Ethically Challenged Canadian Corporate CEOs Double-Dipping on the Taxpayer's Dime

"The orthodoxy is that executives owning shares is absolutely the proper corporate governance because it aligns the philosophy, the risk and the performance period with payouts."

"What's interesting is that when you bring dividends into play and the ability of an organization to determine dividend payouts based on a government subsidy, it does raise questions about that linkage and the optics of that linkage."

"By the time you actually own a physical share, it's considered an after-tax investment the same way it would be if you bought mutual funds [there has never been a requirement to directly disclose figures relating to dividend payouts publicly]."

Christopher Chen, managing director, Compensation Governance Partners

 

"You may be less willing to suspend dividends because you have an interest in receiving the dividends. To say [CEWS] is different money or the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing I don't think addresses that conflict that certain CEOs have seven digits in dividends at the same time they're accepting the government subsidy."

"What you could do is voluntarily take a haircut so your net total compensation remains the same ... and say we're not going to benefit financially during receipt of taxpayer money."

Richard Leblanc, York University professor, governance consultant

There is nothing illegal about companies claiming emergency benefits while continuing to pay dividends. But the findings raise all kinds of questions that are worth debating. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post files

There may be nothing illegal, strictly speaking about wealthy corporations lining up to receive government benefits out of taxes imposed on citizens, during the economic hardships of SARS-CoV-2 causing a global pandemic, but that is only because the government in its haste to send out cheques to individuals and corporations claiming to have been deleteriously impacted by the pandemic, in a bid to soften the blow and give aid to those in need, overlooked cautionary principles in flux when greed equals need, and failed to specify certain conditions be met to qualify for the handouts.

That wealthy corporate interests have taken advantage of the situation claiming Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy benefits to enable them to meet payrolls and avoid laying off personnel, when in fact they faced questionable such emergency reactions to the COVID situation, speaks volumes of their lack of principle and perspective. Seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayer may be a common enough human lapse in judgement but it hardly excuses them, and nor does it earn any plaudits for government either.

An investigative report by journalists at one of Canada's leading national newspapers revealed that the chief executive officers of 68 Canadian companies that proceeded to pay out dividends to their shareholders while at the same time taking possession of the special pandemic wage subsidy, saw those same executives earning an estimated $30 million in dividends personally during the quarters where their firms accepted the wage subsidy.

The investigation revealed a minimum of 68 companies receiving over $1 billion in CEWS, designed as a subsidy giving aid to companies seeing a revenue drop due to the coronavirus impact -- to enable them to cover payroll costs, and who then chose to nonetheless pay out over $5 billion in total to shareholder dividends in the past two quarters. Nothing in the CEWS program as it was designed prevents companies from paying out those dividends.

 

Toronto's financial district is seen on Friday. CBC News analyzed the financial statements of 53 public companies that disclosed receiving more than $10 million from the Canada emergency wage subsidy program. Collectively, these companies dished out nearly $2 billion to shareholders between April and September. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

 

Pierre Karl Peladeau of Quebecor, known to be close to the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, earned close to half of the group's total in shareholder dividends personally, estimated at $14 million. K.Rai Sahi, CEO of four companies on the investigated list earned $3.1 million in dividends, with his company receiving over $22 million in CEWS payments. Quebecor claimed its telecom business failed to qualify for CEWS while its media subsidiaries did. 

 

According to Christopher Chen, companies have made it a requirement that executives own shares for the past several decades, as the gold standard of good governance, but the dividend earnings of the executives now has him rethinking a practise once taken for granted. Government to date has paid out over $52 billion to 359,880 applicants through the CEWS program, extended recently to June 2021.

Millions were received by other CEOs on the list of dividend recipients.

 

York University professor Richard Leblanc stated executives owning shares has always represented a "small-c" conflict of interest for the fact that the executives and board members deciding what gets paid out in dividends may themselves be recognized as among the largest beneficiaries of those payments.  The issue of dividends is characterized by many companies as necessary, arguing their dividends represent stability for investors. Suspending paying out dividends, they argue, would break the cycle of trust and might lead to a stock price downturn.

