Leaving aside the relationship with Bill Morneau or the Trudeau family, there's still lots of questions around WE. All the ex-employees sharing negative stories, the NDAs, the directors resigning, real-estate flipping, the nature of the relationship between WE and ME to WE. Last week we found out that they hired a Republican-linked firm to plant negative articles in the media to attack Canadaland, and posted "micro-jobs" for search-engine manipulation work to boost positive stories about WE and hide negative stories.
It seems like there is lots to question even without the issue of trying to foster a cozy relationship with politicians. Morneau and the Trudeaus might not have felt like they were being courted, but it sure seems like the WE brothers were trying to court them. And you have to wonder how many others they have influenced in the same way. Did they likewise try to foster this sort of friendly relationship with school board officials in order to get their organization embedded in schools?
And the whole "voluntourism" idea seems shady to me. Send your kids on an expensive vacation to Africa, get a charitable tax deduction... to me it sounds like a tax dodge for rich families. Writing a big cheque to the charity and then getting a complementary luxury vacation "to see your charity dollars in action" is particularly distasteful.
-k