Call the cops, then claim there's an investigation

I’ve given the takedown of WE Charity a lot of space in my social media and blog posts since it was targeted by a podcaster six years ago. I describe in my new book Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre how Poilievre used that children’s charity as a prop in his campaign for prominence in his own party. WE Charity was collateral damage to the ambitions of two ambitious men: Poilievre and Charlie Angus.

When it was all over, one of Canada’s finest charitable organizations was destroyed, even though WE had done nothing wrong.

Long after the charity was forced to close and most people involved in building and operating it recovered as best they could, these politicians and the smaller fish that surround them, continue to peddle lies and misinformation.​

On February 24, Ontario MP Michael Barrett posted a string of allegations against the charity in a Twitter/X post, that was viewed almost 200,000 times. He, like so many others, are willing to keep hammering the charity to draw blood from the Liberals. The tweets included a screenshot of the first page of a document from the RCMP released to him under the Access to Information and Privacy Act (ATIP). It’s the Canadian version of the U.S.’s federal and state Freedom of Information laws.

Barrett just posted the first page of the eight-page RCMP document. That left him free to put his own spin on the seven pages that readers couldn’t see. Presumably, journalists read the thread but it appears none bothered to compare the actual report with Barrett’s take. Now you can: here’s a link to the report: http://bit.ly/4bFIY3P

It’s clear why he just posted the first page. Barrett’s take on the full document leaves out a lot of important facts and strangely interprets the ones he cites.

One of the biggest claims his post: “WE Charity founders Craig and Marc Kielburger did not cooperate with this investigation and dodged interviews with the RCMP.” But that’s not what the report says. The RCMP wrote the Kielburger brothers “declined the opportunity to provide a statement” and were never asked for an interview. RCMP investigators said already had extensive evidence from the brothers, including “testimonies before parliamentary committees, open source documents, and documentary evidence provided to various government departments.”

I suspect the Kielburger brothers would have sued if Ontario’s anti-SLAPP law hadn’t made it almost impossible to get a defamation case into court if there’s a political element to the writing.

The report also shows Barrett triggered the RCMP’s investigation himself. He wrote to the RCMP and “encouraged initiating a criminal investigation” into the Canada Student Service Grant (CSSG). But the pages he conveniently did not share on Twitter/X show the RCMP found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

This has become a modern political trick, used especially (but not only) by Canada’s Conservatives. Make a complaint, forcing authorities to open a file, then say, “X is under investigation for …”.

After doing a detailed review of the facts, the Mounties closed the file. Barrett falsely claims “the RCMP gave Trudeau a pass.” But again, the report shows otherwise. Many credible witnesses with knowledge of the facts and law said neither Trudeau nor any of his Ministers did anything wrong. The selection of WE to run the Canadian Student Services Grant was made by senior public servants scrambling to put together Covid relief programs “without direction or pressure from elected officials.”

That’s what the Kielburger brothers said from day one, a claim that was backed up by credible witnesses in two sets of House of Commons committees in 2020-2021.​

(They were also investigated by the lobbying commissioner, which ended without charges).

When Barrett wrote, “Canadians are tired of the RCMP opening files into Liberals”—he omits the rather important fact that any tiring was caused by his complaint to that police force. If people are tired, it’s because this crap keeps getting raked over, even though the results are always the same.

This report from the RCMP, along with the forensic audit done several years ago (“Forensic analysis exonerates WE Charity and the Canadian government”), make it clear again that WE Charity was a well-run organization that did everything right. It’s been completely vindicated. And ruined.

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