Apparently, on April 11, 2023, the Globe and Mail reports that the “Trudeau Foundation CEO, board resign over Chinese billionaire’s donation”.
We blogged here a few weeks ago about the Trudeau Foundation and numerous concerns with its governance. Needless to say, issues like putting up financial statements that are required under the CNCA have not been done. Instead, and this seems to be a common thread with organizations receiving negative media (like Hockey Canada), all of a sudden, the entire board resigns! I would rather they fix the governance mess but that does not seem to be their approach.
Now it might sound impressive that the whole board resigns, except it is not the board that has the real power. It is the members that have the power. They are sort of like shareholders – they can elect the directors, change the articles and by-laws, etc. So actually, nothing important has happened, but it appears to be an attempt to perhaps seem like they are making changes when they are really not. Again, the real power is with the members, and it does not appear that there are any changes to the members.
Perhaps in 2001 or 2002, it seemed like a good idea to create a $125 million foundation in the name of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Certainly, by 2008, when his son entered politics and became an MP for Papineau, someone should have woken up and realized that having a foundation (legally named THE PIERRE ELLIOTT TRUDEAU FOUNDATION) but commonly referred to as the Trudeau Foundation (as in their URL WWW.TRUDEAUFOUNDATION.CA) was not a great idea. Even more so when Trudeau became Prime Minister in 2015.
You see, charities are supposed to be quite clearly non-partisan and having Trudeau’s brother as a member and Trudeau as a member makes it difficult to maintain the notion of being non-partisan. This is not a small family foundation funded by the family. This is a taxpayer-funded entity that is supposed to be “independent and non-partisan” according to its website.
My suggestion is that either the name is changed or the Trudeau Foundation should return the funds to the government of Canada so they can be redeployed to a worthy cause. If you cannot think of anything to spend $168 million on, I can certainly help you there. Also, there really should not be any further involvement of the Trudeau family in the affairs of the foundation now that Trudeau is involved in politics. If the programs of the Trudeau Foundation are worth saving, then please change the name and try to avoid having another embarrassing scandal in the charity sector that reduces public confidence in charities.