Information & Ethics Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I will remind you again, Mr. Barrett, to be mindful of the discussions held in camera as well. I'm talking about this to make sure you're clear.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I'm crystal clear, Mr. Chair.

I'm speaking about the events of today, exclusively. In the events of today, I moved a motion that the committee invite the whistle-blower, an individual who contacted the committee to identify wrongdoing.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.

That wasn't defeated. It was ruled out of order. Let's be clear here.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

To be clear, Ms. Damoff is right. It was—

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

These aren't points of order. This is now open debate. This is anarchy.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Ms. Damoff, we all know what happened. Mr. Barrett also knows what happened. I'm going to ask him to continue.

Be mindful of moving that motion soon, please.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

What happened at this committee was that I moved a motion: “That the committee invite the whistleblower—the individual who contacted the committee to identify wrongdoings at Sustainable Development Technology Canada—to provide their testimony, and that the committee make every accommodation necessary to facilitate the witness testimony in public before Friday, Dec. 1, 2023.”

What happened was the cover-up coalition used procedural tricks to make sure this didn't happen. It's as good as a no vote. If they want to use tricks to silence whistle-blowers, they can do that, but they have to live with their own consciences on that.

[An hon. member]

It was out of order, not defeated.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

They can heckle and be upset, but the official record will show they had the opportunity to vote on that and chose not to.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm sorry, Mr. Barrett.

I'm going to ask for order in the room. Mr. Barrett still has the floor.

I expect you're going to get to your motion soon. Go ahead, please.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Just like they want to silence me from talking about them silencing a whistle-blower—

[An hon. member]

You've been talking for 30 minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm going to call for order in the room, please. Mr. Barrett is still talking.

Go ahead.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

These are the same members, Chair, who shut down a meeting when we had the commissioner of the RCMP here to expose corruption with their government. It's a bit of a pattern, you see, every time corruption in the Liberal government comes forward.

We had Justin Trudeau's hand-picked board chair, who came before committee and outed herself as having embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars from taxpayers. Of course they don't want the whistle-blowers to come before the committee. Of course they don't.

They don't even want us to talk about how they don't want it to happen. The committee needs to have the opportunity to decide whether it wants to make sure the official record reflects that. My motion will speak to that—the opportunity for witness testimony from someone in this space who isn't doing it for political gain, who elected to pursue a career in the sustainable technologies sector and who is at great personal risk.

We've asked the government for protection for the whistle-blowers. The government has said no. They're not going to provide that protection to them. We have an obligation then, when these individuals come before us and furnish us with information or present us the opportunity to send them an invitation, to have them come here and tell Canadians what so far, as far as I understand, only opposition MPs and the media have been willing to hear from them.

The minister cautioned members against speaking to the whistle-blower. He offered a caution and his best legal advice. I can tell you that, from a minister who didn't fire the entire board, the chair and the CEO when this came to light, I'm not looking for advice. We have Canadians who are struggling and who are looking to Ottawa, and they see this kind of rampant insider dealing and corruption. Parliamentary committees are where their representatives have an opportunity to examine this kind of thing. If not that, then what?

The urgency of this, I think, is very clear. I was saying previously, when I was interrupted, that this is a billion dollars still in the hands of people who have demonstrated that they won't follow conflict of interest rules in their own organizations. In some cases, those don't even exist. Their assurances to the group reviewing them were that they were going to bring somebody in. I'll remind you that the outside counsel that they brought in had them backdating conflict of interest documents so that they would be compliant with conflict of interest rules.

The chair of the board got outside legal counsel to tell her that she could give herself a couple of hundred thousand bucks and have the board vote on it, and that she could in fact move the motion. It's not a conflict of interest, they said. It's incredible that this level of disdain for the taxpayer wouldn't rise to be the highest priority for parliamentarians and that we wouldn't be engaged in that.

The most urgency the government found for it was to have a fact-finding exercise. They will tell you now that they are co-operating with the Auditor General. Surprise—they are legally required to. That's like saying, when the RCMP is searching the file cabinets, “We're co-operating with the RCMP.” Of course you are. You are required to by law.

The contribution agreement, which underpins this seed fund is identified as being not compliant with that contribution agreement. This is one of many examples of the observations that RCGT found that show that the people who are administering this money for taxpayers were misadministering, misappropriating and mismanaging. They have been having quite a time at the taxpayer's expense.

