New Democrats move to break deadlock, deliver for Canadians

OTTAWA – In the face of the second wave of COVID-19, NDP Ethics Critic Charlie Angus presented a plan today to get the government to move forward, come clean with the answers Canadians deserve and focus on working together to deliver for people across Canada.

“From shutting down parliament to days of dragging their feet in committees that need to be moving on to focus on the pandemic, the Liberals have been going to extremes to block access to documents that could show how much Justin Trudeau personally profited from his relationship with WE,” said Angus. “What I am putting forward today is removing any reference to the Prime Minister’s mother and brother from the request. Hopefully, this will end the logjam, help us get to the bottom of what Justin Trudeau is hiding.”

In July, the Ethics Committee passed a motion that required the Speaker Spotlight - an organization that the Trudeau family have used for years to arrange speaking engagements - to hand over all the financial records of the Prime Minister, his wife, his mother and his brother, all of whom have had a working relationship with the WE organization. It was the revelation that Justin Trudeau’s mother and brother received over half a million dollars from WE that forced the Prime Minister to apologize for not recusing himself from the decision to award WE an ill-fated student program that was worth over $500 million.

These documents were set to be shown to MPs in August but were blocked when the Prime Minister prorogued parliament the day before they were due. Since returning, Liberals have been using delay tactics to block their release.

“This is a way forward that should still allow us to get to the truth about Justin Trudeau’s WE scandal that robbed students across Canada of the close to a billion dollars in the help they were promised because of the WE scandal,” said Angus. “With this distraction behind us, we will finally be able to get on with providing the help Canadian still need while we all face the greatest economic and health crisis we have had to deal with in many generations.”