ANALYSIS: The Missing Pieces in Trudeau Foundation’s Chinese Donation Puzzle

Office of the Trudeau Foundation in Montreal on April 19, 2023. Noé Chartier/The Epoch Times

News Analysis

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.

Guy Lefebvre, a former vice-president of the Université de Montréal (UdeM), told Le Devoir that the Chinese donors were not interested in dealing with the foundation and that he was the one who reached out to them so they would give money to UdeM.

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.

Trudeau’s office says he was unaware of the donation, having withdrawn his involvement in the foundation’s affairs after he became the Liberal Party leader in 2013, reported The Globe and Mail in a Feb. 28 article.

The prime minister himself said in an April 11 news conference that he has “absolutely no intersection” with the foundation established in his father’s name.

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.

In December 2016, then-commissioner Mary Dawson said she could find no evidence that Zhang “has dealings or is seeking funding from the Government of Canada,” media reported at the time.

“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.

An archive of a page on the foundation’s website showing Trudeau’s biography suggests that he was listed as an active member as of April 19, 2014.

A subsequent Wayback Machine capture of the same page on Oct. 23, 2015, has a note with an added asterisk at the end of his biography stating: “* Mr. Trudeau has withdrawn from the affairs of the Foundation for the duration of his involvement in federal politics.” The note doesn’t appear in the April 19, 2014, capture.

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.

However, the donation deal was actually concluded in 2014, a UdeM spokesperson told The Epoch Times, with only the signature ceremony taking place in 2016.

A spokesperson for the ethics commissioner told The Epoch Times that Trudeau would not have been in breach of his obligations even if he was still involved with the foundation prior to becoming prime minister, since he wasn’t subject to the Conflict of Interest Act.

As an MP, he was only subject to the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, said communications director Melanie Rushworth.

“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

The foundation’s entire leadership resigned on April 11 over the handling of the donation and the resulting fallout.

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.

In the September 2016 issue of its Droit Montreal publication, the university’s law faculty wrote about the “historical donation” of $800,000 it had received in June that year from Zhang and Niu.

The CCIA wrote on its website in December 2014 that a “Zhang Bin-Niu Gensheng-Trudeau Education Fund’ had been discussed in June that year between Zhang, Niu, Trudeau Foundation director Alexandre Trudeau (brother of the prime minister), and UdeM vice-president Guy Lefebvre.

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 original explanation presented by UdeM in November 2014 was that parents of a Chinese student at the Faculty of Law were so pleased with their son’s experience on campus that the father reached out to Zhang Bin, who then made the donation.

The second origin story was reported by The Globe and Mail in its Feb. 28 article. It says the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had intercepted a conversation in 2014—with no specific time period given—between Zhang and a Chinese diplomat in Canada. It says the diplomat told Zhang to give $1 million to the Trudeau Foundation and said Beijing would reimburse him.

The third origin story was laid out by Guy Lefebvre in an interview with Le Devoir published on April 17.

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.

Le Devoir reported that Lefebvre said it was he who contacted Zhang Bin after Zhang, along with Niu Gensheng, donated $800,000 to the University of Toronto, to ask him to donate to UdeM as well.

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.

His resumé on the UdeM website that earlier contained multiple references to his involvement with China has been completely purged of any such links in recent days. The previous version is available in the Internet Archive.

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.