No, no, no, no, no Dear God no.
Not the Sophie connection, that's neither here not there - many Canadian celebrities have been bullied at some point into working with WE. But administering something like this is way out of WE's wheelhouse - and apparently without a tender? Super-sketchy.
You have to remember the deeply strange way WE is organized: part charity (WE Charity), part for-profit (ME to WE). The dividing line is deliberately opaque (if founders get paid through the for-profit, their salaries don't show up on the charity's CRA submissions)
I don't think you need to get into conspiracy theories about kickbacks or whatever other nonsense: it just probably isn't a good deal and if I were in oppo I would definitely want to see whatever agreement was signed to see what the audit provisions are.
To all those asking: what about all those other charities? It comes down to something the ever-excellent @JenniferRobson8 is always on about: administration. The entire problem with ideas like youth jobs is that it is a hell of a lot of admin for not a lot of benefit.
Someone has to certify that the organization and the work being done are both real (significant potential for scams here). How do you do that exactly? You need a large organization, for sure. Setting up an agency in govt to do that takes agency bc Treasury Board rules.
And yet this thing was supposed to go from "conceived" to "up and running" in about 4 weeks, which was always clearly nuts. not doable on govt rules. So the search for an outsourcing agent begins. But can't do through tender because that takes forever & summer's already started.
So at some point ESDC just throws up its hands & says "how many organizations are there with natl networks in the volunteer field who might be able to do this?" Not many. 4-H maybe? But field is small, and urgency to come up with any old deal b/c of insane timelines. Hence this
