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Without wishing to detract from misdemeanors the Liberal cabinet have committed wrt WE, this is an important piece of evidence about the way in which WE has wormed its way into the heart of the Laurentian elites. It's not always a partisan thing. It's more subtle than that. https://twitter.com/stephenlautens/status/1281751650470891524
For a non-profit/charity to get big in Canada, it needs access to a certain element of the Toronto elite (both financial and cultural). Teach for Canada, Pathways to Education, the Kielburgers: they all in one way or another come out of similar backgrounds.
Now I happen to like Pathways (and unlike the other two its origins are genuinely community-based). But let's face it: the Harper govt gave this organization tens of millions with very little hard evidence of effectiveness. How different was this to the WE contract?
2 points I would make here are this: 1) govts like dealing with people with whom they have an ideological affiliation. Doesn't necessarily involve corruption/kickbacks: it's just they trust people who "think like us" and give them benefit of doubt. Can this ever not be the case?
2) Why is it that these organizations that capture national imagination (and I would throw Indspire in this group as well) all come from YYZ? There is a deeper issue here about how the national political imagination is formed, and it's not pretty.
