No.
Evidence of meeting #67 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was foundation.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #67 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was foundation.
A video is available from Parliament.
10:05 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
No.
10:05 a.m.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
It's hard to see why they would.
So that was the only instance.
10:05 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
To my knowledge, yes.
10:05 a.m.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Right.
Earlier on, you described the tense environment at your office in the period prior to your resignation. Were things strained, at least in part, because you were asking certain people to recuse themselves, which I believe was only to be expected. I'm assuming they didn't want to recuse themselves.
10:05 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
That's right.
10:05 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
The chair of the board of directors, Mr. Edward Johnson, was at the time the chair of the financial audit committee. In this capacity, he signed letters jointly with the chief executive officer. So he was the one who signed, together with Morris Rosenberg, the letter stating that there was, to their knowledge, no fraud. He was therefore the one who was asked to recuse himself, and he chaired a number of committees and was a member of the board of directors.
Bruce McNiven, who is currently the treasurer, was also asked to recuse himself. At the time, he was also a member of the financial audit committee.
There was also Peter Sahlas, a foundation member who, I believe, had also been on the financial audit committee since 2017.
What we, the eight members of the board of directors and I, were requesting, was was for those who had been there at the time to recuse themselves. That meant the three people I mentioned. We asked them to make a self-disclosure stating that they were there at the time and that they were now recusing themselves, including from specifying the scope of the mandate for the lawyers and the accounting firm, so that they wouldn't have a role to play in setting any parameters.
10:05 a.m.
Bloc
10:05 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
Based on my legal knowledge of ethics, yes.
10:05 a.m.
Bloc
René Villemure Bloc Trois-Rivières, QC
Could you tell us briefly about Mr. Edward Johnson, given that his name has only just come up.
10:05 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
Edward Johnson was one of the founding members, as was Bruce McNiven. They had therefore been there from the very start of the foundation.
At the outset, 20 years ago, the foundation had a number of members, and one of their important roles was to appoint the board of directors. As I mentioned, there could be as many as 30 members, which is a rather large governance structure, and up to 18 members of the board of directors. These are two distinct entities. Governance of the foundation would accordingly be handled by approximately 50 people, whereas there were only 10 employees. That's a rather small team for such a large governance structure, in terms of the volume of work and the number of committees. There were a lot of committees at the time.
Mr. Johnson had worked as Pierre Elliott Trudeau's chief of staff. As I was saying, he was one of the founding members of the foundation. At the time I resigned, he was the chair of the executive committee and the governance committee. He was the chair of the board of directors and also sat on the finance and investment committee, and the appointments committee. He is therefore very knowledgeable about the foundation's governance, having been there for 20 years.
Apart from what happened at the end, I very much enjoyed working with him.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Ms. Fournier and Mr. Villemure.
Mr. Green, you have six minutes, sir. Please start.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
On that note, according to the registered charity information return for September 1, 2017, to August 31, 2018, the total eligible amount of all gifts for which the charity issued tax receipts was $25,374.
Given that the donation of $200,000, or $140,000 actually received, occurred in 2016, would that year be an outlier in terms of donations the foundation received?
10:10 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
I didn't understand your question.
Are you talking about the 2017-2018 fiscal year?
Is that correct, that it's 2017 to 2018?
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
That's correct. It said that they received only $25,000 the following year.
10:10 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
I can't comment on the books for the period preceding my arrival.
What I can tell you is that the foundation did not run major funding campaigns. It was financed from the interest on an endowment to create leadership programs for scholars, mentors and fellows. We wanted to do some fundraising. In the final years, we were preparing a package of supporting documentation to demonstrate that we had leadership schools. However, it never became one of the foundation's main activities.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
To be clear, this is an endowment of currently $156 million with an operating budget of about $6 million. Is that correct? There are $6 million for fellows and board-directed programs, yet we have a $200,000 endowment that seems to be conditional, from an unverified third party source, potentially foreign.
In your work, were there any other donor-directed funds? Just give a simple yes or no, please.
10:10 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
Was it if there were other donors? What was your question again? I'm sorry; I cannot hear well.
10:10 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
No, we had individual donors, mainly former members. We had a matching donations program with the McCall MacBain Foundation.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Okay, thank you. That satisfies.
This was the only donor-directed, conditional donation that was provided. In your time, you brought in a little due diligence, through the governance structure, to ensure that donors were vetted and that you had a proper board risk analysis. I myself have spent some time on a pretty solid, historical board here in Hamilton, and I know that we had lots of policies—we were eyes wide open for every donor. However, it didn't exist before you got there.
In your opinion, if you had been receiving $25,000 or $30,000 per year in donations, and then you received a $200,000 donation, your testimony is that you would embark on an investigation as to the origins of the donor. Is that correct?
10:10 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
In 2016, there was a policy on the acceptance of gifts. I amended that policy to make it stronger, but the policy at the time mentioned that the president of the foundation had to obtain legal advice with regard to the contract itself and the origin of the donors.
There was a policy. We made it to the next level, if I may say that, and in 2018 we also adopted a policy on responsible investment, which I am really proud of. However, there was a policy in place that required that this kind of background check be conducted.
10:10 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Sure.
With more specificity, this is not a traditional foundation; this a foundation named after a former prime minister whose son is the current Prime Minister. From a governance standpoint, to ensure that you are beyond reproach, what special policies are implemented within the board level governance to ensure that there is no perception of foreign interference or foreign influence, i.e., the use of the name for purposes that might provide a foreign interest?
Did you have any consideration around that in your risk analysis?
10:10 a.m.
Former President and Chief Excecutif Officer at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, As an Individual
Under my leadership, I would conduct that kind of in-depth research—not myself. I'm a firm believer in the independence of the process, so I had a law firm that would come back to me with what they found, and then I would go back to the development committee and then back to the board to say, I will go ahead with that donation; this is the risk analysis that was conducted.
I was conscious of the name and the perception that individuals might have regarding the name, and I was exceptionally careful with regard to donations. I cannot comment on the past, obviously, but I can tell you that there was a policy in place.
10:15 a.m.
NDP
Matthew Green NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
You would also have to have that consideration, given that the Prime Minister's brother was an active member of the board, understanding our conflict of interest rules and code of ethics within Parliament. Is that correct?