National
Red Deer – Lacombe MP Blaine Calkins calls on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign
What We Know About Trudeau’s Latest Ethics Scandal
BLAINE CALKINS
Over the past several weeks Canadians have been shocked at the details coming to light regarding Justin Trudeau’s WE Scandal. Justin Trudeau and the Kielburgers have been happy to benefit from each other for years. While they are quick to downplay their relationship, the facts tell a different story. According to WE Charity, Justin Trudeau and his family have participated in over 50 WE Events where they have been able to share their political message with young Canadians.
In 2017 WE created a campaign style ad featuring Justin Trudeau for Canada 150 and even pressured employees to go to a political event for the Minister of Finance in his Toronto riding. The Kielburger brothers have donated to the Liberal Party in the past, and under the Trudeau government WE has received upwards of $5.5 million in government funding.
This reciprocal relationship is concerning all on its own, before even considering the current scandal regarding the Canada Student Service Grant, Justin Trudeau and WE. The twists and turns in the story can be difficult to track, but it is clear that Justin Trudeau and former Finance Minister Bill Morneau have once again failed to live up to their legal obligations laid out in Canada’s conflict of interest laws. Here is what we know so far.
In April, WE sent an unsolicited proposal for a youth entrepreneurship program to Minister Chagger and Minister Ng. Ten days later WE received a call from Rachel Wernick, a senior bureaucrat with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) about the yet to be announced Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG). When the program was announced to the public a few days later WE co-founder Craig Kielburger sent Ms. Wernick a proposal to administer the grant that same day.
According to the Kielburgers someone at the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) contacted them the next day about delivering the program, which they later recanted claiming it was a public servant who contacted them. Ms. Wernick is credited as being the public servant who recommended that WE was the only organization that could deliver the program.
On June 25th WE Charity was announced as the partner for the $900 million CSSG program, and Canadians were told they would receive $19.5 million to administer it. When asked, Trudeau suggested there was no conflict of interest because he and his wife had never been paid by the organization. A few days later Conservatives asked the Auditor General to probe the deal since parliamentary oversight was hindered by the program being outsourced, and due to concern over the well documented relationship between Trudeau and the Kielburgers.
By July 3rd Mark and Craig Kielburger announced that WE would be giving up the contract to administer the CSSG. On the same day, the Ethics Commissioner confirmed that he would be starting an investigation into Justin Trudeau for the third time. Less than a week later WE confirmed that the Prime Minister’s Mother, Margaret Trudeau had been paid $312,000 for 28 appearances since 2016 and that his brother, Alexandre Trudeau, was paid $40,000 for 8 events in 2017-2018. They also acknowledged that the Prime Minister’s wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau had received $1,400 for an appearance in 2012.
We later found out that on top of those fees WE Charity also paid an additional $212,846 in expenses between the three members of the Trudeau family. This brings the total remuneration to over $566,000. This revelation, in part, led to the Conservatives writing to the Commissioner of the RCMP to request that they look into this matter as it pertains to potential criminal code violations.
The Prime Minister isn’t the only one with an apparent conflict of interest in this matter, with former Minister Morneau also having close family ties with WE. Like the Prime Minister, he did not recuse himself despite the fact that his one daughter works for WE and another has been a speaker in the past and received a book endorsement. This led to the Ethics Commissioner launching an investigation into former Minister Morneau as well.
At an appearance before the Finance Committee former Minister Morneau would later go on to acknowledge that he and his wife had recently made two large donations, roughly $50,0000 each, and that he had also just written a cheque for over $41,000 to reimburse WE for expenses he and his family incurred on two vacations to Africa and South America, where they visited WE projects. WE later confirmed that the complementary trip was offered to former Minister Morneau and his family because of their history of significant donations to similar programs. These revelations led to the Conservative caucus calling for the now former Minister to resign.
The Finance Committee and the Ethics Committee began to look into this latest scandal, and the testimony and information they have received has painted a confusing and troubling picture. They uncovered a number of very concerning details before the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament in order to shut down the committees.
· WE stood to collect $45.53 million in fees, over double what was initially stated.
· The program, originally announced at over $900 million, was actually contracted out at $544 million instead. Why the discrepancy?