As Frank Li from the Ivey Business School explains, an executive's compensation should be linked to the firm's performance but when funds like CEWS become introduced into a company, injected into revenue and net income figures they tend to exaggerate performance metrics. This leads to higher compensation while facilitating payouts like dividends, in other words 'compensating' CEOs at taxpayers' expense. It is "luck or taxpayer money" that has resulted in executives collecting dividend income, not that they succeeded in leading their companies to good financial outcomes.

"If you perform badly, then you are fired, but in this case, they performed badly, they received [CEWS] and executives still enjoy high pay and high compensation."

"That's not an efficient corporate governance mechanism."

Frank Li, finance professor, Ivey Business School, Western University

 

 

Filthy Lucre and Profound Wealth

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Elon Musk and Grimes at the 2018 Met Gala

The world is stumbling through a global pandemic with nation after nation watching helplessly as their economies crumble, stock market values tumble, businesses fail, great corporations are prostrated, and pharmaceutical companies rush to develop a life-saving vaccine -- and all the while their health-care systems are overwhelmed with mounting cases of a coronavirus that has crushed the lives of millions of people.

Yet, all is not lost. The world's wealthiest billionaires are in fine shape, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index which ranks the world's 500 wealthiest people in order of the riches they have amassed. For the past eight years those rankings have informed a curious world of the wealth that some individuals have been able to accrue to themselves. And this year, which has seen nations stumble to their financial knees, the ultra-wealthy are doing just fine, thanks for asking.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos is now acknowledged as the wealthiest man in the world. Bill Gates has been dumped south, from the second richest man on Earth, to third-place status. And Elon Musk, who in January ranked 35th in wealth among the 500 billionaires the report names, added $100.3 billion to his net worth in the year 2020, for a total of $127.9 billion, the year that spelled disaster to Planet Earth. That princely sum added to his net worth has brought him to the position of second wealthiest man on this blue planet.

Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates's net worth of $127.7 while powerfully rich, has been diminished from the heights it might have reached had he not donated considerable portions of his vast wealth to charity, in giving over $27 billion to the Bill Gates Foundation, since 2006. He appears to have been more than willing to surrender the top spot in soaring wealth in favour of funding research in viruses to rescue humanity from dread diseases.

There are notable differences between Gates and Musk, the former believing in vaccine research and putting his money where his mouth is, as opposed to the values of the latter who questions pandemic data, finding comfort in certain conspiracy theories. And just as urban legend often speaks of the peculiar social mores and twisted morals of the very rich, there are examples that reveal the inner value core of such people.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undeniably made for a poorer world for most of Earth's inhabitants. Millions have lost employment, millions have become ill and the lingering effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID will bedevil some people all their lives, those spared the devastation of more immediate life-taking complications. Governments have had to borrow vast sums in funding to financially support their desperate populations.

Widespread layoffs disproportionately affecting the working class and the poor, poverty is increasing exponentially. In marked contrast to the members of the Bloomberg index having collectively profited by gaining 23 percent (roughly $1.3 trillion-worth) since the beginning of the year when a mysterious pneumonia-like illness began to emerge in Wuhan, China and all too soon spread world-wide to wreak havoc everywhere.

•X, the unknown variable

•Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence) •A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent

+ (A=Archangel, my favorite song) (

metal rat)

The world's second richest man's partner is a Canadian-born entertainer, sufficiently successful in her career to have made a name for herself, and the owner of her own recording company, Crystal Math Music Inc. Her stage name is Grimes, her true name Claire Elise Boucher, born in British Columbia and an alumni of McGill University. The staff she employs at her recording company applied to a granting agency on her  behalf.

This is a woman, while a reportedly gifted musician and entertainer, lives in California with her love partner, Elon Musk, and their young son whom they named XAE A-XII. Factor, a Canadian arts subsidy program partially funded by the Government of Canada, awarded her a $90,000 grant. She evidently under the eligibility criteria of the funding body seems fully qualified, irrespective of the fact that she no longer lives in Canada, though listed as a Quebec artist.

So a woman with a successful entertaining career who owns her own recording company appealed to a partially publicly-funded arts-grant group for a grant acknowledging her contribution to Canadian entertainment. That she has access to undreamed-of wealth, living with the world's second-most wealthy man appears incidental; she has not hesitated to take the grant and he appears uninvolved with the moral implications.

