Celebrity can help charities ... but the reverse is also true

National Post, 17 July 2020

It’s a question of balance. Is the fame being used to advance the good work? Or is the good work being used to advance the fame?

I have a modest sum of sympathy for Justin Trudeau over his family’s alleged self-dealing with WE. The last time his government tried something on the summertime youth file was back in 2018, when it mandated that all applicants for grants from the Canada Summer Jobs program had to “attest” that they held the Liberal party’s views on various social issues. If your landscaping company planned to hire a few lawn mowers on the program, you had to sign on to the Liberal party’s support for the extreme abortion license in Canada. If you didn’t think that a weed ’n’ feed service needed a policy on abortion, too bad.

The whiff of totalitarianism is not good for the brand, so perhaps this time the prime minister thought it best to hand over the new “paid volunteer” summer program to someone else entirely. And who better than his friends at WE, who were ready and eager? They could administer whatever loyalty oaths might be thought necessary at an arm’s length, and ensure that no unfashionable causes from the government’s point of view would get in on the action.

If a few hundred grand — pennies on the dollar, given the $43 million that WE could have trousered — found its way back to the prime minister’s mother, surely no one would greatly object? After all, that’s how celebrities do charity don’t they, showing up at each other’s golf tournaments and gala tributes?

That’s the more off-putting aspect of the government stacking the deck for WE. There are plenty of good souls doing admirable work across the land who do not feverishly draw attention to themselves in the manner of WE. The Kielburger brothers got their start some 25 years back with their advocacy on child labour issues, founding Free the Children. That morphed into WE, which, does what exactly? Well, plenty of good works, but you would be forgiven if you think that being praised for doing good works gets as much attention as the works themselves.

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