· The Clerk of the Privy Council stated that there were no red flags when considering WE, but that the Public Service didn’t probe the organizations finances. This is quite odd.
· The President of the Public Service Alliance disputed that only WE could have delivered the CSSG, stating that to say the Public Service was unable to was insulting. He pointed to the various government grant programs, Canada Summer Jobs and the Canada Service Corps as comparable programs. The theory that only WE could handle the program was further dismantled when it turned out that they had to subcontract part of the program because they weren’t able to deliver it in French.
· The contract for the CSSG wasn’t actually with WE Charity, but with WE Charity Foundation, a shell foundation that had no previous experience in delivering these types of programs.
· The former Chair of the Board at WE Charity testified that she had been forced to resign by Craig Kielburger for requesting financial documents from WE Executives to justify the layoff of hundreds of employees.
· The Kielburger brothers testified, claiming that they were running the program as a favour to Canada, and that their organization was to be reimbursed for expenses, but not make money off of the program. In a leaked document, a draft budget dated May 4th outlined some expenses including for staff salary. This included 175 program managers at $30,0000 each for 4.5 months work, ten supervisors at $45,000 each for 5.5months work, five group leaders at $70,000 each for 6 months work, and two project leaders for $125,000 for eight months work.
· WE Charity started to incur eligible expenses on May 5th, despite Cabinet not approving the program until May 22nd. This was being done with the full knowledge of ESDC, and allegedly at the financial liability of WE.
· Trudeau testified that he only found out about WE’s involvement on May 8th, shortly before it was set to be discussed at Cabinet. He claims that he removed it from the agenda and asked the public service to complete additional due diligence given his family connection to WE. He did not contact the Ethics Commissioner despite the concerns. This additional due diligence did not unearth any of the problems disclosed by the former Chair of the Board. It is noteworthy that no Minister, prior to the Prime Minister making his claim, had a story that would corroborate this feeble explanation.
The Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff confirmed that a handful of employees in PMO were aware of WE’s involvement and had interactions with the organization in the lead up to the approval. This included an interaction on May 5th, the day WE started incurring eligible expenses. So far, every time someone has come forward to try and explain away the Liberal’s latest mess, Canadians are left with more questions than when they started. Canadians deserve answers, and my Conservative colleagues and I are committed to finding them using every tool at our disposal.
While the studies at committee may have been temporarily halted by Trudeau’s prorogation Conservatives will continue to investigate this matter, and pursue every whiff of corruption like when we called on the Elections Commissioner to look into the political benefits that the Liberals have been given by WE. While the Prime Minister may be attempting to prevent Canadians from knowing the truth, Members of the Finance committee received thousands of heavily redacted documents from the Liberal government on the same day that Trudeau prorogued Parliament. They paint a very different picture of how WE came to be selected for this program than the one that the Liberals have offered up.
These documents suggest that the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth told WE to develop a proposal for a summer service opportunity before the CSSG was even announced. They go on to claim that the former Minister of Finance was “besties” with WE and that senior members of the Prime Minister’s office were involved in the development of the program and were having conversations with WE from an early stage. You can see these documents for yourself at wedocuments.ca.
The timeline of Mr. Trudeau’s version of events simply doesn’t add up. The CSSG was announced on April 22nd. A member of PMO spoke with WE about their proposal on May 5th, the same day they started to charge expenses for administering the program, but Cabinet wouldn’t approve the program for two and a half weeks.
Why was a charity that had to recently lay off hundreds of employees due to financial hardship related to COVID-19 so willing to accept the liability of starting the program without approval? Why were they so sure they would be approved? Why were they told they could start charging expenses before approval?
To answer that, you only need to look at the cozy relationship between Justin Trudeau, former Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, the Liberal Party and WE. Now that the former Minister Bill Morneau has resigned and more than 5000 pages of documents have been released for review, Canadians are hungrier for that truth than ever before. The Liberals are banking on Canadians forgetting about this scandal during their prorogation and hoping that they can change the channel later this month with a new Throne Speech, but it isn’t going to work. Despite prorogation and all of the confusion and misdirection, one thing is absolutely clear – Justin Trudeau must resign for his part in this scandal.
