As a consequence of her separation agreement with husband Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau is exempt from disclosure under the Conflict of Interest Act.
“Sophie and the prime minister have signed a legal separation agreement,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Aug. 2. “They have worked to ensure all legal and ethical steps with regards to their decision to separate have been taken.”
The act states that any person “cohabiting with a public office holder in a conjugal relationship” is bound by law to full disclosure. No disclosure is necessary, however, for “a person from whom a public office holder is separated if all support obligations and family property or patrimony have been dealt with by a separation agreement or a court order.”
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, corporate records show that on April 6, 2022, Ms. Grégoire Trudeau registered a federal corporation, Under Your Light Communications Incorporated, at a Toronto law office declaring herself as its sole director. The filing says the corporation offers communication services.
Previously, Ms. Grégoire Trudeau was employed as a paid speaker with the Trudeau family’s Toronto talent agency, Speakers’ Spotlight.
In 2020, the agency revealed to the Commons ethics committee that accounting records covering Ms. Grégoire Trudeau’s remuneration for speaking engagements through the company prior to 2013 had been destroyed. The Trudeaus have been married since 2005.
Additional documents verified that now-defunct We Charity provided Ms. Trudeau with $25,681 in fees, gifts, and all-expense-paid trips to both London and New York, Blacklock’s reported. This was prior to the charity obtaining a $43.5 million federal grant in 2020. However, this grant was later retracted after revelations that We Charity had disbursed $471,751 in fees and gifts to various members of the Trudeau family, including the prime minister’s mother and brother.
On July 30, 2020, Mr. Trudeau testified at the Commons finance committee saying he “knew that my brother and mother had worked with We Charity” but said he'd been unaware of details. “I did not know how much work either of them had done with We Charity or how much they had been paid,” he said.
Mr. Trudeau apologized for not recusing himself from talks related to the charity’s program since he and his relatives had taken part in eight WE events. In May 2021, he said in a statement that his report confirms what he had already said about the WE Charity affair.
“At the heart of this initiative was getting support for youth during this pandemic as fast as possible,” Mr. Trudeau said in the statement.
MPs are duty-bound to keep files current regarding marriage status for the purposes of disclosure, as required by the Office of the Ethics Commissioner.
