Ethics Committee Invites PM’s Brother to Testify on Trudeau Foundation

Alexandre Trudeau is pictured in a Toronto hotel as he promotes his book "Barbarian Lost" on Sept. 19, 2016. (The Canadian Press/Chris Young)

The prime minister’s younger brother, Alexandre Trudeau, is being invited to appear as a witness before a House of Commons committee investigating a Beijing-linked donation to the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation after he reportedly said he wants to tell “everything” he knows on the matter.

“I want to testify before the committee that is looking into it. I’m ready to say everything I know about the foundation. It’s pressing!” Alexandre Trudeau told the Quebec-based newspaper Le Devoir in an interview on April 27.

The Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts voted unanimously on April 24 in favour of holding two meetings in which it would question witnesses from the Trudeau Foundation about their knowledge of a $140,000 donation in 2016 by two Chinese billionaires linked to the Beijing regime.

However, at the request of its Liberal MPs, the committee also agreed to exempt the prime minister and any of his family members from being invited to testify on the matter.

Now, Conservative MP and chair of the Commons Standing Committee on Ethics, John Brassard, says the prime minister’s brother has been invited to appear as a witness before the ethics committee.

Brassard told The Epoch Times on April 28 that the ethics committee clerk has extended an invitation to Alexandre Trudeau asking him to appear before the committee on May 3. He said the invitation was sent through the Trudeau Foundation’s email and the committee is still awaiting a response.

Alexandre Trudeau, who is two years younger than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, told Le Devoir that it is important he testify before a parliamentary committee following what he calls “dishonest attacks” on the foundation bearing his father’s name, of which he has been a member for a number of years.

Alexandre was also the Trudeau Foundation’s director in 2014 when he met with Zhang Bin and Niu Gensheng, the Chinese billionaires responsible for the controversial donation to the Trudeau Foundation in 2016.

In 2014, CSIS found that Zhang had been instructed to make the donation by a Chinese consulate official, who told Zhang that Beijing would reimburse him for doing so, according to a Globe and Mail report published in February.

‘No Bad Intentions’

Alexandre Trudeau told Le Devoir he wants to testify before the Commons public accounts committee because the foundation’s “reputation is affected.” He also said the foundation has “done nothing wrong” and adds that the foreign donation was never an attempt at “interference.”

“The donors had no bad intentions,” he said.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre previously called for the prime minister’s brother to testify in committee about his directorial involvement with the Trudeau Foundation two years prior to when it received the donation, which was originally promised to be $200,000 but turned out to be $60,000 less than that.

“He [the prime minister] would have us believe that the Trudeau Foundation received donations from Beijing, organized by his brother, but that he did not know about it,” Poilievre said in the House on April 24.

Trudeau has said on several occasions that he hasn’t had any involvement with the foundation for 10 years.

“As I have repeated many times in and out of this House, I have had no engagement, direct or indirect, with the Trudeau Foundation for about 10 years now,” Trudeau said in Parliament on April 25.

Noé Chartier contributed to this report.