It was less of an industrial strategy and more of a cultural manifesto wrapped in a subsidy package… clause after clause mandates social goals: The “50-30 Challenge” pushes for 50% women and 30% underrepresented groups on boards, with detailed reporting on diversity metrics… But job protections? Squishy at best.
Folks, here’s why every Canadian should be boiling mad: Just two years ago, on May 2, 2023, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were all grins and photo ops, announcing a whopping $15 billion deal with Stellantis to build the NextStar EV battery plant in Windsor, Ontario. Trudeau himself called it a “historic agreement” that would “create thousands of well-paying jobs” and position Canada as a leader in electric vehicles. But fast-forward to October 14, 2025, and Stellantis pulls the plug on Brampton: They’re shifting production of the Jeep Compass from the Ontario plant to Belvidere, Illinois, citing “market conditions” exacerbated by Donald Trump’s reinstated 25% tariffs on Canadian-made vehicles. As Reuters reported on November 3, 2025, those tariffs—slapped on earlier this year—made it untenable to keep building in Canada for the U.S. market. Result? 3,000 workers laid off indefinitely, a facility idled since February 2024, and billions in taxpayer subsidies looking like a sucker punch. Stellantis isn’t even hiding it; their press release that day admitted the move was to “optimize operations” amid tariff pressures, investing $600 million in Illinois instead.
It’s a question that should make every Canadian furious, particularly anyone who still believes that the government’s role is to defend the nation’s workers rather than sell them out to foreign multinationals under the guise of “green investment.” The Trudeau government—with a lot of ribbon-cutting, back-patting, and press conference confetti—told us this was a generational opportunity. Up to $15 billion of taxpayer money was pledged through a combination of federal and Ontario subsidies, a massive, glittering pile of cash dumped at the feet of a foreign company to secure so-called “green jobs” in the electric vehicle sector. Split two-thirds federal and one-third provincial, it’s tied to production incentives—paid per kilowatt-hour as batteries roll out, not upfront, per the redacted contract leaked by CBC on October 29, 2025. But that didn’t stop the Liberals from hyping it as a slam-dunk for Canada’s economy.
At the time, Liberal ministers paraded through Windsor and Brampton with photographers in tow, declaring that the NextStar EV battery plant and a retooled Brampton assembly line would solidify Canada’s future in the EV revolution. The Strategic Innovation Fund was rolled out like a magic wand—promising prosperity, sustainability, and, of course, “equity.” Not just for jobs, but for gender representation, for racial diversity on corporate boards, for net-zero targets. It was less of an industrial strategy and more of a cultural manifesto wrapped in a subsidy package. As revealed in the CBC-leaked documents, clause after clause mandates social goals: The “50-30 Challenge” pushes for 50% women and 30% underrepresented groups on boards, with detailed reporting on diversity metrics. Climate commitments? Baked in, with net-zero benchmarks. But job protections? Squishy at best.
But now, Stellantis is pulling up stakes in Brampton. They’re shipping production of the Jeep Compass south—to Illinois. The line is shutting down. Three thousand jobs are gone, and Ottawa’s response? A letter. A procedural dispute-resolution letter sent to Stellantis lawyers on November 3, 2025, with the government now claiming the company broke a “binding agreement.” As Industry Minister Mélanie Joly told the parliamentary committee that day, “We will start the 30-day period of the formal dispute resolution process in order to bring back production at the Stellantis Brampton facility.” She added, “These actions are not symbolic. They’re the direct consequence of the violation of clear commitments.” The same government that only weeks ago was hailing this deal as a model for the future now admits it may not even contain an enforceable jobs guarantee. The language is vague. The numbers are redacted. The accountability? Nonexistent.
The Industry Minister, Mélanie Joly, faced her grilling on Parliament Hill during a meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry and Technology (INDU)—that exposed just how hollow this whole deal really was. Conservative MPs, including Raquel Dancho and Michael Guglielmo, demanded to see the clause. Which clause did Stellantis allegedly violate? What exactly was the commitment to Brampton? How many jobs were actually guaranteed? Was there a number? Was it enforceable? The Minister couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say. She deflected, pointed to redacted documents, and, when pressed about why the contract was packed with detailed social engineering mandates on board diversity but lacked hard job protections, accused her critics of being “against women.”