Among which is the fact that entertainers of all kinds in the world of art are struggling to assert their talents in circumstances where public venues revolving around art and entertainment are now closed off to them, and while continuing to polish their talents in hopes of better days to come, seek gainful employment in the ill-paid services industries in hopes of earning a living to get by current difficulties. 

F.Scott Fitzgerald was right when he penned that throw-away line that "the rich are not like you and me".

Sincerely Ingenuous

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau  (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

"I knew there would be perception issues around this [family ties to a charity his government chose to distribute a $912-million student disbursement for volunteerism to]."

"At the same time, delivering a grant program to students who volunteer across the country has absolutely nothing to do with any work my brother or mother did with WE [WE Charity], and that's why there was no conflict of interest."

"We [Cabinet] pulled the item from the agenda so that we could be doing the right thing, the way."

"I wanted to push back and really make sure that everyone could say without a shadow of a doubt that this was…the way to deliver the program recommended by our outstanding and professional public servants."

"As Mr. Morneau [Finance Minister] himself highlighted, he apologized and he should not have accepted the elements of that, that were gifts."

"The idea that someone on their personal vacation would choose to support a good cause or get involved in helping make the world a better place is not something that we should reject or turn away from."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"Multiple ministers and senior officials have testified at the finance committee."

"Not one of them said that the prime minister pulled the WE proposal from the May 8 cabinet meeting and sent it back for further scrutiny."

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer

The Parliamentary finance committee in conducting their investigation into the highly unusual situation whereby a sole-sourced contract for a proposed Canada Student Service Grant was granted to a charity that happened to be supported and hugely favoured by the prime minister, his family, the minister of finance and his family, had invited quite a few individuals to appear before them in friendly question-and-answer settings (through remote video connection). Among others, a number of senior civil servants. From whom came the information that the connection between the Trudeau family and the WE Charity was widely known among them.

That, in fact, this specific charity and none other, catering to youth, inspiring youth to reach out and give aid to other youth in the international community much less fortunate, as well as speaking out against child labour and investing in educational opportunities for children living in abject poverty in developing countries, would be hugely favoured as a result, to be named the beneficiary of a lucrative contract. This was important because the prime minister insisted repeatedly that it was not he who arranged for the contract to be sole-sourced to WE Charity, but the civil service, and he was completely ignorant of their choice.

Until he no longer was, when he was finally apprised of his most favoured charity for which he had himself attended well publicized, popular and crowd-thick inspirational meetings, speaking to the adoring throngs of youth, taken with the message of dedicated volunteerism. Dedicated volunteerism is what the public witnessed when they listened to an enthusiastic Margaret Trudeau speak on numerous occasions to spellbound WE Charity supporters. As did her son, Alexandre, Justin Trudeau's younger brother.

However, they did so to the tune of remuneration totalling a third of a million dollars, where Margaret Trudeau herself banked $250,000 for her 28 inspiring speeches. The prime minister's wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, was another enthused volunteer and spokesperson for the charity. The finance minister's two daughters were also heavily involved with WE Charity, one a contract employee, the other a speaker. This is a charity that has, besides its charitable purpose, a for-profit arm, a real estate arm, a tourism arm, and an associated contract-signing arm separate from the charity itself, but signing for it.

WE Charity excels in extending invitations to wealthy donors for all-expense-paid trips to some of its overseas ventures. Mr. Morneau and his family accepted two such trips in 2017, one to Ecuador, the other to Kenya. By all accounts quite wonderful trips to see the good work of the charity in action, and to stay at luxury accommodation in a truly unique environment for a feel-good purpose. Mr. Morneau is a multi-millionaire. The trips his family took  were estimated to the value of $93,000. Mr. Morneau suddenly recalled, on the eve he was to appear before the finance committee, that he 'owed' WE Charity $41,000 in connection with those trips, and he speedily wrote a cheque, albeit 3 years after the events.

