Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has denied playing any role in picking a charity with ties to his family to manage a major government programme.
Testifying to the House of Commons, he rejected any involvement by him or his staff in the programme that has caused a huge political controversy in Canada.
Mr Trudeau is under scrutiny for failing to recuse himself from decisions around the programme.
He is being investigated by a federal ethics watchdog for failing to do so.
On Thursday, Mr Trudeau told the finance committee in Ottawa that the decision to tap WE Charity for the student volunteerism programme was made independently by the federal public service.
He says he only learned that the charity had been recommended by the public service for the programme in early May.
WE Charity had previously paid the prime minister’s mother and brother to speak at events and Mr Trudeau and his wife were involved with the organisation.
Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. It extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres (3.85 million square miles), making it the world’s second-largest country by total area.
Its southern and western border with the United States, stretching 8,891 kilometres (5,525 mi), is the world’s longest bi-national land border. Canada’s capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Various Indigenous peoples inhabited what is now Canada for thousands of years before European colonization. The Canada Act 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British Parliament. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy in the Westminster tradition, with a monarch and a prime minister who serves as the chair of the Cabinet and head of government.
As a highly developed country, Canada has the seventeenth-highest nominal per-capita income globally as well as the thirteenth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index. Its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks.
Justin Pierre James Trudeau PC MP is a Canadian politician who is the 23rd and current prime minister of Canada since November 2015 and the leader of the Liberal Party since April 2013.