You can’t make this up.
Raquel Dancho, hammering in the core question that everyone watching already knew the answer to, asked,
“Was it 3,000 jobs that that SIF agreement with Brampton guaranteed?”
The minister responded like a bureaucratic ghost, floating just above the substance of the question.
“There are job guarantees in all the different contracts,” she said, “but you absolutely need to make sure that you see not only the contract… but also its amendment.”
Translation: Trust us. It’s in there somewhere. You just can’t see it.
Dancho pushed again: Where’s the number? Where’s the clause? The minister replied, “Clearly it is about protecting jobs. It is also about the production at the Brampton facility.” Not a single figure. Not a single line reference. Just the usual empty affirmation: “We care.”
Dancho didn’t let up. She cut through the fluff with brutal clarity:
“Surely there should be an explicit Canada-wide jobs guarantee. But we’re splitting hairs here. You’ve been evasive about the numbers… I’m not sure if you understand the magnitude of the money that you’ve committed.”
Then came the math:
“Over 647,000 full-time, two-parent Canadian families had to work an entire year to provide the $11 billion your government handed over to Stellantis. And still, there’s no explicit jobs guarantee.”
And when Michael Guglielmo followed up with the most damning observation of all—why are the clearest commitments in this contract about gender and racial equity quotas, not Canadian jobs?—the minister didn’t even deny it. She shot back with the cheap and predictable counterpunch:
“Are you against women being on boards?”
This is what it’s come to.
Instead of defending Canadian workers, the minister defends ideological clauses. Instead of admitting they cut a $15 billion cheque without a locked-down jobs guarantee, they imply that questioning the deal is somehow anti-diversity. These people don’t just miss the point—they refuse to even stand in the same room as the point.
Because the priority wasn’t jobs. It was ideology. The contract’s most detailed provisions weren’t about keeping Canadians employed—they were about the “50-30 challenge,” ensuring that Stellantis boards hit quotas: 50% women or non-binary individuals, 30% racialized, LGBTQ+, Indigenous, or disabled. These were enforceable clauses. Meanwhile, the 3,000 Brampton workers whose plant just shut down got… vibes.
That’s not economic strategy. That’s social engineering masquerading as industrial policy.
And now, when the jobs are gone, when Brampton is shuttered, when the workers are packing up their toolboxes and wondering how they’re going to pay their mortgage, the Liberals say they’re “launching a dispute-resolution process.” They sent a letter. They held a press conference. The Prime Minister, not present. The Minister, ducking behind amendments and redactions. And Canadians are left asking the only question that matters: Did we just get played?
Yes. We did.
The Liberals want you to believe this is just the price of doing business in a green economy. That global supply chains shift. That the transition to EVs is complicated. That we must continue to “work together.” But that’s not leadership. That’s surrender. The truth is, this wasn’t an industrial strategy—it was a $15 billion act of political performance art. A press release dressed up as policy. A parade of woke checkboxes signed into law while real, blue-collar livelihoods were used as bait.
And now we’re paying for it—not just in tax dollars, but in lost paychecks, empty factories, and shattered trust.
This is what happens when your government governs with hashtags instead of handshakes. When they negotiate with ideology, not leverage. When they cut billion-dollar deals and forget to actually protect the people they claim to represent.
Stellantis didn’t betray Brampton. The Liberal government did.
If there was a real deal—an actual, enforceable agreement that tied billions in taxpayer money to thousands of Canadian jobs—we’d be hearing about it nonstop. The Liberals wouldn’t be hiding behind redactions, amendments, and vague references to “linked contracts.” They’d be shouting from every podium: Here’s the clause. Here’s the violation. Here’s the money we’re clawing back. But instead, what do we get?
We get, “You’ll find it.”
We get, “It’s in the amendment.”
We get, “It’s commercially sensitive.”
It’s a shell game. A bureaucratic sleight of hand. Because the truth is, if this government had locked in a rock-solid guarantee, they’d be waving it in your face. They’d be naming names and quoting line numbers. But they can’t. Because it doesn’t exist. Or worse, because they were too arrogant or incompetent to include it in the first place.
