(Ottawa) Alexandre Trudeau, the brother of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is summoned to appear before a parliamentary committee to explain his role in the affair of the Chinese donation linked to Beijing to the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation.
His testimony is scheduled to take place next Wednesday before the Freedom of Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee, which is examining foreign interference and the threats it poses to democratic institutions.
Alexandre Trudeau had expressed the wish to be heard by this committee in an interview he gave to the daily The duty this week.
“I want to testify before the committee that is looking into it. I’m ready to say everything I know about the foundation. It’s pressing! “he said in particular on a daily basis.
He also claimed that the Foundation that bears his father’s name and with which he has been involved for the past 20 years has been the target of “dishonest attacks” and that he wanted to set the record straight. ‘hour.
“If I want to speak to the committee, it is because the reputation is affected. The honor of the fellows is questioned. They don’t need that pressure,” explains Alexandre Trudeau.
The chairman of the ethics committee, Conservative MP John Brassard, granted his wish as the former president and CEO of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, Pascale Fournier, ended her testimony on Friday on the stormy events that led to his resignation recently.
During her testimony of nearly two hours, Mr.me Fournier, who has directed the destiny of the Foundation for the past five years, explained that she left her position because of the refusal of certain members of the board of directors to take the necessary steps to shed light on the Chinese donation of $140,000.
“We have been hit by this crisis […] regarding the possibility that there was interference and that the Foundation was used for circumstances other than a simple donation which was to be used to organize conferences relating to China”, explained Mr.me Fournier, who resigned at the same time as the vast majority of the members of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.
The Foundation was splashed in February, after the daily The Globe and Mail reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) intercepted a conversation between a commercial attaché at a Chinese consulate and wealthy Chinese businessman Zhang Bin.
The 2014 exchange was about the upcoming election in 2015, and the possibility of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals getting the better of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. An order would have been given to Zhang Bin by Beijing: to donate one million dollars to the Trudeau Foundation, in exchange for reimbursement.
A year later, in 2016, the billionaire and a second wealthy Chinese businessman offered $1 million to honor the memory of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, including a check for $200,000 to the Foundation. In the end, the sum of $140,000 was donated to the Foundation. The existence of these contributions was known, but not the context in which they took place.
Before the committee, Mr.me Fournier explained that she wanted to shed some light on this donation, especially since different information about its provenance appeared in the Foundation’s annual reports and in the charitable receipts that were given by the organization for the donation. which was made in two installments.
“The names of the two donors did not appear in 2016 on the receipts presented by the Foundation and the address was in China. The second receipt in 2017 is a bit different from the first receipt. The name of the company, the address is in Quebec and the names of the donors are on the document, ”she explained.
This divergent information about the source of the donation explains why she considered it essential to shed light by requesting a forensic investigation. But the members of the board of directors who were in office at the time of these events were opposed to such a move. This led to the resignation of several members.
“It was my intention to ask lawyers to shed light on this question,” she said, adding that these events occurred before her arrival at the head of the Foundation in July 2018.
While conducting internal research, she found that an association based in China was in communication with the employees of the Foundation, not to discuss the organization of conferences on China, as provided for in the contract formalizing the donation, but to provide “directives” on what should appear on receipts issued by the Foundation. “I found it very particular and disturbing,” she said. “There were all kinds of facts that seemed incomprehensible to me. I wanted to shed some light on all of this.”
Mme Fournier claimed that it was Alexandre Trudeau who signed the contract for the Chinese donation, although in principle he did not have the authority to do so.
The Trudeau Foundation, an organization that describes itself as independent and non-partisan, is piloting a leadership and mentoring program. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau participated in it from its creation in 2001 until 2014.
With Katia Gagnon and Mélanie Marquis