Juno News - Justin Trudeau has a lot of explaining to do

There are a lot of questions still floating around about this WE Charity scandal up on Parliament Hill, but if we only get an answer to one question, this is the one it should be. Who were the public servants or public servants who randomly came up with the idea that WE Charity should be given the sole source contract to administer a pandemic relief program for students?

00:00:00.000 There's a whole lot of questions still floating around about this WE Charity scandal up on

00:00:09.440 Parliament Hill, but if we only get an answer to one question, this is the one it should be.

00:00:15.200 Who was the public servant or public servants who randomly came up with this idea that WE

00:00:21.040 Charity must be given the sole source contract to administer this pandemic relief funding program

00:00:27.280 for students. Now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau originally said this has nothing to do with me,

00:00:32.000 it was entirely the public service. He made them the fall guy on the whole thing.

00:00:36.000 Then he finally fessed up and he said okay fine, it was a cabinet decision and I did not recuse myself

00:00:42.240 from it despite the fact that his own family, his mother mostly, but also his brother and his wife,

00:00:47.280 had had financial connections to the WE Charity. And to say it was a cabinet decision, let's be

00:00:52.560 honest, what this means is it was Justin Trudeau's decision. Because where does the buck stop at

00:00:56.880 cabinet at the guy at the top, at the prime minister himself? So he made the final call in it, but the

00:01:02.400 government still maintains that the public service originated the idea. Let's unpack that for a second

00:01:08.160 and let's take a look at really just how ridiculous and ludicrous that whole idea is. If it's true, 0.97

00:01:14.800 wow, you've got the public service basically stepping forward and saying they are incompetent and they

00:01:20.640 can't fulfill one of their core basic functions. I really don't believe that they said that.

00:01:27.440 So you have a whole bunch of coronavirus relief programs. You've got this one that WE Charity was

00:01:31.680 going to administer, you've got the CERB that we're all talking about, you've got the wage subsidy,

00:01:36.160 but there's a bunch of other niche ones. In total, there's well over 10 of them. And yet the public

00:01:41.120 service has stepped forward and picked one of these, just one of these more than 10 programs and said,

00:01:46.400 we can't possibly deliver this fund, even though they do this sort of thing for all different

00:01:52.000 sectors all across the country every day of their working lives. And not only did they say,

00:01:57.440 we can't possibly administer this program, which is something that we've been doing our entire careers,

00:02:02.480 programs similar to it, but WE Charity is the only one that can do it such that they need a sole

00:02:08.320 source contract. We can't even send it out to tender. That's a pretty hard thing to believe. So

00:02:14.960 produce the goods, produce the communications, the documents, name the names of the individuals

00:02:20.480 in the public service who proposed all of this. Now that's what the ethics commissioner may do.

00:02:26.640 Mero Dion is tasked primarily with looking at the ethics of Justin Trudeau's role in all of this,

00:02:31.440 but we've also got committees looking into it. They should produce these goods and these documents

00:02:36.400 because Trudeau maintains, yes, the public service floated the idea. Let's see proof in all of that,

00:02:42.800 because that is still a really hard thing to believe.

Juno News - July 20, 2020

Justin Trudeau has a lot of explaining to do

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