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For months, I& #39;ve been following @canadaland& #39;s deep dive into We Charity and its bewildering array of both for-profit and charitable subsidiaries and affiliated companies. The picture just keeps getting uglier and weirder, and it reached a kind of pinnacle for me today.
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Some background: We began life as "Free the Children," an anti-child-labour campaign started by a pair of Canadian brothers, Marc and Craig Kielburger, who were children themselves at the time.
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In the years since, We has become a Canadian institution, with "We Days" mega-events attended by top performers and politicians, as well as in-school events coast to coast. Millions of Canadian kids have raised money for We.
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But We is a complex and opaque and difficult-to-understand organisation. Some reporting would have made it easier to understand what the org was up to.
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But between seeking editorial censure of journalists for mild criticism, and a reputation for replying to routine journalistic queries with threats from some of Canada& #39;s most aggressive libel lawyers, critical investigative coverage was thin on the groups.
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Canadaland& #39;s investigations began with tips that the organization& #39;s various arms had "partnered" with companies that were credibly accused of participating in the kind of child labor practices that they were formed to start.
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But it quickly turned into a story about the story itself, as Canadaland, and its founder, @jessebrown, were subjected to bizarre, international dirty-tricks campaigns, including smearjobs in obscure, small-town, far-right news sites.
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Brown discovered he& #39;d been targeted by private investigators who went so far as to dig into his young children& #39;s lives.
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Brown and Canadaland couldn& #39;t affirmatively link the dirty tricks to We, though the timing, context and content made everything very suspicious - and meanwhile, Wikipedians put warnings on We& #39;s articles after they detected paid reputation-washers editing them.
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To Brown and Canadaland& #39;s credit, they didn& #39;t let up, and chased a steady stream of tips about labour conditions at We, corruption in We& #39;s overseas projects in Kenya, and irregularities in the We& #39;s charitably raised funds, contributed by Canada& #39;s schoolkids
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They discovered that performers at We& #39;s "We Days" - including members of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau& #39;s family - were paid for participating, out of those charitable funds (We says they should have been paid by its for-profit arm).
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This coverage begat revelations of subsidised junkets for top level government officials, published shortly after the Canadian government offered We a 9-figure no-bid contract to create a summer volunteer program for Canadian kids.
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All of this against a steady background drumbeat of legal threats, more dirty tricks, and smears - some, shamefully, from Canadian journalists.
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Last month, We& #39;s founders testified before Parliament, as the political dimensions of the scandals threatened the stability of Trudeau& #39;s fragile coalition government.
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All of this has called a once-unimpeachable Canadian institution into question - from the way its funds are dispersed (only a minority of We& #39;s charitable funds go to overseas program activity), the way it smears its critics, to the complexity of its financial structures.
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Which brings me to the latest Canadaland episode, in which Brown discusses the revelation that one of We& #39;s US companies contracted with Firehouse Strategies, a GOP dirty tricks company that grew out of the 2016 Rubio presential campaign.
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By Firehouse& #39;s own account, the company gave up on substantive debate after Trump and devoted themselves to dirty tricks and smears, targeting nonprofits seeking to retaliate against their critics.
https://www.canadalandshow.com/we-charity-usa-spent-money-on-kielburger-friend-republican-strategists/
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https://www.canadalandshow.com/we-charity-usa-spent-money-on-kielburger-friend-republican-strategists/
17/">https://www.canadalandshow.com/we-charit...
Meanwhile, other Canadian news outlets discovered job-board listings for clickworkers to help engage in deceptive "search-engine optimization" techniques to bury criticism of We.
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Having been on the receiving end of legal intimidation from wealthy, powerful, politically connected Canadians, I know just how much of a risk Brown took with this, and how harrowing it must have been.
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He and Canadaland should be commended for shining light where it was obviously badly needed. The kind of harassment and dirty tricks he& #39;s faced are not the actions of anyone who has any business being involved with the moral education of our children.
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Image: We, Firehouse Strategies (modified)
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ETA: In tweet #6, above, I mistyped:
"the kind of child labor practices that they were formed to start."
should read:
"the kind of child labor practices that they were formed to fight at the start." https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1290325245346209808">https://twitter.com/doctorow/...
"the kind of child labor practices that they were formed to start."
should read:
"the kind of child labor practices that they were formed to fight at the start." https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1290325245346209808">https://twitter.com/doctorow/...