When he responded to questions at the finance committee investigation, Mr. Trudeau gave what he considered to be perfectly valid, explicable responses; among the most salient that his 'talented' family generously gave of their time, and that the connection between their being paid by this charity and the charity being chosen for a prestigious, high-profile vote-getting program was completely above-board. Nothing to see here, folks move on, because the prime minister insists there was nothing unethical; the cause unassailable, everyone involved well-meaning.

There are other Parliamentary enquiries into this situation in the offing. The Parliamentary Ethics Commissioner has committed to investigating Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau, both for the third time, for ethics violations. On the two previous occasions, both men were found to have gone afoul of Parliamentary ethics. The entire situation is nothing more, nothing less, than business-as-usual for this Liberal government. A finance minister handling Canada's finances and handing out tens of billions of treasury for Liberal government COVID-19-related support to business and the unemployed and students, who cannot keep abreast of his own personal finances.

A prime minister who feels entitled to believe that anything he decides would be in the best interests of the country should go unquestioned, and to that end manipulated a situation whereby a second-tier opposition party agreed to support a motion to suspend Parliament for the duration of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic roiling the world, until such time as a vaccine is discovered and widely available. Setting the stage for this prime minister to govern like a true autocrat whose decisions cannot be questioned. Had Parliament been fully restored, opposition parties would have been able to intervene in this situation.

The fact that the charity was in deep financial trouble would have been noted and questioned. Its real estate holdings, unusual in size and breadth for a charity would have been noted and questioned. Its default on its banking obligations would have been noted and questioned. Its firing of 400 employees would have been noted and questioned; after all, how could such an ambitious program such as the student grants be administered short-handed? Most telling of all, the resignation of the chair of the WE Charity board of directors would have been noted and questioned.

Former WE Charity Board Chair, Michelle Douglas 'testifying'

That most other members of the board chose to leave along with the chair should certainly have been a flapping red flag. Michelle Douglas too appeared before the finance committee to respond to questions put to her. She described feeling uneasy and puzzled that upon request and even after pressing, she and the board were unable to obtain copies of WE Charity finances. She was troubled by the precipitate firing of 400 employees which she felt to be completely inappropriate and unnecessary. When, in a telephone conversation with the Kielburgers she insisted on seeing financial records, the line went dead.

Subsequently she was requested to hand in her resignation. “It was our view that you don’t fire hundreds of people without very strong demonstrable evidence, and even then should explore mitigation measures to save jobs", she explained to the committee. "Instead, the executive team were dismissing employees with great speed and in large numbers."  As for payment to speakers, she and the board had been led to believe that all speakers did so voluntarily. "The WE Charity board always understood that speakers were not paid by the charity or the related organizations to speak at WE Day. The board made direct inquiries on this issue."

Co-founders of WE Craig (left) and Marc Kielburger (right) are seen on stage during WE Day California in Inglewood, California, U.S. April 25, 2019. The brothers spent four hours in front of a committee of MPs today answering questions about their role in the federal government's student grant program. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

Marc and Craig Keilburger, co-founders of WE Charity and all its stunningly complicated arms initiated work on administering the controversial Student Volunteer Grant program well before it had been approved to proceed by Cabinet. They had, they explained, been advised by departmental officials that they could feel free to incur expenses related to the disbursement program prior to to being informed the agreement had been formally awarded to WE Charity. Their haste, they explained, had nothing whatever to do with anticipating the $43-million profit that would come their way; they were assiduous in starting for the simple reason that delay would harm the program.

The idea was to get as many university students unable to find summer jobs during the COVID pandemic involved as soon possible, to enable them to have the financial wherewithal to pay for their forthcoming tuition when the university year commenced. And so, they overlooked the possibility that the agreement would not come through and they stood a chance of forfeiting any expenditures on their part, for the greater good of the country, because this is what they're all about; making the world a better place.

"That was a decision that they took because they knew how important it was to get this program going and they assumed certain risks in going forward and starting to spend on a program that hadn't yet been approved by cabinet and would not be approved for another few weeks", explained Mr. Trudeau, in their defence and his own. Ungenerously, the leader of the opposition, Mr. Scheer, responded "Why was WE so sure that they were going to be approved? Why were they told they could start charging expenses before the program was even approved?"

