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What is the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and what does it do?

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The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation has been mired in a political controversy that pushed the organization’s president and board to resign last week.

At the centre of the controversy is a 2016 donation from two donors with links to the Chinese government. The donors pledged $200,000 to the foundation at the time.

While the donation spurred an initial controversy in 2016, interest in the story revived in the wake of recent media reports stating Beijing interfered in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections. The foundation said it would reimburse the funds but apparently ran into administrative roadblocks. (Radio-Canada has confirmed the donation has since been returned.)

The foundation said last week’s resignations were in response to the latest controversy about the donation.

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“The circumstances created by the politicization of the foundation have made it impossible to continue with the status quo, and the volunteer board of directors has resigned, as has the president and CEO,” a statement from the foundation said.

But reports from the Globe and Mail and La Presse suggest the resignations stemmed from the foundation’s handling of the donation.

The controversy has also spilled into the halls of Parliament.

Morris Rosenberg — who authored a government report on electoral interference in the 2021 election — and former governor general David Johnston — tapped by the Liberal government to be its special rapporteur on election interference — have had past affiliations with the foundation. Conservatives have argued that fact compromises both investigations.

Last week’s resignations only spurred more outrage from the opposition, with both Conservatives and Bloc Québécois MPs calling for investigations of the foundation. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wrote to the Canada Revenue Agency asking it to “launch a fulsome audit” of the foundation, with a focus on donations the charity received from foreign governments.

On Friday, the foundation itself asked the auditor general to probe the 2016 donation.

Here’s what we know about the organization at the centre of the controversy.

What does it do?

The foundation was established in 2001 to honour the former prime minister, who died in 2000. In 2002, the federal government endowed it with $125 million to help fund its core operations. It also accepts private donations. The foundation describes itself as an independent and nonpartisan charity.

The foundation helps fund and promote academic and public interest research. It awards up to 20 doctoral scholarships each year and finances up to five research fellowships. It also supports a network of “mentors” to help young academics and organizes public events, such as book launches and lectures on public policy issues.

These mentors — who have included former Supreme Court justices, current and former politicians, journalists and business leaders — receive an honorarium and travel costs during their term.

Where does its money come from?

As part of the 2002 agreement with the federal government, the foundation cannot spend the $125 million endowment. Instead, it was invested; only income earned from returns on the investment can fund the foundation’s activities.

According to its 2021-22 charity filings with the CRA, the organization earned millions of dollars in revenue from returns on its investments. It raked in less than a million dollars in donations.

Who runs the foundation?

The foundation has two primary governing bodies: the membership team and the board of directors.

The members are responsible for appointing board members and changing bylaws, while the board is more involved with the management activities of the foundation.

Most of the board of directors and its president, Pascale Fournier — who herself is a former recipient of a Trudeau scholarship — resigned last week.

The foundation said three board members will stay on until new ones can be selected.

 

Trudeau reacts to CEO, board resignations at Trudeau Foundation

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the foundation will continue to make a positive impact on academic institutions across the country.

When he was asked recently about the foundation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted he no longer has any ties to the organization bearing his father’s name.

Trudeau was directly involved in the foundation from its creation in 2002 until 2014, after he was elected leader of the Liberal Party.

“The Trudeau Foundation is a foundation with which I have absolutely no intersection,” Trudeau told a news conference Tuesday.

But the prime minister’s brother, Alexandre Trudeau, is currently one of the foundation’s members.

Pierre Trudeau's son, Alexandre Trudeau, after announcing the first Trudeau Foundation scholars and fellowships in February 2003.
Pierre Trudeau’s son, Alexandre Trudeau, after announcing the first Trudeau Foundation scholars and fellowships in February 2003. (CBC)

Some members are people who were close to Pierre Trudeau, such as his former principal secretary Thomas Axworthy and senior economic adviser Denise Chong.

The board of directors also has had members who were close to the former prime minister — including his daughter Sarah Coyne, who was one the members who resigned last week.

The list of resignations also includes a wide range of academics, lawyers, former civil servants, and business leaders.

Archived photos of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau and former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed.
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed were two political giants who squared off over the National Energy Policy in the early ’80s. Lougheed would later sit on the Trudeau Foundation’s board of directors. (The Canadian Press)

Well-known Canadians have served on the board in the past, including Peter Lougheed and Bill Davis, former conservative premiers of Alberta and Ontario.

Former NDP MP Megan Leslie and former Conservative cabinet minister Chuck Strahl also have been board members, although Strahl resigned in 2016 during the initial donation controversy.

The foundation says directors and members serve on a voluntary basis. According to its CRA filings, the foundation has 13 full-time and three part-time administrative staff.

Who else has been affiliated with the foundation?

