Alexandre Trudeau Says Chinese Donation Was Not Interference, Committee Is Wasting Time on Foundation

Alexandre Trudeau, brother of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and member of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, prepares to appear before the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, studying foreign interference, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on May 3, 2023. Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Alexandre Trudeau told MPs that everything about the donation to the Trudeau Foundation from two businessmen affiliated with the Chinese regime a few years ago was legitimate and didn’t constitute any attempt to influence his brother, who would later become prime minister.

“Frankly, this is a waste of time because there is not a foreign interference issue here at the foundation and I know the documentary record will make that clear as it’s disseminated,” Trudeau said as he testified before the House of Commons ethics committee on May 3.

Trudeau provided his version of the story that has shaken the foundation in recent weeks, leading to many of its directors resigning.

At issue is a $1 million donation to the Université de Montréal (UdeM) and the Trudeau Foundation from two Chinese businessmen tied to China’s ruling Communist Party in a number of ways.

Zhang Bin and Niu Gensheng are both affiliated with the China Cultural Industry Association (CCIA), which former Trudeau Foundation CEO Morris Rosenberg described to the committee on May 2 as a “soft power” organization for Beijing.

Soft power is defined as a way for states to advance their national interests through influence and persuasion.

The donation was technically made by a company registered in Canada and owned by Zhang Bin, Millennium Golden Eagle Canada, but affiliated with a Beijing-backed company of essentially the same name and also tied to the CCIA. Zhang is also an adviser to the communist regime.

Trudeau said he “still ha[s] no reason to believe” the motives of the donors “were not honourable at that time.”

“I refuse the idea that those people were trying to interfere.”

The donation to the Trudeau Foundation and the UdeM came after the same donors gave the University of Toronto $800,000 in 2013 to honour the legacy of Canadian doctor and communist Norman Bethune, who served in Mao Zedong’s army.

The donation to the foundation and the UdeM was framed to honour former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who studied and taught at the university and opened up diplomatic relations with communist China in the 1970s.

The foundation was created in the early 2000s with a $125 million endowment from the federal government, with a mission to offer scholarships and mentorship.

Intercepted Conversation

The donation issue most recently came to light in late February when the Globe and Mail reported that CSIS had intercepted a conversation in 2014 between Zhang Bin and a Chinese consulate official in Canada. They reportedly discussed how the Liberals would defeat the Conservatives in the next election and for Zhang to provide $1 million to the Trudeau Foundation, which Beijing would reimburse.

Trudeau criticized the reporting from Globe and Mail, saying he finds “journalism on the basis of one single anonymous source poor journalism.”

He said the facts of the report were problematic since there was never a question at any point that $1 million would go to the foundation. The donation deal was for $800,000 for the UdeM and $200,000 for the foundation.

Trudeau, who’s been involved in the affairs of the foundation named after his father from its inception, was a director at the time when the donation deal was made.

He said the company that officially donated didn’t raise any concerns and that it was in good standing, having an account at the Bank of Montreal, which is “governed by very strict rules.”

Conservative MP Michael Cooper challenged that assertion saying that Millennium Golden Eagle Canada is a “shell company based out of a house in Dorval that is controlled by the China Cultural Industry Association, which is part of the United Front Work Department.”

The United Front Work Department is a core tool of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to infiltrate and influence foreign countries.

Rosenberg also defended the donation when he testified the previous day, saying it was not foreign. But everything but its address in Dorval, Quebec, is Chinese and has links to the regime. The donation receipt had also been sent to its address in Hong Kong.

Cash-for-Access

The first time the issue of the donation came to broader public knowledge was in 2016, when it was reported that Zhang Bin had attended in May 2016 a cash-for-access Liberal Party fundraiser with other Chinese billionaires where the prime minister was the guest of honour.

The donation deal had been long in the works and the official signing ceremony took place a few weeks later in June.

“I bet you he wanted a photo with the prime minister to show to his friends,” Trudeau said about Zhang Bin. “I have no reason to doubt that this man never tried anything that would look like interference.”

While Zhang met with the prime minister in May 2016, the other donor Niu Gensheng did so a few months later in October, while visiting with a delegation of the China Entrepreneur Club. Trudeau hosted the delegation at Willson House on Meech Lake, Quebec, with three other cabinet ministers.

Alexandre Trudeau said he had no concerns about the donors’ motives, but the cash-for-access event still changed things at the foundation.

“It was a moment of realizing, you know what, no more academic diplomacy at the Trudeau Foundation,” he said.

Trudeau, the foundation, and the UdeM say they thought that by creating academic links with China it would nudge it away from authoritarianism.

“It’s not that we were naive that we were dealing with people that were linked to the Chinese government, because just about everybody was. What we were naive about is that we actually believed by dealing with them, that we would have soft power influence on them,” Rosenberg told the committee the previous day, premising that then UdeM vice-president Guy Lefebvre thought the same way. Lefebvre had extensive connections to Chinese entities and played a key role in the donation deal.

Views on China

Alexandre Trudeau’s views about, and links to, the Chinese regime were also prodded by MPs on the committee.

He was asked if he was compensated for giving a speech to the Confucius Institute in Edmonton in 2017, and said it wasn’t the case.

“First of all, I’m a reader of Confucius,” Trudeau said before being cut off by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis.

“The Confucius Institutes have nothing to do with the work or legacy of Confucius,” said Genuis. The institutes, like the CCIA, are also part of Beijing’s soft power arsenal and have grafted themselves to multiple learning institutions across the world.

Genuis asked Trudeau if he still held the view shared in his 2016 book “Barbarian Lost: Travels in the New China” where he defends the CCP.

“I think one ha[s] to state in a positive sense that the organizing principles of the Chinese Communist Party had made a significant economic impact on the country,” Trudeau told the committee.

But he also said that he is not an “apologist for the Chinese government” and that he “wants freedom for the Chinese people.”