Top public servant says few redactions of cabinet confidences made to WE documents

Photo: The Canadian Press

Clerk of the Privy Council Ian Shugart waits to appear before the House of Commons Ethics committee in Ottawa, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020. The top federal public servant says only one per cent of the 5,000-plus pages of documents the government has released on the WE Charity affair were blacked out to protect cabinet confidences. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

The top federal public servant says only one per cent of the 5,000-plus pages of documents the government has released on the WE Charity affair were blacked out to protect cabinet confidences.

Ian Shugart says another 2.5 per cent were redacted because they contained information about other matters that were not relevant to a committee inquiry into the WE controversy.

But opposition members of the House of Commons finance committee say that doesn't jibe with the documents released to them, which NDP MP Peter Julian says contained about 1,500 pages with redactions.

The federal ethics commissioner, meanwhile, says his office has received tens of thousands of pages of documents on the affair, none of which were redacted to black out cabinet confidences.

Mario Dion is investigating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former finance minister Bill Morneau for possible violations of the Conflict of Interest Act.

Both Trudeau and Morneau have close family ties to WE Charity but neither recused themselves from a cabinet decision to pay the charity $43.5 million to administer a now-cancelled student services grant program.