[Thread] If you're screaming about the whole WE business with the LPC, and wondering why I'm not losing my shit over this, here's why: /1 #cdnpoli #ableg #abpoli

The whole affair lacks substance. Lots of indirect connections which could easily be drawn with just about any political party and any large charity org. (Politicians love charity photo ops for good reason) /2

Second, most of the thing seems to be originating out of Canadaland, and the more I see, the more it looks like someone in Canadaland is settling an old score with either WE, or Trudeau (both?). /3 https://fairpress.ca/jesse-browns-latest-flop-making-20-by-attacking-a-charity/

Then there's what I see going on here in Alberta (where I live), and what is happening here is corruption and self-dealing on a scale that we have seldom, if ever, seen in this country. /4

The Minister of Health stands to personally profit from privatizing health care - and he is tasked with doing just that;

The Minister of Education is clearly tasked with turning as much of the school system over to private (and dare I say, religious) interests she is tied to/5

The Premier has spent millions of taxpayer dollars on cushy little "committee" appointments for the people who helped get him elected in the first place. /6

The Premier set up a $30M "war room" (er ... public education service), and placed 3 cabinet ministers in charge of it, while structuring it so that the finances are not visible to the public (can you say "money laundering"?). /7

The first act of this government was to give away $4.5bn in tax cuts to "job creator oil & gas corps". Meanwhile, those same corporations have continued to shut down and move. /8

Last, but perhaps not least, we keep on learning bits and pieces of the various backroom deals that Kenney made in order to get elected (*cough Used Car Dealers cough*) /9

So, if you want me to be pissed off about what amounts to bad optics on a program rollout done in the midst of a pandemic crisis, you better start showing a little more concern about real corruption and self dealing happening in government first.

. @threadreaderapp unroll plz

PS1: Let me spell out for you why this whole "controversy" isn't the grand case of "corruption" (or even entitlement) that so many think it is: /a1

First, the government sole-sourced a significant contract to an agency that it deemed had the necessary infrastructure to administer it in the midst of a crisis.

Sole sourcing a contract of this size _should_ be a rare occurrence, and only done in exceptional times /a2

Hopefully we can all agree that in the midst of a pandemic with much of the economy shut down, that this is exceptional circumstances. /a3

Then along comes the accusations that members of the Trudeau family had been paid speakers for WE.

Okay, fair enough. There is no crime in being a "paid speaker" for an organization that engages in fundraising for charitable causes. /a4

At most, you have _possibly_ shown that WE has some connections to the leadership of the governing party.

What this does NOT show is that there is some quid pro quo arrangement at play. /a5

Since we have plenty of evidence of family members related to a range of political figures have been engaged at WE events, suggesting some partisan chicanery was going on needs a hell of a lot more evidence than "Margaret Trudeau spoke for them a few times". /a6

From an optics perspective, sure, those links were inevitably going to be drawn by someone digging into WE's activities. The government should have done more to insulate itself from them. /a7

If you want to critique WE's business model, that's fair ball. I don't object to that at all. It's an approach to charitable funding that isn't well understood. /a8

Could the government itself have launched a program with existing resources in the bureaucracy? Probably not. The bureaucracy as a whole was already swamped with a range of urgent new programs that had to be set up very quickly. /a9

Was WE the best choice? Maybe, maybe no. I haven't seen a whole lot of other options tabled that could execute on this scale quickly. /a10

Regarding Canadaland's coverage of this, at best it seems to be reaching. Drawing conclusions from what I would politely call very thin threads. /a11

You are welcome to disagree with me, but at the moment the most we have is a lot of circumstantial connections, and very little evidence that substantiates some kind of nefarious arrangement. /a12

In order for that latter to be the case, one would have to assume WE knew about COVID-19 years in advance. A claim I find hard to believe. /a13