OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – The former head of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation admitted he never questioned the fact that a Canadian charity tax receipt for $140,000 was sent by the Foundation to an address in China linked to a TV production company with a Canadian address.
The admission was made by Morris Rosenberg on Tuesday during testimony before the House of Commons ethics committee. Rosenberg served as the Foundation’s president and CEO from 2014 to 2018.
As per Blacklock’s Reporter, the Chinese TV production company is linked to the Communist Youth League. According to Rosenberg, the donation to the Foundation came “with no strings attached.”
“Our intention was not to hide anything,” he said, adding that the Foundation did not count it “as a Chinese donation,” because the money came through an intermediary with a Canadian postal address.
The Foundation came under fire recently after a scandal broke detailing how the non-profit group received a $200,000 donation alleged to be connected to the CCP.
The foundation appears to have ignored warnings from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) regarding accepting certain cash donations.
Last month, after the CCP-linked donation scandal broke, the foundation said it would return the money.
Earlier this month, the Trudeau Foundation’s entire board of directors, including the president and CEO, resigned after the report surfaced.
In 2016, the Foundation got a donation from Millennium Golden Eagle International (Canada), which lists a private home address as its business location.
Millennium Golden Eagle wanted a receipt to be mailed to its address in China, which coincidentally is the same address as a Communist Chinese Party (CCP) affiliated agency named the China Cultural Industry Association.
After Rosenberg made his admission, Conservative Party MP Michael Cooper demanded to know what Millennium Golden Eagle did for business.
Rosenberg replied that as far as he knew, “they’re a media company.”
Cooper pressed Rosenberg to answer why it seems like he did not do his “due diligence.”
“Did you bother even to go to their website?” he asked.
Rosenberg said, “We thought and strongly believed we were complying with the law,” adding that he thought the donation was from a “Canadian company” and was not “foreign.”
Of note is that the Income Tax Act mandates that all charity donations be reported.
MPs could not believe what Rosenberg said. Conservative MP Michael Barrett pressed Rosenberg more, asking him if he got “donations from many Canadian corporations that ask you to send the paperwork back to China?”
Rosenberg replied that “no” he does not.
Barrett then asked if this was the only time this has happened, to which Rosenberg said, “as far as I know it is.”
Records show that the Trudeau Foundation, in its public reporting, did not include a source to Millennium Golden Eagle.
Rosenberg told MPs that there was no audit done regarding the donation.
On Wednesday, Alexandre “Sacha” Trudeau, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s brother, denied that the donation was a type of foreign interference.
Alexandre Trudeau was testifying before the ethics committee over his involvement in the Trudeau Foundation and its connection with the Chinese Communist Party.
Records show that Sacha was a senior director when the Foundation altered documents regarding 2016 Chinese donations. He claimed the Foundation did “nothing wrong.”
Sacha was photographed with Chinese donors accepting the donation contribution on behalf of the Trudeau Foundation. The Trudeau Foundation calls itself “an independent and non-partisan charity established in 2001 as a living memorial to the former prime minister.”
MPs from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee voted unanimously last week to begin an investigation into how the Foundation is funded.
In recent days, news broke that an agent of the CCP was targeting the family of Conservative MP Michael Chong. Canadian intelligence, along with the federal government, did not notify Chong he was being targeted, and only recently admitted it occurred.
Opposition parties, notably the CPC, have been for weeks demanding that Trudeau launch a full independent public inquiry into the Chinese election meddling scandal.
To date, Trudeau has denied that he was involved with the foundation’s work.
However, he recently appointed former governor general David Johnston as an “independent special rapporteur” to investigate the allegations.
Johnston was listed as a member of the Foundation, but after the scandal broke his name disappeared from its website.
Late last month, one of Trudeau’s own MPs, Han Dong, resigned from the Liberal Party just hours after a news report broke alleging that he had asked a Chinese diplomat in February 2021 to delay the release of two Canadians held captive by the Communist Chinese regime.