The foundation appears to attract mentors from all walks of life. Civil servants, journalists, academics, activists and authors have all been mentors to the foundation’s scholars.

Former Supreme Court justices Beverly McLachlin, Louise Arbour, Marie Deschamps, Thomas Cromwell and Frank Iacobucci were mentors in the past. The latter two were nominated by Conservative prime ministers Stephen Harper and Brian Mulroney.

Federal, provincial and municipal politicians of all political stripes have also been mentors.

Many of the former politicians who have signed up to mentor Trudeau scholars in the past are associated with the Liberal Party, such as former cabinet ministers Anne McLellan and Pierre Pettigrew.

An archived photo of the 1929 federal leaders debate, featuring Ed Broadbent, Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark.
The great debate, left to right, Ed Broadbent, Pierre Trudeau and Joe Clark, May 13, 1979. Broadbent was a mentor to a Trudeau scholar in 2010. (Peter Bregg/The Canadian Press)

Former Conservative cabinet minister and senator Michael Fortier was a mentor as well. So was Strahl before he became a member of the foundation’s board.

Other past mentors include former NDP leader Ed Broadbent, former NDP premiers Tony Penikett and Michael Harcourt and current Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May.

One of the foundation’s former presidents, Pierre-Gerlier Forest, was appointed president of Quebec’s public health agency — Institut national de santé publique du Québec — by the provincial government in 2022.

 

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Opinion: Canada's foreign policy and its domestic politics on Israel's war against Hamas are shifting – The Globe and Mail

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The vote in the House of Commons last week on Israel’s war against Hamas represents a shift in both Canada’s foreign policy and its domestic politics.

The Liberal government is now markedly more supportive of the rights of Palestinians and less supportive of the state of Israel than in the past. That shift mirrors changing demographics, and the increasing importance of Muslim voters within the Liberal coalition.

Both the Liberal and Conservative parties once voiced unqualified support for Israel’s right to defend itself from hostile neighbours. But the Muslim community is growing in Canada. Today it represents 5 per cent of the population, compared with 1 per cent who identify as Jewish.

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Although data is sparse prior to 2015, it is believed that Muslim Canadians tended to prefer the Liberal Party over the Conservative Party. They were also less likely to vote than the general population.

But the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper deeply angered the community with talk about “barbaric cultural practices” and musing during the 2015 election campaign about banning public servants from wearing the niqab. Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was promising to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada if elected.

These factors galvanized community groups to encourage Muslims to vote. And they did. According to an Environics poll, 79 per cent of eligible Muslims cast a ballot in the 2015 election, compared with an overall turnout of 68 per cent. Sixty-five per cent of Muslim voters cast ballots for the Liberal Party, compared with 10 per cent who voted for the NDP and just 2 per cent for the Conservatives. (Telephone interviews of 600 adults across Canada who self-identified as Muslim, were conducted between Nov. 19, 2015 and Jan. 23, 2016, with an expected margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.)

Muslim Canadians also strongly supported the Liberals in the elections of 2019 and 2021. The party is understandably anxious not to lose that support. I’m told that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly often mentions the large Muslim community in her Montreal riding. (According to the 2021 census, 18 per cent of the people in Ahuntsic-Cartierville identify as Muslim.)

This is one reason why the Liberal leadership laboured so mightily to find a way to support last week’s NDP motion that would, among other measures, have recognized the state of Palestine. The Liberal caucus was deeply divided on the issue. My colleague Marieke Walsh reports that dozens of Liberal MPs were prepared to vote for the NDP motion.

In the end, almost all Liberal MPs ended up voting for a watered-down version of the motion – statehood recognition was taken off the table – while three Liberal MPs voted against it. One of them, Anthony Housefather, is considering whether to remain inside the Liberal caucus.

This is not simply a question of political calculation. Many Canadians are deeply concerned over the sufferings of the people in Gaza as the Israel Defence Forces seek to root out Hamas fighters.

The Conservatives enjoy the moral clarity of their unreserved support for the state of Israel in this conflict. The NDP place greater emphasis on supporting the rights of Palestinians.

The Liberals have tried to keep both Jewish and Muslim constituencies onside. But as last week’s vote suggests, they increasingly accord a high priority to the rights of Palestinians and to the Muslim community in Canada.

As with other religious communities, Muslims are hardly monolithic. Someone who comes to Canada from Senegal may have different values and priorities than a Canadian who comes from Syria or Pakistan or Indonesia.

And the plight of Palestinians in Gaza may not be the only issue influencing Muslims, who struggle with inflation, interest rates and housing affordability as much as other voters.

Many new Canadians come from societies that are socially conservative. Some Muslim voters may be uncomfortable with the Liberal Party’s strong support for the rights of LGBTQ Canadians.

