The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) says it will not be investigating a donation made to the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation by donors linked to Beijing because the amount and private nature of the funds put them outside the office’s authority.
“This decision is based on the scope of the Auditor General’s authority under the Auditor General Act, and our review of the endowment agreement between the Government of Canada and the Foundation,” OAG spokesperson Natasha Leduc wrote in an email to The Epoch Times on April 24.
The office added that the
Auditor General Act gives the OAG auditing authority over any organization that receives at least $1 million in public funds under a “funding agreement” with the federal government.
If the office were to investigate the private donation sent to the Trudeau Foundation, Leduc said Auditor General Karen Hogan would be “limited to examining whether the Foundation accepted or handled donations in accordance with the terms and conditions of the endowment agreement” between the foundation and the federal government.
“It would be outside the Auditor General’s authority to examine the source of private donations, the identity of other donors or their motivations,” Leduc wrote.
The Trudeau Foundation
previously said it would welcome an investigation into the donation by Auditor General Karen Hogan including a probe of “all aspects concerning the receipt and handling of these donations by the foundation.”
The foundation’s interim board chair Edward Johnson also said the organization would be hiring both a private law office and accounting firm to conduct an “independent review of the donations” regardless of whether or not the OAG agreed to investigate the funds.
Donation
Zhang Bin, president of the Beijing-backed China Cultural Industry Association (CCIA), and his colleague Niu Gensheng, an adviser to the CCIA, had
reached a deal in 2014 to donate $200,000 to the Trudeau Foundation and $800,000 to the Université de Montréal, where former prime minister Pierre Trudeau used to study and teach.
The Globe and Mail
reported in February that CSIS intercepted a conversation in 2014 between Zhang and a Chinese consulate official. The official reportedly asked Zhang to donate to the Trudeau Foundation and said the Chinese Communist Party would reimburse him for doing so.
The foundation
said it actually received just $140,000 instead of $200,000, but it reportedly could
not return the donation because the name on the cheque did not match that of the real donor.
Citing the politicization of the issue, the foundation’s entire leadership team
resigned on April 11 following internal tensions concerning how the controversial donation was handled.
Just before all its members resigned, the foundation’s board unanimously
voted in favour of having an independent investigation to probe the foundation’s acceptance of the donation.
The Canadian Press and Noé Chartier contributed to this report.
