FIRST READING: How the Trudeau Foundation became a scandal mill

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From the moment Justin Trudeau became a politician, the foundation began experiencing a surge of unsolicited cash that hasn’t really stopped

Published Mar 17, 2023  •  6 minute read

Justin Trudeau pictured prior to a meeting of the Trudeau Foundation in 2004. In the middle is Boaventura de Sousa Santos of the World Social Forum and at right is Stephan Toope, the foundation’s first president. Photo by The Gazette/Allen McInnis Article content

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When the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation first opened its doors in 2002, proponents boasted that it would soon become Canada’s version of the Rhodes Scholarship.

The foundation’s namesake had died in 2000, and the Liberal government of the day decided to honour his legacy by earmarking $125 million for a memorial endowment. The foundation would award doctoral fellowships; up to $50,000 over four years for humanities scholars who looked “to promote (Pierre Trudeau’s) ideas,” in the words of Roy Heenan, Trudeau’s former law partner.

“What is a more fitting legacy to a man who symbolized youth, excellence and the innovative spirit?” said then Minister of Health Allan Rock in a House of Commons speech that was duly applauded by the opposition benches.

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Even the Canadian Alliance was a fan, with interim leader John Reynolds specifically praising the fact that the endowment would primarily be controlled by members of Trudeau’s own family. “I would like to offer my best wishes to Sacha and his family. I am very pleased that they are involved in this project,” he said.

Just two decades later and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation mostly makes the news these days due to its ties to scandal.

Despite the Liberal Party having no shortage of wealthy supporters, in its first years the Trudeau Foundation was attracting fewer donations than even some high school softball teams; as late as 2008 the group could boast only $2,000 in annual fundraising. But from the moment that Justin Trudeau became a serious contender for the prime minister’s office, the foundation bearing his father’s name was suddenly barraged by millions of dollars in unsolicited donations.

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At the same time, the Trudeau Foundation built such a latticework of high-level contacts that seemingly half of Ottawa is either an official member, has been on the payroll, has acted as one of its official “mentors” or has benefited from its largesse.

When former Governor General David Johnston was selected Wednesday as Canada’s “special rapporteur” to probe the extent of Chinese electoral interference, it was quickly noted that Johnston is a registered member of the Trudeau Foundation.

Morris Rosenberg — who was hired by the Trudeau government to draft an initial probe into foreign interference in the 2021 election — is a former director of the Trudeau Foundation.

Memorial endowments are typically bankrolled via private donations. That was certainly the case with the Rhodes Scholarship after which the Trudeau Foundation was modelled.

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But while the Trudeau Foundation did initially set out to find willing philanthropists, its existence is mostly owed to the $125 million it received from the government of Jean Chrétien in 2002.

At the time of the foundation’s inception, the federal government already had a way to hand out research funding. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council — founded under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1977 — maintains a similar mission of funding post-secondary humanities research.

But with the Trudeau Foundation, funding allocation would be overseen by a board of directors that would include Pierre Trudeau’s former colleagues and members of his family, with the explicit mission of supporting openly Trudeau-esque research interests.

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The current board is largely free of explicit Liberal ties, comprising directors such as former Iqaluit mayor Madeleine Redfern and University of Ottawa professor Saani Yaya. And it has featured the occasional Conservative, most notably Chuck Strahl, a minister under Stephen Harper.

But Justin Trudeau was indeed an active member from the foundations’ inception up until 2014. His brother Alexandre was a founding director. The current board includes Sarah Coyne, Pierre Trudeau’s 31-year-old daughter from his relationship with lawyer Deborah Coyne.

At times, the Foundation has even served as the unofficial representative for the Trudeau family. In 2004, it was a Trudeau Foundation executive assistant who first confirmed that Justin was engaged to Sophie Gregoire.

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And as early as 2016, the Foundation was first seen to be receiving an unexplained influx of cash that just happened to coincide with the political rise of Justin Trudeau.

Within months of Trudeau securing the Liberal leadership, the Trudeau Foundation was suddenly receiving a tidal wave of cash from donors who had been happy to spend the preceding 12 years ignoring the group’s existence.

A National Post analysis in 2016 found that donations were basically zero until Trudeau was first elected to the House of Commons in 2008. They then shot up to between $50,000 and $60,000 per year — before heading into overdrive as soon as Trudeau became Liberal leader and then prime minister.

In 2013, Trudeau’s first year at the helm of the Liberal Party, Trudeau Foundation donations suddenly quadrupled to $254,000. The year he became prime minister, they had surged to $634,000.

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The Trudeau Foundation in this period had not mounted any campaign for donations.

But there was definitely overlap between this new crop of foundation donors and people who had an interest in lobbying the new Liberal leader. Most notably, some of the windfall would come by way of Chinese business representatives who had met privately with Trudeau in closed-door Liberal fundraisers.

In 2016, after meeting with Trudeau in an exclusive fundraiser at a private Vancouver home, Chinese businessman Zhang Bin donated $200,000 to the Trudeau Foundation. And the cash in that instance, according to recent CSIS leaks, may have ultimately been reimbursed by Chinese consular officials seeking to peddle influence with the new prime minister.

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After these “pay to play” revelations caused one of the first major Trudeau government scandals, the donations mysteriously dropped off a cliff.

By 2018, domestic donations were down to just $115,609. And in the category of “foreign donations,” the money dried up altogether. Despite foreign donations peaking at $535,000 in 2016, between 2017 and 2019 they dropped right back to zero.

Nevertheless, according to numbers just obtained by the National Post, the unsolicited cash couldn’t be held down for long. In the election year of 2021, Trudeau Foundation donors had once again returned to their old habits, with domestic donations spiking to $441,308 and foreign donations leaping right back into six digits at $241,000.

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Chris Selley: David Johnston a terrible choice for ‘special rapporteur’ on Chinese interference

Opposition leaders dismiss David Johnston appointment as special rapporteur

IN OTHER NEWS Two Edmonton Police officers, Const. Brett Ryan, left, and Const. Travis Jordan, right, were killed early Thursday morning while responding to a domestic dispute call. If it seems like this is happening a lot more these days, you’re not wrong. Just last year, an unprecedented five Canadian police officers were murdered in the line of duty. For context, between the years 1961 and 2009 Canada saw a total of 44 homicides against police officers, a rate equivalent to fewer than one death per year. Photo by Edmonton Police Service

As we covered yesterday, former Governor General David Johnston has agreed to take up the post as the “special rapporteur” charged with “protecting democracy” from foreign threats. There’s just one problem: Johnston isn’t actually tasked with finding out any of the things that people care about. According to an official statement, Johnston’s only job is to “look into foreign interference in the last two federal general elections.” But that part of the scandal has already been pretty well covered; over the last 12 months reporting by Global News, the Globe and Mail, Postmedia and others have unearthed a number of funding and electoral anomalies in the last two elections that seem to point towards some level of coordinated Chinese interference. What is less known is to what extent the Trudeau government knew this was going and refused to do anything about it – possibly because the interference tactics were predominantly working to get Liberal candidates elected.

Seamus O’Regan may just be the Minister of Labour, but lately he’s been putting out an awful lot of broad declarative statements like the above tweet from Wednesday. The week before that, O’Regan uploaded a vanity social media video in which he talked about his humble background and “ruthless” practicality. Not to suggest anything, but if the Liberal leadership was going to soon become vacant for whatever reason, this is about how you would expect an ambitious cabinet minister to act. Photo by Twitter/Seamus O’Regan

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