New information is surfacing on the Chinese donation that took down the leadership of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, but how accurate is it and how does it tie into the larger picture?
It’s clear that the donors were affiliated with the Chinese regime, and reportedly the money was meant to serve a purpose in Beijing’s foreign influence strategy.
One stakeholder who claims he played a key part in the donation given in 2016 provides a different account of how the donation came about.
Lefebvre, a former dean of UdeM’s law faculty and now a professor emeritus there, had links with China at the time, being among other things a fellow at a Chinese Communist Party think tank.
Analyzing the different stories to see how they mesh together is made difficult by the lack of specific dates for important events of the saga, with most accounts only providing a certain year instead of months or actual dates.
There is also ambiguity on when the donation deal with Trudeau was launched, and if there was any overlap with Trudeau’s tenure at the foundation.
Donation Cleared
When it was reported in 2016 that billionaire Chinese Communist Party (CCP) advisor Zhang Bin and another wealthy Chinese businessman, Niu Gensheng, would donate $200,000 to the Trudeau Foundation—a move that followed Bin’s attendance at a cash-for-access fundraiser with Trudeau in May that year—the ethics commissioner rejected the Opposition’s demand to examine the matter.“Information in the public domain indicates that the terms of the donation to the Trudeau Foundation were negotiated between September 2014 and spring 2016, after Mr. Trudeau’s involvement with the Foundation had ended. I will therefore not be looking further into the matter at this time,” Dawson reportedly wrote to then-interim Conservative Party leader Rona Ambrose.
Trudeau became leader of the Liberal Party in April 2013.
The Epoch Times asked the Trudeau Foundation and the Prime Minister’s Office for the exact date Trudeau stopped being involved with the Foundation but didn’t hear back.
Hence, when the Zhang donation was revealed by media in 2016, Trudeau was technically no longer involved in the affairs of the foundation, according to his page on the foundation’s website.
“Nothing in the Code prevents Members who are not ministers or parliamentary secretaries from being a director or officer in a non-profit organization as long as they are able to fulfil their obligations under the Code,” she said
Origin of Donation Idea
It is undisputed that UdeM received the bulk of the $1 million donation from Zhang Bin and his associate Niu Gensheng. Both men work for the China Cultural Industry Association (CCIA), a state-backed entity promoting Beijing’s interest abroad.What took place before June 2014 needs to be unearthed to better understand the genesis of the donation, for which there are at least three explanations.
The November 2014 UdeM article explained how the strong ties between Chinese universities and UdeM were developed because of Lefebvre and that he played the key role in the donation deal.
Lefebvre met Zhang for the first time in 2014, then twice in Beijing, reported Le Devoir; Lefebvre said they only met four or five times. An initial or specific date for those meetings was not mentioned.
UdeM’s version of the 2014 events, about the father of a UdeM student, is not consistent with the other two versions. As for the CSIS and Lefebvre versions, without knowing the date of the conversation intercepted by CSIS or when Lefebvre first reached out to Zhang, it’s hard to know if and how the events are related.
But there’s yet another contradiction: Lefebvre telling Le Devoir the Trudeau Foundation was not involved at the beginning. He said that initially, Zhang and Bin wanted to donate solely to the Université de Montréal to establish scholarships and that Zhang had never expressed the wish to contribute to the foundation.
“There was no request from his part, that’s abundantly clear,” Lefebvre told Le Devoir.
Lefebvre explained that the Trudeau Foundation sought to insert itself into the deal after he reached out to the foundation about using the name of Pierre Elliott Trudeau for the scholarships.
The 2014 UdeM article said the donation was meant in part to “honour the memory and leadership of Pierre Elliott Trudeau” as one of the first Western leaders to recognize the People’s Republic of China, having established diplomatic relations with China in 1970. Trudeau is also a graduate of the Université de Montréal and taught at its law faculty.
Lefebvre told Le Devoir it’s also the Trudeau Foundation that asked for the specific amount of $200,000, along with $50,000 to build a statue of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Lefebvre’s information does not correspond to what the Globe reported about the consulate instructing that a $1 million be donated to the Trudeau Foundation. Le Devoir says Lefebvre didn’t dispute CSIS’ reporting on what took place but insisted the initial project didn’t involve the foundation.
Lefebvre said he didn’t expect the Chinese state would be involved. “Perhaps I was naive,” he told Le Devoir. Lefebvre has extensive experience in China and ties to Chinese entities, including being a fellow with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a CCP think tank.
The Epoch Times asked UdeM why all Chinese connections were removed from Lefebvre’s resume and it said individual UdeM members are responsible for the resume’s content. This suggests Lefebvre purged the content himself. Lefebvre has not responded to several requests for comment.