Finally, Muslim voters for whom supporting the rights of Palestinians is the ballot question may be drawn more to the NDP than the Liberals.

Regardless, the days of Liberal/Conservative bipartisan consensus in support of Israel are over. This is the new lay of the land.

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Recall Gondek group planned to launch its own petition before political novice did – CBC.ca

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The third-party group helping promote the recall campaign against Mayor Jyoti Gondek had devised plans to launch its own petition drive, as part of a broader mission to make Calgary council more conservative.

Project YYC had planned with other conservative political organizations to gather signatures demanding Calgary’s mayor be removed, says group leader Roy Beyer. But their drive would have begun later in the year, when nicer weather made for easier canvassing for supporters, he said.

Those efforts were stymied when Landon Johnston, an HVAC contractor largely unknown in local politics, applied at city hall to launch his own recall drive in early February. Since provincial recall laws allow only one recall attempt per politician per term, Project YYC chose to lend support to Johnston’s bid.

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“Now we have to try to do door-knocking in the winter, and there’s a lot of preparation that you have to contemplate prior to starting. And Landon didn’t do that,” Beyer told CBC News in an interview.

Project YYC has helped gather signatures, created a website and erected large, anti-Gondek signs around town. It has supplied organizational heft that Johnston admits to lacking.

Their task is daunting.

According to provincial law, in order to force a recall plebiscite to oust the mayor before the term is up, they have two months to gather more than 514,000 signatures, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population in 2019.

They have until April 4 to collect that many signatures, and by March 21 had only 42,000.

Beyer criticizes the victory threshold for recall petition as so high that it’s “a joke,” and the province may as well not have politician recall laws.

So if he thinks it’s an impossible pursuit, why is he involved with this?

“You can send a message to the mayor that she should be sitting down and resigning … without achieving those numbers,” Beyer said.

Project YYC founder Roy Beyer, from a Take Back Alberta video in 2022. He is no longer with that provincial activist group. (royjbeyer screenshot/Rumble)

He likened it to former premier Jason Kenney getting 52 per cent support in a UCP leadership review — enough to technically continue as leader, but a lousy enough show of confidence that he announced immediately he would step down.

Gondek has given no indication she’ll voluntarily leave before her term is up next year. But she did emerge from a meeting last week with Johnston to admit the petition has resonated with many Calgarians and is a signal she must work harder to listen to public concerns and explain council’s decisions.

The mayor also told the Calgary Sun this week that she’s undecided about running for re-election in 2025. 

“There used to be this thing where if you’re the mayor, of course you’re going to run for another term because there’s unfinished business,” Gondek told the newspaper.

“And yes, there will be unfinished business, but the times are not what they were. You need to make sure you’re the right leader for the times you’re in.”

The last several Calgary mayors have enjoyed multiple terms in office, going back to Ralph Klein in the 1980s. The last one-term mayor was Ross Alger, the man Klein defeated in 1980.

Beyer and fellow conservative organizers launched Project YYC before the recall campaign. The goal was to elect a conservative mayor and councillors — “a common-sense city council, instead of what we currently have,” he said.

Beyer is one of a few former activists with the provincial pressure group Take Back Alberta to have latched themselves to the recall bid and Project YYC, along with some United Conservative Party riding officials in Calgary. 

Beyer’s acknowledgment of his group’s broader mission comes as Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet ministers have said they want to introduce political party politics in large municipalities — even though most civic politicians have said they don’t want to bring clear partisanship into city halls.

Although Beyer admits Project YYC’s own recall campaign would have been a coalition effort with other conservative groups, he wouldn’t specify which ones. He did insist that Take Back Alberta wasn’t one of them.

A man in a grey baseball cap speaks to reporters.
Calgary business owner Landon Johnston speaks to reporters at City Hall on March 22 following his 15-minute conversation with Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (Laurence Taschereau/CBC)

Johnston says he was approached by Beyer’s group shortly after applying to recall Gondek, and gave them $3,000 from donations he’d raised.

He initially denied any knowledge of Project YYC when documents first emerged about that group’s role in the recall, but later said he didn’t initially realize that was the organizational name of his campaign allies.

“They said they could get me signatures, so I said, ‘OK, if you can do it by the book, here’s some money.’ And it’s worked,” he said.

Johnston has said he’s new to politics but simply wants to remove Gondek because of policies he’s disagreed with, like the soon-to-be-ended ban on single-use plastics and bags at restaurant takeouts and drive-thrus.

He’s no steadfast conservative, either. He told CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener that he voted for Rachel Notley’s NDP because one of its green-renovation incentives helped his HVAC business.

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

– Source:
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