Politic?: WE Charity Manipulating Wikipedia to Glorify Its Reputation

Craig, Marc Kielburger, Trudeaus: Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press

"This is highly unethical. This is doing something bad. This is violating the terms of service of any site that they're interacting with."
"As a veteran in the industry, I frown on all of this."
Robert Burko, CE Digital, digital marketing agency

"Similar to many organizations where much of their audience is reached online, for several years WE Charity has engaged firms to assist with general promotions including Search Engine Optimization (SEO]."
"In light of your message [investigative reporter enquiry], we are seeking further information about their specific practices."
"Although it is not a formal role of any individual and done very infrequently, WE employees have occasionally posted minor updates to Wikipedia pages to ensure factual accuracy."
WE Charity

"Every client that has ever been into the black market of buying traffic, buying reviews or manipulating the data ... has lost their search ranking, gotten called out for it, or had someone like you [newspaper investigative reporter] reach out and broken a news story about them."
"[The practice is both unethical and] unfortunately [common but organizations that use it often get caught]."
Maryan Golabgir, president, Digital Marketing Experts

"Someone needs to take a serious look at this article to give it an advertising screen ... Maybe lock the page afterward since a silly number of edits in the history is cleaning up corporate BS marketing."
"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a soapbox."
Wikipedia editor, April 2018

Finance Minister Bill Morneau rises during question period in the House of Commons on July 20. Morneau is facing criticism for not recusing himself from cabinet discussions about awarding contracts to the WE organization. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

This would be, of course, the very same WE Charity in whose shenanigans Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau have been involved. Involved in a manner inconsistent with transparency in good government, involved to the extent that it represents a severe breach of ethical behaviour for Parliamentarians. Involved to the extent that the federal ethics commissioner is investigating both the prime minister and the finance minister, and their involvement in voting for a sole-source contract valued at close to a billion dollars which the charity was chosen to administer.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears as a witness via videoconference during a House of Commons finance committee in the Wellington Building on Thursday. (The Canadian Press)

Their profit would have been in the neighbourhood of $43 million or so, enabling them, it would seem, to be able to expand their burgeoning real estate acquisitions, a situation itself far from representative of most charities' activities. Finance Minister will now be put under the ethics microscope not only for failing to recuse himself in view of his personal relations with the charity, but also for the fact that the charity paid $41,000 for two Morneau family trips to WE facilities in Ecuador and Kenya in 2017, which he suddenly recalled, repaying the amount to the charity last week.

Canada's Liberal government had earmarked $912 million to be disbursed as student grants up to $5,000 for each student unable to find a summer job during the COVID lockdown, who would agree to volunteer instead in their community to earn a grant; $1,000 for every 100 hours of volunteering. Since the original announcement by the prime minister that this charity would undertake the administration of the student-volunteer summer program, questions have arisen regarding conflict of interests issues.

Margaret Trudeau speaks on stage at WE Day on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Toronto. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP)

That, for example, the prime minister's mother Margaret Trudeau being paid $200,000 for a series of 28 speeches on mental health, his brother another $30,000 for 8 speeches, and Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau accepting honoraria for similar presentation work with WE Charity. While entertainers who agreed to lend their talent and time to the Charity for appearances at special events, some of whom are struggling artists, received not a cent in recompense.

The puzzling issue of Wikipedia entries for WE Charity was the revelation that about 180 workers had been authorized and paid to manipulate Google's search algorithm promoting feel-good stories on WE Charity and its co-founder Craig Kielburger and to see that negative stories were hidden from view. The puzzle is who authorized them and paid them since the charity itself denies any such involvement. Yet who could benefit from such actions other than WE Charity itself?

One Toronto Star article on a $30-million investment by WE to "build a high-tech facility boasting a slate of programs geared toward grooming the fledgling concepts of socially conscious young entrepreneurs" was geared to be diminished in accessibility. Meant to bury negative stories about WE in Google's results was one CANADALAND report connecting WE to at least three companies known for using child and slave labour in their supply chains.

"By doing that, you're hiding it to like 90 percent to 95 percent of people who search for a given term and are not going to go past the first page", explained digital strategy consultant Alexander Thorburn-Windsor, of the anonymous employer who offered to pay some 90 different workers to manipulate Google search results in WE's favour.