As for Justin Trudeau's forgiving attitude over Bill Morneau's ill-advised acceptance of an all-expense-paid trip hosted by a charity he and his family have generously supported, it's hardly surprising. Given that Justin Trudeau and his family were pleased to accept just such a trip whose invitation was extended by the Aga Khan for them to enjoy Christmas at his private island in the Bahamas. Justin Trudeau innocently described the trip as a gift from a family friend, and couldn't see what the fuss was all about. That was the first time that the Ethics Commissioner issued a rebuke for trangressing Parliamentary ethics when he was found to have violated sections 5, 11, 12 and 21 of the Conflict of Interest Act.

Minister of Finance Bill Morneau rises in the House of Commons to deliver a fiscal snapshot as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looks on, Wednesday, July 8, 2020 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Canada's Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau

"There's never been two resignations in recent memory of people resigning on principle ... together."
"The difference here is that Trudeau explicitly promised in the last election to do business differently than previous governments [transparency, equality, ministers free to run their departments free from prime ministerial interference]."
"In the past, one of the things -- and there are exceptions to this -- that would have characterized the cabinet appointment would have been, at a minimum, vetting for pretty severe levels of loyalty to the party. In this case, that wasn't something the prime minister prioritized when he put his cabinet together."
"[Wilson-Raybould and Philpott hadn't been] socialized to that norm [of the leader-centric model that Trudeau has claimed he rejected]. When he tried to tell them what to do on a particular issue, they just said no."
Chris Cochrane, politics professor, University of Toronto

"Secret in-camera meetings or private notices should not be a shield to prevent the upholding of the law and members' [Members of Parliament] rights."
"We were expelled prior to the commencement of the Liberal caucus meeting. The prime minister's words that night to the Liberal caucus are important to underscore, because expulsion should not be his decision to take unilaterally. However, the decision had been already made."
"This is a constitutional convention [one codified in the Parliament of Canada Act]."
"[Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's decision to eject former cabinet ministers Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould from the Liberal caucus represented] a breach of the Parliament of Canada Act."
Former Minister of Health and Treasury Board President Dr. Jane Philpott

Former cabinet ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott have been expelled from the Liberal caucus. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Dr. Philpott, now sitting as an Independent in the House of Commons since last week being ejected from the Liberal caucus by Justin Trudeau, and refused, along with Jody Wilson-Raybould, former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, to run in the forthcoming federal election as Liberals as they had intended, accuses the Liberals of having failed to hold a legally required caucus vote in the wake of the 2015 election in recognition of expulsions from caucus, upholding the reality that MPs are not accountable to the party leader; the leader is accountable to Members of Parliament.

But then, bypassing legalities, particularly those that were passed into law by the previous Conservative-led government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is a favourite with this parliament. When Justin Trudeau was sworn in as prime minister he intended to fashion a new Canada and began by re-naming government departments to better reflect his agenda and his 'new direction' for Canada, while ironically proclaiming when abroad to his G-20 peers, "Canada is Back!"

He meant, of course, Liberal-led Canada. And like his father before him, his Canada would be socialist, progressive in orientation, with a kind eye toward repressive, socialist countries like China and Cuba. Trudeau was anxious to make his mark on the world stage and he began by demonstrating how cheerfully Canadian he is, open to progressive idealism that embraced the world at large, women and labour, the environment and refugees, Indigenous Canadians and the LGBTQ-2 community in an equal and open setting of mutual admiration.

He set out to cut a dashing figure in India, and succeeded. He somehow managed to ally himself repeatedly with those suspected of terrorist activities, sympathetically offering them 'understanding' and Canadian tax awards to ameliorate hurt feelings. He endeared himself to minority enclaves and brought into his cabinet ministers born in Afghanistan and Somalia, authorized to act in the very best interests of their adopted country. Muslims have pride of place in the Liberal caucus and "Islamophobia" does not.

Although the previous cabinet under Stephen Harper's Conservatives had almost equal representation between men and women, Justin Trudeau was quick to strut with pride and exclaim his 'feminist' credentials for dividing positions equally between men and women, issues such as experience and qualifications set aside as irrelevant. At every turn Trudeau made a concerted effort to set aside anything the previous government had brought into law, including the aforementioned Parliament of Canada Act with its amendment to decentralize political power back into the hands of ordinary legislators.