And frankly, I’m not surprised. We’ve come to expect this from a Liberal government that governs by photo op and backpedals by committee. But what this is really about—what this entire spectacle reveals—is not just incompetence. It’s the desperate attempt to hide that incompetence from their own base. To maintain the illusion that they’re builders of the future while the factories go dark behind them.
They knew what they were doing. They just didn’t care who paid for it.
From the Fraser Institute
The Carney government will table its long-awaited first budget tooday. The vote on the budget is expected to be a confidence vote, so the stakes are high. Everyone is speculating about what’s to be in it. CBC, the Toronto Sun and Global News are all reading the tea leaves. And I hate to miss a tea party.
The budget is, naturally, going to have major implications for Canada’s economic indicators of debt, deficit, spending, governmental expansion/contraction, and so on. I’ll leave all that macroeconomics to my colleagues at Fraser Institute. But Prime Minister Carney has made some specific claims in my areas of specialty (environment, natural resources and regulation), and has made noises about Canada becoming an “energy superpower” and “building things” again. He’s also, in speeches leading up to the budget, re-affirmed that the Trudeau-era climate-change-centric, carbon-emission-control mindset is unchanged. The wording has changed, but the focus and predicates remain. Now though, rather than pounding on terms such as carbon, greenhouse and climate change, it’s all about Canadian policy being “responsible,” “sustainable,” “moral” and “equitable.”
Here’s what I’ll look for in the budget.
First, will the government dismantle or reform bills C-48, C-69 and the oil and gas emission cap—the three-pronged trident of death for major oil and gas development in Canada? Without this, it will be difficult to take any of his talk of energy superpower or natural resource trade renaissance seriously.
Second, will the government renounce or seriously reform the economically irrational, unattainable and crippling “net-zero 2050” anti-carbon agenda and shift Canada’s climate policy from emissions abatement to something potentially more attainable, such as adaptation and resilience building? Will it free Canada’s carbon natural resource economy to be the engine of Canadian prosperity and international competitiveness once again? Or keep Canada’s carbon (oil and gas) economy (and manufacturing economy) on a path toward extinction?
Third, will the government reset the tone of Canadian culture and defuse some of the adversarial relations with resource-rich provinces by acknowledging that Canada’s natural-resource economy has been, is now and must continue to be a cornerstone in Canada’s total economy? Or will it stick to the “net-zero” extinction process for carbon emissions, which will also be an extinction process for anything that requires substantial energy generation, and for the development of natural resources as the primary wealth engine of Canada? Will the government end the disdain for the role of Canada (and notably some of Canada’s western provinces) as a natural-resources export economy?
The budget will offer a window into the mind of Prime Minister Carney on the matter of natural resources in Canada’s economy and society. With global changes undermining the international carbon control regime and idee fixe, and with an understanding that Canada is on an economic precipice, there’s an opportunity here. Let’s hope Carney works to unshackle one of Canada’s greatest engines of economic progress—its energy and natural resource production, transformation, transportation, consumption and exportation.
Canadians could use the boost in quality of life that Canada’s natural resources could bring to current and future generations.
From Underdog to Top Broodmare
In his own words: Stunning Climate Change pivot from Bill Gates. Poverty and disease should be top concern.
Trans Mountain executive says it’s time to fix the system, expand access, and think like a nation builder
The painful return of food inflation exposes Canada’s trade failures
-
Crime2 days agoPublic Execution of Anti-Cartel Mayor in Michoacán Prompts U.S. Offer to Intervene Against Cartels
-
Environment2 days ago
The era of Climate Change Alarmism is over
-
Aristotle Foundation2 days agoB.C. government laid groundwork for turning private property into Aboriginal land
-
Justice2 days agoA Justice System That Hates Punishment Can’t Protect the Innocent
-
Alberta1 day agoCanada’s heavy oil finds new fans as global demand rises
-
Business1 day agoCarney government should retire misleading ‘G7’ talking point on economic growth
-
Daily Caller1 day agoNigeria Would Welcome US Intervention In Massacre Of Christians By Islamic Terror Groups
-
Censorship Industrial Complex24 hours agoPro-freedom group warns Liberal bill could secretly cut off Canadians’ internet access