Commentary by Grahame Russell, Rights Action, August 3, 2020
As Rights Action is a "tax-charitable" NGO, we are following the corruption investigation (‘ethics inquiry’) into the profit-making scheme between the Canadian Prime Minister's Office and the WE profit-making, neo-liberal NGO.
A major part of Rights Action’s work is to send small grants (most of our funds come from individual donors) to very poor Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Honduras and Guatemala involved in land and territory, human rights and environmental defense struggles. These are resistance struggles against violent forced evictions, human rights violations and violent repression carried out by soldiers, police and private security guards in the service of economic interests in the sectors of mining, hydro-electric dams, tourism and the ‘for-export’ production of bananas, other fruits, sugar cane, African palm and coffee.
The second major part of our work is to expose and try to remedy the underlying causes of the exploitation and poverty, violence and corruption, and environmental degradation that our partner communities in Honduras and Guatemala suffer from.
Over the last 25 years of doing this global development and human rights work, Rights Action has found it necessary to denounce certain Canadian government policies such as: the aggressive promotion and signing of ‘free trade’ agreements; the implementation of ‘structural adjustment programs’ via the World Bank and IMF; the providing of political support for an illegal regime-change coup d’etat (Honduras, 2009); and, the providing of political and diplomatic support for undemocratic, corrupt, military-backed regimes that rule both countries.
Rights Action has found it necessary to denounce aspects of the operations of certain Canadian mining companies (Glamis Gold and Goldcorp Inc., Skye Resources and Hudbay Minerals, Tahoe Resources and Pan American Silver, Radius Gold, Aura Minerals), tourism companies and ‘sweatshop’ garment companies.
It is necessary to denounce these Canadian public and private sector policies, actions and operations because they directly contribute to, and indeed benefit from exploitation and poverty, forced evictions and human rights violations, and corruption and impunity in both Honduras and Guatemala.
For our efforts, we receive no Canadian government funding for our work. We receive no grants from Canadian corporations (except for two annual grants of $10,000 and $20,000 respectively from small foundations) – and definitely not million and multi-million dollar grants such as the ones WE receives from the Globe & Mail, RBC and Virgin Airlines – to name a few that I read about in the media. (Just how long is WE’s list of corporate donors that all receive tax write-offs for their donations to WE’s “global development and human rights” work?)
For our efforts, Rights Action receives virtually no main stream media coverage about this work in Honduras and Guatemala, even – and particularly - when Canadian government and private sector interests are harmfully and negatively involved.
Finally, for our efforts, our tiny NGO (one full-time staff person) has been audited by Revenue Canada twice over the past 10 years. I find this suspicious, even as we fully complied.
CanadaLand newscast #271 – “Bottom of the Barrel”
Thus, the inquiry into the allegedly corrupt dealings between a multi-million dollar, profit-making Canadian NGO and the Canadian PMO's office is of great interest.
Rights Action and WE operate in the same field of work – tax-charitable, global human rights and development work, but from entirely different personal perspectives, political analysis, operating procedures and methodologies.
We recommend listening to CanadaLand’s newscast #271 – “Bottom of the Barrel” – that builds on CanadaLand’s previous extensive reporting about WE.
In this report, CanadaLand delves into:
the multiple relations between WE, the PMO's office and the PM’s family;
the highly questionable "global development and human rights" vision of WE;
WE efforts to pay considerable amounts of money to try and smear investigators – such as CanadaLand – that look critically into who they are and how they operate;
how WE’s various profit-making corporations receive millions of dollars (how many millions, over the years?) from WE’s various not-for-profit and ‘social enterprise’ corporations – all of these WE corporations apparently under the control of the Kielberger brothers.
Gaming the global systems of inequality, exploitation and poverty
It seems that WE is gaming systemic global exploitation, poverty and inequality for some significant financial gain, “fame”, awards and media accolades as ‘great humanitarians’, and friends in high places in the Canadian establishment.
CanadaLand addresses a number of issues that the mainstream media is apparently not willing to address. (It is not for nothing that the Globe & Mail saw fit to be a major donor to WE, until this alleged corruption scheme became public.)
The main focus of the mainstream media seems to be how well, or not, Prime Minister Trudeau is 'managing the scandal'? How this 'scandal' might affect his re-election chances, or not?
For the most part, the media is not focusing on the possible criminal nature of the exchange of financial favours between WE and the PMO’s office and family. There is no focus on the highly questionable “development and human rights” vision of WE and WE’s actual “development and human rights” work.
There is no focus on what seems to be the very sketchy flow of a lot of money from “charitable” corporations under Kielberger control to “for profit” corporations under Kielberger control.
White collar crime
'White collar crime' appears to be out in the open and well permitted in Canada. I suspect that beyond some hand-slapping, and ‘ethical pecadillos’ finger wagging, there will be no criminal charges laid, neither against anyone in the PMO’s office and government, nor against the WE conglomerate.
It seems to be business as usual in rich, powerful countries of the global north. Global neo-colonialism and systemic inequality, exploitation and poverty remain firmly in place.
Grahame Russell, director Rights Action
info@rightsaction.org