The deposed Wilson-Raybould had been a Crown prosecutor, a treaty commissioner, the regional chief of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations when she was crowned by Justin Trudeau as the first Aboriginal woman to hold the cabinet post of Minister of Justice. She has testified that she was hounded aggressively by order of the prime minister to have her change her mind about not instructing the prosecution service to offer engineering-construction giant SNC Lavalin a deferred prosecution rather than a criminal trial. She refused and was removed from her post.

Dr. Philpott's career was as a family doctor, an associate professor at University of Toronto, with advocacy work for HIV/AIDS in Africa in her portfolio. She decided to support Jody Wilson-Raybould with whom she had worked in close collaboration while both were in Cabinet, protesting that she had been dealt with unethically and unfairly, and calling upon the prime minister to do the honourable thing and admit his culpability. She resigned her post voluntarily, after Wilson-Raybould had resigned from her brief stint as Minister of Veterans Affairs to emphasize her claims of political interference.

There is a mystery to all of this. The Liberal caucus embarked on a smear-whisper campaign against both these women who have stood their ground, demanding accountability of the prime minister and his loyal henchmen for having pressured Wilson-Raybould to accede to Justin Trudeau's plan to save SNC-Lavalin from a criminal trial and the fall-out from conviction which would eliminate SNC from any government contracts for a decade, to which the company threatened a move of its corporate offices abroad, and the relinquishing of Canadian jobs.

Given the extent of what the public knows now about the behind-the-scenes, unethical behaviour and bullying on the part of the prime minister and his flunkies, and the associated condemnatory behaviour of the Liberal caucus in standing firm behind the prime minister as they are expected to do as ideologues and participants in a personality cult of a leader who will not be denied his way, why would both these women who resigned and spoke the truth on a matter of conscience and principle, insist they must be reinstated as Liberals?

• Jody Wilson-Raybould (far left) and Jane Philpott (second from left) were illegally bounced out of caucus without a vote, contends long-time Vancouver Liberal Bert Paul. MCPL MATHIEU GAUDREAULT, RIDEAU HALL

Splitting Ethical and Moral Hairs

"[Was this the most egregious example of unethical behaviour by a politician she had to deal with as ethics watchdog?]"
"No. It was the most noticeable one [because it represented the first of their kind regarding a sitting prime minister.] It was an error made, a miscalculation. It was highly noticeable because he was the prime minister."
"I’m not of the view myself that more stringent penalties are required… in my view, publicity and the test of reelection make up the appropriate form of redress. The publicity is bad enough."
Mary Dawson, retired Parliamentary Ethics Commissioner

"An organization that has the explicit purpose of restricting women's rights by removing rights to abortion and the right for women to control their own bodies is not in line with where we are as a government, and quite frankly where we are as a society."
"Of course, you're more than allowed to have whatever beliefs you like. But when those beliefs tend to actions determined to restrict a woman's right to control her own body, that's where I, and I think we, draw the line as a country. And that's where we [the Trudeau government] stand on that."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fields a question at a town hall meeting in Lower Sackville, N.S. on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2018.   Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press

The prime minister who celebrates himself as a 'feminist' also enjoys hob-nobbing with prestigious and wealthy elites, alternating that propensity with his attraction for dictators whose governments are able to mandate what the people will adhere to, through a social contract of their devising. The ethics commissioner was asked by the opposition parties in Parliament to look into the matter of the Trudeau family spending $100,000 of taxpayer funding to take a Christmas holiday on the private island of the Agha Khan.

The complication here is a prime minister accepting favours and gifts from those for whom decisions taken by the Government of Canada can be profitable. The Aga Khan has ongoing official business with the government in seeking funds for a number of projects. The Aga Khan Foundation itself is registered to lobby the Office of the Prime Minister; ergo the prime minister is in a position to 'help' the Aga Khan. The ethics commissioner found that gifts accepted by Justin Trudeau and his family were unethical.

The prime minister's response was to declare regret for the "mistake" made in not having "cleared" free and costly vacations he decided to take, with the ethics commissioner. He was rebuked, and faced no penalties, thanks to the generous interpretation the ethics commissioner took on the matter, that the fallout from his 'error' might convince voters that this man lacked critical judgement. She did conclude that Trudeau had violated four provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act.

