EXCLUSIVE: Trudeau Foundation Held Not 1 but 3 Meetings in PM’s Building

People gather on the lawn outside the Langevin Block building, renamed the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council, on June 21, 2017. The Trudeau Foundation held three meetings in the building between April 2016 and March 2017. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Opposition MPs have raised questions about a meeting in April 2016 between the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and senior government officials in the building that houses the Prime Minister’s Office. It turns out the foundation had two more such meetings in the building, according to records seen by The Epoch Times.

Along with the April 2016 meeting, which was first reported by Montreal’s La Presse newspaper in April 2022, documents obtained through access to information indicate the foundation held another meeting in the building in January 2016 and a subsequent one in March 2017.

All three meetings pertained to the foundation discussing its “Pluralism Project,” aimed at proving the economic benefits of diversity and inclusion with senior government officials.

Interest in the Trudeau Foundation and its links to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has grown in recent months in the context of Chinese regime interference in Canada. The Globe and Mail reported in February that Beijing directed a Chinese Communist Party adviser in 2014 to make a donation to the foundation to curry favour with Trudeau, who went on to become prime minister in 2015.

Since becoming Liberal Party leader in 2013, Trudeau has denied any links to the foundation set up in the name of his father.

But MPs from every opposition party have suggested that the foundation benefited from privileged access to Langevin Block, which sits across from Parliament Hill. Trudeau renamed the building Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council in 2017 because its original namesake, Hector Langevin, one of the fathers of Confederation, had a role in the residential school system.

Morris Rosenberg, president of the foundation at the time, was questioned about the April 2016 meeting when he testified before the House of Commons ethics committee on May 2.

“It was actually quite surprising to see that the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation was in the Prime Minister’s building with access to five deputy ministers. That is not a common occurrence,” said Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure during Rosenberg’s testimony.

“It may not be a common occurrence, but the Langevin Building is located in downtown Ottawa, so it is very central and it is a place where senior officials often meet,” said Rosenberg, a former senior public servant who worked at the Privy Council Office (PCO), the prime minister’s department.

Screenshot of a Privy Council Office document obtained through an access to information request. (The Epoch Times)

The agenda for the April 2016 meeting noted the participation of nine senior government officials, including two deputy ministers, two assistant deputy ministers, and three deputy secretaries to the cabinet.

On June 12, Rosenberg appeared at the House public accounts committee to discuss the foundation’s business, which was set up with a $125 million endowment from the federal government in the early 2000s to provide scholarships.

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis noted that holding meetings inside the building that houses the PMO “sends a message.”

“If you want to send a message that this foundation is closely connected to the Prime Minister and therefore donations to this foundation are appreciated by the Prime Minister, a great way to send that message is to have it in the relatively small building that is called ‘the Prime Minister’s Office,’” he said.

Rosenberg said that he “fundamentally” disagreed with that view. “I don’t think it sends any message, and we were not the only ones to have the opportunity to go there.”

All the meetings were held on the fourth floor of the building, which is occupied by the PCO. The PMO occupies the first two floors, while the deputy prime minister uses the third.

Common Vision

Before the first meeting was held in January 2016, the PCO wrote a meeting note describing the participants and context.

“[Name redacted] has requested a meeting with PCO officials to discuss the Pluralism Project, a project sponsored by the Trudeau Foundation which aims to generate a public debate on the social and economic impacts of cultural pluralism in Canada,” it said.

The names of the other participants from the foundation were also redacted, but the description of their role wasn’t, suggesting it involved project leads Bessma Momani from the University of Waterloo and Jillian Stirk from Simon Fraser University.

Participants from the PCO were noted to be Matthew Mendelsohn, deputy secretary to cabinet (with a “to be confirmed” mention), and François Daigle, assistant secretary to cabinet. The secretary to the cabinet is the Clerk of the Privy Council, the top public servant in the federal government.

The PCO said the Pluralism Project coincides with the Liberal government’s priorities, but expressed uncertainty as to whether the foundation was seeking financial support.

“The theme behind the Pluralism Project aligns with the Government’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, and as such, could be of interest to departmental policy work at Canadian Heritage (PCH), Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees (IRCC) and Global Affairs (GAC),” says the meeting note.

The meeting with the deputy ministers followed in April 2016, where they were briefed on the project. The meeting in March 2017 was to inform a group of assistant deputy ministers of the results of the project.

A PCO note about the impending March meeting written for an unspecified senior executive from the office mentioned project recommendations, such as implementing “inclusive hiring” or “include diversity in procurement processes.”

Governance Crisis

The Trudeau Foundation went through a governance crisis after The Globe and Mail report in February, with its CEO and most of the directors on the board resigning over how the Chinese donation would be investigated.

Former directors who testified before the House ethics committee on June 2 said that three board members who were present when the donation was made refused to recuse themselves from the investigative process.

One of those directors, Edward Johnson, who remains as chair of the foundation, has denied the existence of such a motion.

“At no point was there a motion for any directors to recuse themselves, nor was there any refusal to do so by any director,” Johnson said when he testified before the public accounts committee on June 8.

Johnson announced shortly after the dissolution of the board in April that the foundation had hired a firm to conduct an independent audit of the donation controversy.