The protection that employees would expect working for an organization that is under the watchful eye of the minister—the so-called watchful eye of the minister.... They don't even have a formal hiring or termination process. When people get in the way, they fire them.

The minister was very concerned about whether or not he had cause to fire the chair or the CEO. I can tell you, they pulled the fire alarm and ran for the exits when the investigation started, but they're still obligated to co-operate. Concerning the demands for information from the CEO for correspondence, none of these demands are excused by virtue of having resigned.

The imperative for a parliamentary committee to do this now is that we get this issue on the record with the whistle-blower, with people who know, before the paper shredders start going. That's one of the risks that we have here. The more time and space that the people who have been abusing the taxpayer get between them and transparency, that's great. That's the perfect scenario for them.

I can't help but wonder, when the board of directors' minutes.... RCGT sampled 21 samples of meeting minutes, and they found, around deliberations or conclusions by the board prior to 2023 for conflicts of interest, that there were none documented. No one declared that they had a perceived or real conflict. There's no way to assess whether or not that happened.

The Auditor General may be able to put together who had interests in what, who was at the meetings and who continued to participate, but because we operate in a system where we expect honourable people to act honourably and we expect that the people charged with administering these massive sums of money are going to self-declare their conflicts, there's an entire period of time now where there's no record. The board just didn't keep a record. Whoops. How convenient for them. How absolutely convenient for them.

When the conflict of interest recusals or the perception of a conflict isn't identified, it's going to create huge holes. We need people who have the corporate knowledge and the institutional memory, and who aren't politically motivated, to speak to that. This committee is the venue. This committee is the venue where we ought to be giving these people the opportunity to expose this very serious problem.

We have a 300-page dossier presented to the Privy Council's office that lays out in great detail all of the issues with Sustainable Development Technology Canada, be they with their fund-stream compliance or their lack of conflict of interest guardrails, or their myriad problems.

How is it that this isn't something that landed on not only the minister's desk but also the Prime Minister's desk? It didn't get sent in an envelope to ISED's mailroom. This went to PCO. It wasn't in a brown envelope where it just got received and reviewed as, “Well, we'd better do something about it.” The whistle-blowers sat down and clicked through a slide deck with officials.

In terms of any of the news that's going to come out, they're aware of the real damage this does to their government. It became not a question of integrity. It became a political problem for them. It speaks to why we don't have a plan at this committee with respect to the motion that was dealt with at the start of the meeting to have the whistle-blower furnished with an invitation. That should give incredible concern to everyone.

I have a motion that I'd like to move, Chair.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

While I appreciate the enthusiasm of my colleagues, I'll get to it in just a moment.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Am I to understand, then, that you're going to move that motion soon?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Very shortly.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay. Thank you.

Will you present it in French?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

I have full confidence in our interpretation that they'll be able to provide it in both official languages for members as I present it. It's quite short.

Let's just be clear: It's a billion dollars. It's taxpayer money. We have an Ethics Commissioner investigation. We have the Auditor General investigating. The only way to get government attention is through whistle-blower reports to the media. We have leaked audio recordings of the ADM, the deputy minister, who is laying out the seriousness with which the bureaucracy took this issue. Then, when it did land on the minister's desk, it suddenly became much less of a problem. They suddenly didn't believe the whistle-blower. They suddenly did have confidence in the board and the executive.

When given the opportunity, members of the coalition took every step they could to block an invitation for the whistle-blower to appear before December 1.

I move that the committee report to the House that the NDP-Liberal coalition has prevented a whistle-blower from testifying on the $1-billion green slush fund scandal.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Mr. Barrett, you have moved your motion. Do you want to repeat it one more time for us, please?

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Gladly. It is that the committee report to the House that the NDP-Liberal coalition has prevented a whistle-blower from testifying on the $1-billion green slush fund scandal.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

Okay. I do have some questions that I need to clarify with the clerk. I will suspend for a minute, if you don't mind, because I need clarification on this.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Brassard]

I'm going to call the meeting back to order.

I appreciate the patience of members. As you can imagine, there have been some procedural challenges today that needed to be addressed.

Mr. Barrett has moved a motion. I am going to rule it admissible.

On the motion as moved we have Mr. Kurek first and then Ms. Fortier.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!