Industry Committee on Dec. 11th, 2023

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Do you recall any board meetings, when you were in the meeting, where Andrée-Lise Méthot's companies, by her own admission, got $43 million in loans? There were seven of them, and here in the committee she admitted that she got a number of them. Do you recall those meetings?

[Andrew Noseworthy]

I would have to look at the specific project, sir, to determine what meetings I was attending.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

You have amnesia.

Whether it was Andrée-Lise Méthot or Stephen Kukucha or Mr. Ouimet, they all admitted that they got money outside of the COVID payments. Did you ever alert your boss, the deputy minister or the minister to the fact that they were voting money for their own companies?

[Andrew Noseworthy]

Sir, my understanding is that all members of the board followed a fairly rigid conflict of interest guideline—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

That wasn't my question.

Did you alert anyone?

[Andrew Noseworthy]

To my knowledge, I am not aware of any decisions to allocate funds to projects related to board members where they did not recuse themselves.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I have some SDTC board meeting minutes here from March 23, 2020 and March 9, 2021, where they issued themselves special COVID payments. I see you listed as an observer at both of those meetings. Were you at both of those meetings?

[Andrew Noseworthy]

Yes, I was at both meetings.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

You were aware, then, that between the two meetings, four directors voted themselves $3.7 million in special COVID payments to companies. These minutes say that they were unanimously supported.

Those directors admitted here that they did not leave the room for those votes. In fact, the chair of the board, Annette Verschuren, who voted herself money, in the ethics committee said that she actually moved the motion that the four directors....

Do you recall those meetings?

[Andrew Noseworthy]

Yes, I was at both of those meetings.

Sir, in that particular case, the proposition to extend the COVID payments was made as a blanket proposal across all clients of SDTC who had active contribution agreements. I do not recall the specific discussion on any specific project.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

In fact, that's not correct, because while they have said before committee that everyone got 5%, Andrée-Lise Méthot's companies got 10% COVID bump-ups, and there are companies in here.... In one case, one of Andrée-Lise Méthot's companies had 100 months of cash available, so why would they need a special COVID payment?

[Andrew Noseworthy]

The decision was taken by the board to apply the COVID payment across all active files. To my knowledge, I'm not aware of any payments past the 5%.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

You are aware that the Conflict of Interest Act of Canada says that public office holders cannot personally benefit or vote for things that are their own, and that subsection 16(2) of the SDTC act also says that directors cannot personally benefit.

In this case, four directors benefited by $3.7 million, and you didn't alert anyone in the department to it....

[Andrew Noseworthy]

Sir, I was not aware that there was an active vote by the organization without the recusal of any board member who might benefit.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

What's your purpose at the meeting, then?

[Andrew Noseworthy]

My purpose at the meeting, sir, was to be a liaison with the department. I was there at the invitation—

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Deputy, are you aware of any of these payments, that they were in conflict and that they voted themselves $3.7 million?

[Simon Kennedy]

I would say that the first time I became aware of all of these facts was through the whistle-blower kind of exercise, so it would have been through the Raymond Chabot review and the investigation.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Do you think—

[The Chair, Liberal, Joël Lightbound]

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry, Mr. Perkins. That's all the time you had.

I'll yield the floor now to MP Gaheer.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to all the witnesses for making time for this committee.

My questions are for the ISED officials. We know that SDTC is an arm's-length organization. Can you explain the work and the collaboration between ISED and SDTC? Also, has it been that way since SDTC was founded in, I think, the early 2000s?

[Simon Kennedy]

SDTC is what is technically called a “shared-governance” corporation. There is a board, the majority of which is not appointed by the Governor in Council, but there is a minority—7 of the 15 members—appointed by the Governor in Council.

ISED has a role in helping to identify, as an example, prospective members of the board who would be appointed by the GIC. That's one area where the department intersects directly with SDTC. The other is obviously that the government has a contribution agreement with SDTC to deliver the programming that the government has asked that organization to deliver. We are the custodian of that agreement. It's like a contract, and we manage this agreement with SDTC.

We have an interest in ensuring that they're staying within the bounds of the contribution agreement, and there have been a number of contribution agreements over the 20 years or so of the history of the organization. When a government provides new money, as successive governments have done over the years, ISED would prepare the Treasury Board submission. We would do the work to get the authorities needed to execute the agreement with SDTC.

I'm just trying to be precise. There are two principal ways in which we intersect with SDTC. One would be the management of the contribution agreement, and the second would be through the government appointees to the board of directors.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

That's great. Thank you.

As an official at ISED, what's your specific role in dealing with SDTC?

[Simon Kennedy]

I'm the accounting officer for the ISED ministry and the deputy minister. I have general managerial oversight of the department, its budget and its personnel.

Perhaps the best way to explain it would be that I manage the organization, and I have staff who would be responsible, for example, for preparing the contribution agreement with SDTC, and who would be invited to attend meetings of the board to provide the board with information on the government's priorities, making sure we're respecting the requirements set out by the Treasury Board and so on. I have the principal responsibility, as the manager of the department, of undertaking those functions that intersect with SDTC and the responsibilities the department would have.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

When were you and the department of ISED advised or made aware of the allegations made by the whistle-blower?