jamie, the Globe and Global have done all this work on Chinese interference and the Globe in particular speaking to a national security source who they have not named, someone who they say is at risk of prosecution for sharing some of this information

publicly. The source tells the Globe and Mail that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service ceases capture to conversation in 2014 between an unnamed commercial attache at one of China's consulates in Canada and a billionaire. Now, the source says that the diplomat tells Zhang to donate the million dollars to the Trudeau Foundation and the university and that the Chinese government is going to reimburse him for the entire amount. Of course, as we said, all of this is happening under this backdrop that we understand through reporting in The Globe and The Globe and Mail that China wants to see the liberals in power because they think they'll be less tough on Beijing. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, you know, I guess I'm just

saying the very obvious here, but the implication is that if they donate the money to a charity in the name of the prime minister's father, then, you know, that has the potential to increase access or curry favor with the prime minister. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So these new revelations, which we actually had not heard about until the winter, they come out at the end of February. And the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, they quickly say, oh, no, no, we're going to return the money. And here's a quote from them, as an independent, nonpartisan charity, ethics and integrity are among our core values, and we cannot keep any donation that may have been sponsored by a foreign government

and would not knowingly do so. Then in the middle of last week, the president and the board of directors, they all resigned. And what is their explanation for doing this? Yeah, I have to say, Jamie, that came as a real shock. And you might go, oh my, this story sounds pretty controversial. Why would you possibly be shocked? And I think the weird part about it was that this particular controversy had kind of seemed to die down. Right?

We weren't talking about this specific aspect of the foreign interference file. And so it was like all of a sudden you look up and wait a minute, the board and the CEO resigned en masse. They claimed at the time that it was because the politicization of the donation. I'll read you another part of that statement. The circumstances created by the politicization of the foundation have made it impossible to continue with the status quo. And that politicization, they made it very clear. It was about the money that was donated to them. Yeah. And I remember at the time, people were like, I wonder if there's more to come here. And there was. Reporters started digging into it. And what did they find? Yeah, it was a Montreal newspaper, La Presse, that had the first sort of big scoop on this,

and they called it a stink bomb at the foundation. They find out the foundation has been unable to return the money, even though, according to La Presse's reporting, a lot of the people affiliated with the foundation thought that the money had gone back. It turned out it was a lot harder than the foundation had thought it would be when they made that pledge. The Globe and Mail says that according to the Trudeau Foundation senior staff and board members, the official donors weren't actually the two folks that we named before. The donor of record was Millennium Golden Eagle International, a Chinese state affiliated company that's run by Xi Jinping. There's questions around the tax receipts and whether or not they are accurate. And so there was this big, I guess, effort to give the money back,

but they felt that they couldn't give it to the actual individuals because it wasn't on the books that that's who the money had come from and they couldn't seem to get the check back to the company. And so it had just devolved, I think, into a lot of infighting and finger-pointing and generally trouble at the foundation. Yeah. And I guess I'll just mention that I think it was on Friday, Radio Canada has reported, has confirmed that, I guess guess the money has finally actually been returned. Yes, after a lot of effort and a lot of, you know, I'm sure. Yeah, probably. The people after the Trudeau Foundation wish this had happened a lot sooner.

So we've got this donation that actually ended up coming from a Chinese state affiliated company, even though it was run by the wealthy Chinese businessman who said that he was making the donation in the first place. And this stink bomb, as you say, at the foundation. And then I want to talk about another aspect of the story related to the foundation, which is that there are also all these questions about overlap between the investigations into alleged Chinese interference in our elections and the people who have connections to the Trudeau Foundation, namely Morris Rosenberg and former Governor General David Johnston. And tell me a little bit about the overlap and criticism there. Yeah, you really do kind of need like a flowchart or something here to keep track of it all,

right? You imagine like a beautiful mine and all the pieces of string trying to attach all the pieces. So let's start with Morris Rosenberg. He was the CEO of the foundation when it accepted that donation. He's also an accomplished former civil servant, right? Like the highest ranks of the public service. And so Justin Trudeau's government had asked Morris Rosenberg to write a report into election interference in the 2021 election. Now it was based off of work that other people had

done. He was essentially summarizing the findings of all of it. But you can imagine that the opposition was really banging on the windows, screaming from the rooftops, whatever metaphor you want to use here, about the idea that somebody who had accepted this donation that now apparently, allegedly, has links to the Chinese state. And this guy is going to write a report that now apparently, allegedly, has links to the Chinese state. And this guy is going to write a report that is about, to be fair, election interference of all kinds. But obviously what people are really thinking about right now, when they finally got the chance to read the report, was about Chinese interference. So that, I think, was a challenging time for the folks involved. We should say the report did say that Canada's 2021 federal election, writ large, free and clear, everything is OK.

But of course, some people are pointing fingers at the author. But we should probably talk about David Johnston, too. Yeah. Now, do Johnston for me. Similar kind of criticisms. Yeah. So he has a different role, though, in the sense that there is even more on his shoulders, right? He is the special rapporteur named by the prime minister to basically help him sort out what a path forward is on foreign interference. And so he's taken on this big job that is really it's on his shoulders to decide whether or not there's going to be a public inquiry into this and what it's going to look like.

