1/ Good piece, but I think Campbell Clark - and the opposition - is off a bit on how this thing went down. It almost certainly was *not* i) public servants come up with CSSG and ii) PM says "hey, how about we let WE do it. theglobeandmail.com/politics/artic…
2/ First of all, I am 90% sure the CSSG was a PMO idea, not a civil service idea. ESDC would have been asked for input on delivery prior to announcement, but only in general terms (at most they were given 5 days lead time before announcement, I'd be shocked - probably less)
3/ Part of that input though,was probably that public service could not scale up fast enough to deliver the program and outsourcing was needed. Also, that a traditional RFP competition was impossible in stated time frames and at best some kind of informal search would have to do.
4/ This is where it gets tricky. We don't know if an informal process actually occurred: if it did, it now seems unlikely that it involved multiple potential vendors making presentations based on a set of conditions (if it had, pretty sure competitors would have spoken up by now)
5/ What seems likelier (& consistent with what is presently known) is that PMO/ESDC were brainstorming deliver. Someone at PMO said: "I wonder if WE could do it?", called Marc Kielburger to ask if it was possible. When told yes, they were passed along to ESDC to discuss details.
6/ What *probably* happened then is that ESDC was asked to do a scan of non-profit/charitable orgs comparable to WE. Depending on how that request was phrased, that scan may have come back with some comparables or it may not - we don't know.
7/ If it did, ESDC might have made a phone call or two to ask about capabilities/interest - again, we don't know. It would be useful to find out about this "open process" - it would provide an important window into the way power is exercised between PMO and the civil service.
8/ But I think people are reading the recent evidence about various cabinet members' (and family members') involvement with WE in completely the wrong way. The more Liberals you find involved with WE, the *less* likely it was PMJT specifically who had anything to do with this.
9/ I would argue instead that what we see is a wide belief in Liberal circles that the Kielburgi were able, worthy and very deffo "people like us, people we can count on". In government, you want to do business with people like that. Especially in an emergency (which COVID is).
10/ Is it cronyism? Absolutely. Conflict of interest? Now that we know about payments to Trudeau's mother and brother, probably. He & Morneau should have recused themselves from decision but - and this is my point - it probably wouldn't have changed govt decision.
11/ Why? b/c in chaos of Mar/Apr, PMJT probably did not have a lot of time to get involved in details of policy admin. More likely: YOW Liberal-land believed the Kielburgi were swell fellows, *and believed everyone else thought so too* so that no one would care re: sole-sourcing
12/ This speaks mainly to how insulated Ottawa liberal-land is from the broader voluntary sector (which has always been very dubious about WE) and perhaps some overconfidence in how much leeway Canadians were giving them to manage programs in the pandemic.
13/ Would a different government have behaved differently? Hard to say. Suffice maybe to say no other govt would have believed that fuss could be avoided about such an irregular arrangement because "hey, we had good intentions". Liberals badly need to lose that thinking.
