Justin Trudeau To Testify Before Parliament on WE Charity Scandal

The charity says the Trudeaus volunteered their time and were never paid, with one exception in 2012, when Ms. Gregoire Trudeau received about $1,000 for a speaking engagement. Mr. Trudeau was not prime minister at the time.

But it did pay Mr. Trudeau’s brother Alexandre, a filmmaker, and mother, Margaret, the country’s former first lady, for speaking over the past four years on behalf of the charity at various events. The Kielburger brothers said attracting sponsors for these events was their main way of raising money.

Witnesses told the committee in recent days that Mr. Trudeau was not involved in selecting the charity to administer the program, which involved overseeing up to 100,000 students volunteering for public service jobs. That decision, they said, was made by officials at the apolitical public service, and the cabinet simply approved.

WE was to have received as much as 43.5 million Canadian dollars to run the program, according to documents released this week. But after the controversy erupted, the government announced it was taking the program back, and the Kielburgers said they would return all the money.

The program is still on hold.

Hours before Mr. Morneau, the finance minister, was set to testify before the committee, he announced he had written a check to the charity for 41,366 Canadian dollars, stating that he hadn’t realized he and his family had not paid the full fare for the two trips they took with the organization.

He also disclosed that his family had donated 100,000 Canadian dollars to the charity in recent years.

“You don’t donate $100,000, take trips with a charity and have a daughter who works there and not know there’s a conflict of interest,” said Duff Conacher, the co-founder of a nonprofit watchdog organization, Democracy Watch, which is calling for a criminal investigation.