⁍ Michael Bociurkiw says the latest controversy threatens to deal a fatal blow to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s brand.
⁍ It casts unwelcome scrutiny on his immediate family and on an international charity juggernaut with links to Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and several other well-known celebrities and leaders.
⁍ The controversy comes just as Trudeau, thanks to a savvy response to the Covid-19 epidemic that prioritized science over politics, began to recover his political capital.

– Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in yet another controversy, this time over a charity that paid his mother more than $200,000 to appear at one of its events. The WE Charity—which has ties to Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and other bigwigs—says Margaret Trudeau was never paid an honorarium to appear at one of its events, but the National Post reports she was paid an average of $8,000 to appear at a 2017 Canada Day weekend event. The charity says it never paid Trudeau’s mother “an honorarium” to appear at any of its events. Trudeau has apologized for not recused himself from decisions related to the charity, which was awarded a $660 million contract by the Canadian government to run a program for students who couldn’t find summer work due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The prime minister says the government recommended WE as the only charity in Canada able to administer the program and that it was a “mutually agreed upon decision.” But a government minister says the government could have received up to $32 million for its role in administering the program, and it’s not clear when the federal bureaucrats now in charge of the program will be able to distribute the grant money to students. (Trudeau’s approval ratings are back above 50%.)

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/17/world/coronavirus-newsletter-07-17-20-intl/index.html