Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s brother to appear before a parliamentary committee to face questions about his involvement in a Chinese regime-connected donation previously sent to the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation.
“We already knew that intelligence services have stated that the Beijing communist regime disbursed $140,000 to the Trudeau Foundation in order to influence the Liberal leader who’s now the Prime Minister of Canada,” Poilievre said in French during question period in the House of Commons on April 17.
“But now we know that his brother—his own brother—was the one that negotiated and signed the deal to receive the money,” he added. “Will the prime minister accept to call his brother to a parliamentary committee to answer questions about this?”
Also present at the 2014 meeting was then-Université de Montréal vice-president Guy Lefebvre. The group discussed establishing the “Trudeau Education Foundation” at UdeM’s Faculty of Law.
Zhang is a member of the Chinese regime’s National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and also president of the China Cultural Industry Association (CCIA), a state-backed entity. Niu is a consultant with the CCIA.
Prime Minister Trudeau was not present at question period on April 17 to personally respond to Poilievre’s call for his brother to testify before a committee.
However, Government House Leader Mark Holland fielded the question, saying the prime minister “has not been involved” with the Trudeau Foundation for “approximately a decade.”
“His [Poilievre’s] fixation with the prime minister’s family is well known for its partisan interests,” Holland said. “But the prime minister and the government is not engaged with that foundation.”
However, the French-language news outlet La Presse reported on April 12 that the foundation had not returned the donation because the name on the cheque did not match that of the real donor.
