WE scandal: Justin Trudeau full opening statement before House of Commons finance committee

Описание: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he didn’t know anything about a decision to give a sole-sourced deal to administer a $912-million student grant program to the WE Charity until the matter was set to come before his cabinet in early May.

“I did absolutely nothing to influence that recommendation. I didn’t even know it had been made until May 8,” Trudeau said in his opening statement to the committee. “When I did, I pushed back.”

Trudeau defended what he described as a focus on getting money out the door as quickly as possible to Canadians in the midst of the emergency response to the coronavirus crisis.

However, the PM acknowledged that his family's personal ties to WE might cause the deal to be examined more closely.

“We knew the selection of WE Charity would be closely scrutinized,” he said.

Trudeau said after he asked for a more thorough review of the decision to give the deal to the WE Charity, he was informed that the Canada Service Corps would not be able to scale up quickly enough to run it and that if he wanted the program to go ahead, the only option was WE Charity.

“They said if we wanted this program to happen, it had to be through WE Charity,” Trudeau said.

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