Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Raggi. My guest today is Sandy Garrisino.

Sandy is a Vancouver-based former Crown Prosecutor and now a prominent and award-winning media commentator who provides real depth and detail on complicated

news stories. We're speaking about the Wee Charity story, which has prompted the third ethics

investigation into Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government. Sandy, thank you for joining me

on the podcast again. Thanks for having me.

Good. Let's jump right in. Why don't you describe the Wee Charity first. Tell us what we should know

about it to set the scene and then maybe you can walk us through the story that broke in June

and what we've learned since then. The Wee Charity is very, very well known in Canada,

largely because of almost the celebrity status, charismatic personalities of its founders,

Mark and Craig Kielberger, who first came to prominence in the 90s as children when they

became advocates against child labor in the developing world. They encountered this as children. They were horrified by it,

and they set about to do something about it. And this all happened in the 90s. So we're going back

decades. And they became very strong advocates and were widely known throughout Canada and

somewhat abroad.

They turned this passion into their life's work and formed a charity

and were developing programs to empower youth, to build leadership skills,

to inspire youth, to volunteer, to be active in the community. And they developed

both domestically in Canada and abroad, where they ultimately developed what are called

we villages, which are 86 villages in nine countries. These are in the developing world. And these

are built around providing an experience for primarily

Canadian youth, but also American and European youth, to engage with the whole concept of foreign aid.

Times have changed considerably, so I'm just going to leave aside the issues around what has

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