Trudeau Foundation Chair Says He Wasn’t Aware of Chinese Investments Made with Gov’t Endowment

Chair of the Board of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Edward Johnson appears as a witness at a standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 9, 2023. The committee is looking into foreign interference. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation chair Edward Johnson says he was unaware that the organization invested some of its $125 million initial endowment from the federal government into Chinese companies.

On June 8, Johnson told MPs on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts that the foundation “arranged a special meeting” two years ago to discuss the investments. This came about, he said, after Madeleine Redfern, a businesswoman and the former mayor of Iqaluit who also previously sat on the Trudeau Foundation’s finance and investment committee, raised concerns about them, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

The Trudeau Foundation was created in 2001 in memory of former prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau and was given a $125 million endowment from the government to provide grants and academic scholarships.

Redfern told the Commons ethics committee on June 2 that around 0.07 percent of the foundation’s portfolio is invested in Chinese tech giants Tencent and Baidu. She also said she inquired with the foundation one year ago about whether it had investments in China.

Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné asked Johnson on June 8 about these investments.

“We did discover that yes, in fact, we had two investments and since that time, according to my information, we sold those investments,” Johnson said.

Sinclair-Desgagné asked Johnson if he had previously been aware of the investments and whether he thought it was “normal” to have only learned about them recently.

“No, we divested ourselves of those investments,” he said. “I can’t tell you exactly when. ... We told our financial managers to get rid of that. Normally, we don’t really know what’s part of the portfolio.”

Policies

Johnston added that the Trudeau Foundation has “environmental policies, social policies, and governance policies” that it describes to its financial managers in order to ensure they make ethically sound investments.

“We invest in companies that are conforming to these policies and we meet with our managers to make sure that they are compliant with our policies,” he said.

Redfern previously told the Commons ethics committee that she researched Tencent and Baidu after learning the Trudeau Foundation held stock in them and said she found privacy issues.

Tencent, which is the developer of the widely popular Chinese WeChat application, has been documented by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto as being used for surveillance and censorship.

The Citizen Lab has also found privacy issues with Baidu’s browser, and the American-based cyber defence firm Unit 42 previously said Baidu apps on the Android platform leaked sensitive user data.

Noé Chartier contributed to this report.