She also coincidentally found that Trudeau should have chosen to recuse himself from attendance at two meetings with the Aga Khan Foundation focusing on a $15-million federal grant to benefit the endowment fund of the Aga Khan's Global Centre for Pluralism. A most inconvenient finding, but one that the prime minister appeared to have no problem with, distancing himself from the issue with the promise he would do better in future.

This is the same man who has imposed upon Canada's religious communities a pledge not to reject a woman's right to abortion should they wish to access tax funding allowing them to hire students in multifarious projects benefiting society. Orthodox religious institutions take a stance on abortions and access to abortions, regarding these procedures as offensive to god, and unsupportable by their scriptures.

A majority of Canadians, on the other hand, support a woman's right to abortion. Yet evangelical Christian groups and the Roman Catholic Church advise their members against abortion. To further complicate matters, Canada has no law either pro- or -con on abortion. It is generally accepted within society that abortion is a legal procedure where once it was seen as illegal with criminal penalties attaching to the issue. We live in a more enlightened time in society, quite obviously, but one that has no need of forcing those who are 'pro-life' and anti-abortion to accept the freedom to choose.

This is their prerogative in a liberal Democracy, with guarantees to freedom of religion under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This Liberal-led government of Justin Trudeau has taken it upon itself under his direction to make it mandatory for all groups wishing to qualify for grants to hire summer students, to agree that they support a woman's right to abortions. They have appended an 'attestation' of abortion rights to all registrations for such grants; without checking off the 'attestation' box their registration is nullified.

"In terms of church groups that are concerned that this may invalidate them from funding, in fact, my perspective is that it won't, as long as their core mandate agrees with those hard won rights and freedoms that Canadians expect us to stand up for."
"We think this is a fair process. [Faith groups should be fine checking the box if] their core mandate is actually, for example, administering the word of God, or administering spiritual guidance for people ... These are the kinds of things that, if you look at the core mandates of faith groups, that they talk about."
"We're working very closely, as I said, with faith groups to make sure that they understand that as long as their core mandate is not in violation of Canadian human rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and it's not violating a woman's ultimate right to control her own body, that they should have absolutely no problem receiving grant money, provided they, you know, fill out the application properly [by checking the attestation]."
Employment Minister Patty Hadju

"[The attestation] seriously undermines the right to religious freedom since the Government of Canada is directly limiting the right of religious traditions to hold, teach and practise their principles and values in public."
Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops

Zohra Surani, 21, left and Melinda Cuffy, 23, pore over job listings at the Summer Jobs Services Centre at 511 Richmond Street West in downtown Toronto.    Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

Catholic, evangelical and other religious groups argue that the new attestation on the Canada Summer Jobs grant application is unprecedented, unfair, and possibly illegal. That forcing applicants to attest to their views on abortion while applying runs counter to their human rights, and their rights to equality of treatment and freedom of expression and religion guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Their concern extends to the possibility of the attestation appearing on other government grants and programs as well.

The Charter protects freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and religion, and guarantees the  freedom to be treated equally under the law. Moreover, an anti-abortion group in Toronto has filed a Federal Court case to argue their Charter rights are being violated through the application of this attestation -- and though they are the first to do so, they will not be the last. This government's coercive attitude contrasts sharply with the perceived freedom of the prime minister to believe anything he does personally is beyond criticism.

Some 70,000 placements for students are funded by the summer jobs grant program on an annual basis. A grant system that has been relied heavily upon by religious groups operating summer camps, daycares, drop-in centres and other public service programs of value to society at large. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada along with the Canadian Council for Christian charities state complaints have been pouring in from groups who feel insecure in applying, or are uncertain what agreeing with the attestation will result in.

Some have resorted to their own devices by forwarding their grant applications and substituting the government attestation with one of their own devising, guaranteed to be rejected while upholding the principle of supporting a procedure they reject, as is their right.

The Canadian Press/Fred Chartrand

Thousands gather on Parliament Hill for the March for Life rally in Ottawa on Thursday, May 11, 2017.