It was a brutal exchange. The Kielburgers acknowledged vague wrongdoing to the House of Commons ethics committee, stressing that it was “15 years ago” and say they’re investigating. But Erskine-Smith’s questions revealed the fundamental truth of Monday’s proceedings — the WE scandal has mutated, in the vernacular of the times. It’s still a scandal involving the lousy judgment, at best, of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his former finance minister, Bill Morneau. But it’s now unavoidably also about the Kielburgers and their personal credibility, not to mention the credibility of the constellation of WE-branded organizations they spent their lives building and must now defend.
There were some edifying moments. Angus noted that in earlier testimony, the Kielburgers had said they’d charge no admin fee for the project, and pointed to language in the contract that specified a 15 per cent fee; he also noted that WE would have charged the federal government for rent, which is odd, given the company’s substantial commercial real estate holdings. The Kielburgers had no real response to that, beyond sputtering that Angus doesn’t know how to read a budget.
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