This is an issue that's causing the prime minister a ton of political grief. And so he says, well, let's take it out of the partisan sphere. I'm going to get this guy to do it. Governor General appointed by Stephen Harper. But things get pretty messy basically as soon as his name comes out, because it's pointed out that he was a member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. On top of that, there's old clips of him speaking to the media over the years where he reveals that he considers himself a good friend of the Trudeau family. There used to be these ski vacations together. Our friendship with Mr. Trudeau goes back to children's days when our five daughters and he and his two brothers skied together at Mont-Tremblant.

Tell us a little more about that. So a lot of upset about that. And again, we see the foundation just coming up elected interference story, this is at the very least a perception of a conflict of interest and something that opposition leader Pierre Polyev has really seized on, right? It probably is important to say, Jamie, that no one has found that David Johnston has done anything wrong. There has been no evidence that Morris Rosenberg has done anything wrong. Justin Trudeau says again and again, you know, I wasn't affiliated with the foundation as of 2014. I haven't been involved in any way with the foundation that bears my father's name in about 10 years. And it continues to be that way.

And we have not seen evidence that in any way contradicts any of that. It is, again, this is a situation where it's the optics that I think are really challenging. You know, the prime minister is asked, why should someone who considers himself a friend of yours, for instance, be doing this job for you, right? He has said David Johnson is unimpeachable, uses words like that over and over again, but I think it's the look of things that is fundamentally the problem right now as far as we know yeah i'm thinking of this letter that pierre polyev wrote to johnston where he says like dear repertoire uh explain this how will you investigate beijing's donation to the trudeau foundation when you were part

of the trudeau foundation you know one question I have for you, Catherine, is you mentioned the phone call in 2014 when the Chinese diplomat is talking to the businessman and being like, donate the money and we'll pay you back. Do we know if anybody high up in the liberal government, including the prime minister, was ever briefed about that? It's an excellent question. I mean, one thing to say about it is if the conversation was monitored at the time in 2014, it wouldn't have been the Liberals in power at the time. But did that information make its way up the food chain once Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister? It is one of the many things on this file that we don't have answers to. And I mean, it speaks to the real tension or one of

the tensions at the heart of all of this, which is there are obviously sensitive national security issues here. For instance, if we're tapping phones of foreign diplomats and things like that, you can appreciate that that's not something that the government wants to talk about. Maybe in some cases, because of legal undertakings, they can't talk about some of this stuff. But I think there is also a feeling that people are being asked to accept certain things based on trust. I say people. The public is being asked to accept certain things based on trust. And that that trust, I don't know.

Probably not for me to say whether or not it's wearing thin. But there's a frustration in constantly having so many questions and not being able to get answers. Which is where David Johnston is supposed to come riding to the rescue, I guess is the idea, right? And decide the best path forward on all of this. But as we've just laid out here, it's complicated. Even under this cloud of controversy, yeah. The foundation itself has now asked Canada's Auditor General to investigate, and Polyev is asking Canada's Revenue Agency to investigate.

And why are they doing that? What are they hoping for? What could we learn from this? And are there other big questions that are still being left unanswered here? So I would say the answer is always going to be yes to that on the foreign interference file. But let's break it down. Let's start with the foundation. They're trying to disentangle what is clearly just an absolute mess, right? They've lost their board of directors. A couple of folks, three, I believe, have stayed on just to kind of keep things running. But it is apparent from reporting in the Globe and La Presse and Radio-Canada that the climate there is very difficult and they're

really just stuck. This donation has stuck to them and they're trying to make sense of what happened and clear the air. So reaching out to the Auditor General, I think, is an attempt to get some clarity, to show some transparency and to get to the heart of this in a way that will satisfy all of the stakeholders around this. We should say that the get to the heart of this in a way that will satisfy all of the stakeholders around this. We should say that the letter to the Auditor General, we don't know whether or not they're actually going to go ahead with this because it's not necessarily exactly what the Auditor General does, right? Yeah, it's not like a government agency, right? Although it started with government funding. So I think we just have to wait and see what happens. But the

letter does say, even if you say no, we're still doing our own investigation. We've got, we're getting an independent law firm. We're getting an independent accounting firm. So they're trying to get to the bottom of this. I think that's supposed to be a show of transparency and goodwill. Switch gears to Pierre Pauliev. I mean, for him, obviously, you'll notice anytime he talks about this, he calls it the Trudeau Foundation, not the foundation or the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. He's named his neighbor, family friend, ski buddy and member of the Beijing Finance Trudeau Foundation to look into the matter. He wants this to stick to the prime minister, understandably, I suppose, as leader of the opposition. And so sending this to the CRA, I think, serves a multitude of goals for him. If indeed the CRA agrees to investigate this, it's another day out of this news story, right? It sort

of keeps things going. Even just the way in which he has asked, look at this donation and, you know, any other donations, any possible instances where something could have, for instance, come from another foreign government. So it just sort of raises suspicions again around this whole issue. I think Polyev clearly feels that any problems at the foundation are Justin Trudeau's, at least to some extent, to wear. And so, and, you know, I think people are curious about what's going on here. There do seem to be problems. So if he can find out that there are more, that only benefits him politically. Meanwhile, you have the prime minister swearing up and down all of last week that he's been distanced from this foundation for years. He thinks that, you know, they do good work, but they are the ones who are going to have to answer questions about this. All right, Catherine, thank you very much for wading through this with me. Very appreciative. So happy to do it. Thanks for having me, Jamie. All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.