More than three hours of testimony at the House of Commons finance committee's probe into the WE Charity was nothing more than "political theatre", says a local political analyst.
University of Windsor Associate Professor of Political Science, Lydia Miljan, says the meeting proved to be an opportunity for parties to build campaign material.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau along with his Chief of Staff, Katie Telford, provided testimony at the committee on Thursday.
WE Charity was chosen by the Trudeau government to handle a $912-million student-volunteer program, but the deal fell through after ties between the charity and Trudeau's family were revealed.
Miljan says the committee meeting was "pure theatre."
"He's presenting himself as being noble and doing it only for the children and they had lots of important stuff and as well I think also for the opposition parties, I don't think they were really interested in understanding how this happened, it was more looking at gotchya moments," she says.
Miljan says opposition MPs had little interest in understanding how the sole-source contract came to be issued.
"Nobody asked, 'How many staff does the service corps. have compared to WE Charity?' And I think those specific details might have helped us better understand the decision making here, instead what we got was a lot of just attacks, a lot of defensiveness," she says.
Miljan expects the ethics investigation will produce a report come the Fall.
"Ultimately, this is probably going to die down for a bit though I quite appreciate all the investigative journalism that's going on uncovering a multitude of problems with the WE Foundation," she says. "I think they're the ones that are going to have to wear this the most and their organization might falter as a result."
Both Trudeau and Telford told the committee they were first made aware of WE Charity's involvement in the grant program on May 8 and sent it back to the public service for review.
Opposition MPs on the Commons finance committee are now pushing to hear from more junior staffers in the prime minister's office, and demanding access to cabinet documents.
They want more detailed answers about why WE Charity began working on and incurring expenses for the now-abandoned student-volunteering program on May 5, when it had not yet been approved by cabinet.