Public Accounts Committee on March 19th, 2024

[David Yeo]

Absolutely. Our CFO shop would have all those details. We would provide that to you in a timely basis, for sure.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I would appreciate that.

You mentioned in your opening statement how you were either putting your interests in Dalian into a blind trust, or you had already put them into a blind trust, when you joined the public service.

Can you clarify what you meant by a blind trust?

[David Yeo]

When you divest, there are lawyers involved. You have to divest your shares. You have to put them in to a trustee. There is a lot of documentation back and forth in order to facilitate that. We did start that right away.

My meetings with my lawyers and things like that happened in November all the way through into January. We put the non-disclosure and non-access in with Dalian at the same time. Eventually, we did put all of our documents with DND.

In hindsight—I'll be honest with you—knowing what I know now, and the whole situation that we've run up against here, there's a direct response from me that I should have put all of that in prior to signing the offer. I should have done all of that prior to even looking at the offer from the government. That one's on me, but, at the end of the day, all the information went to where it needed to go.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I'm going to push you a little bit on this. When we hear the terms “blind trust”, it's tough to see how a blind trust would work when you are the founder and majority shareholder of a corporation named Dalian. You can't all of a sudden forget that you own it, whether its visible in a blind trust or not. You also used the terms “divesting your interests in it”.

I'm not entire clear which one you were trying to do. Were you trying to put your corporation into a blind trust? I'm not sure how arm’s-length that could be, or were you divesting yourself of your corporation at that time?

We know now that you're back in full swing with the company, but what was actually your intent at the time? Was it to have it at an arm’s-length, untouchable entity of a blind trust, or were you divesting? Were you selling off your shares? Were you divesting yourself of your corporation at that time? It's not clear what you were doing while you were active as a member of the public service of Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Nater, your time will allow for a reply.

Go ahead, Mr. Yeo.

[David Yeo]

Absolutely, it was not a divestiture, but a blind trust. I did acquire a trustee that I trusted to hold my shares. That's the course of action that we took. If I mentioned divestiture, that's not the case.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. That is the time.

Mrs. Shanahan, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Mr. Yeo, I think you've managed to do something that actually should happen here at public accounts, which is to have all members equally questioning what it is that we're hearing, and wanting to get to the truth of the matter for the sake of the public trust. That's where I for one find that your story has a number of holes in it. Although, it does come together in one way.

You mentioned early on that you met a gentleman, Terry Matthews. Who was that?

[David Yeo]

He's a business owner in Kanata and a billionaire.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Okay, so he's someone who knows how to make money, because you mention that you're not really in it for the money, but you met with someone who knows how to make money. He said you should get it on—how did you put it?—indigenous—

[David Yeo]

It was indigenous procurement that he became aware of, yes.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

So he put you on to something and, indeed, that's what business people do.

Now, you were not in business at the time. As you said, you had no experience with technical work or coding. What was your background? You were a reservist with the armed forces.

[David Yeo]

If you predate...my experience, I went through computer science, and I've been involved with computers my whole life. Certainly there's the aspect of my military career and my reserve career, and then eventually getting back into my high-tech world after all of that experience was the direction that I took, so I do have a background in both.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Was it your intention then to start up a technical services company? Were you, as an indigenous person, as you have identified yourself to us, then providing services to the government of the time? This has covered, of course, a number of governments trying to promote indigenous businesses.

[David Yeo]

Yes, in fact, the company started out as a hardware and software company. We didn't really get into professional services until 2007-08, so my initial—

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Was it your intention then, when you did get into professional services, to hire indigenous employees?

[David Yeo]

Absolutely.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Can you say that you have used your access to indigenous contracts to hire indigenous employees?

[David Yeo]

Absolutely, and we did have indigenous employees in the shop.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

All right, well, at least there's that, but somehow it didn't work out. You had high points and low points. You weren't making money. At some point, you decided to get yourself hired again with DND. You entered into a contract of service.

Referring to your contract, there were a number of paragraphs there that refer to the code of ethics of the public sector and the conflict of interest code. In one such paragraph, there a form called the confidential report, form DND 2839, that talks specifically about conflict of interest. This is in your contract that you signed. Do you recall this form that you would have signed?

[David Yeo]

Yes.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

It does speak specifically to conflict, which is not something that you have been forthcoming about here in earlier testimony.

You seem to be an equal opportunity conflict of interest operator, because it goes on to talk about political activity, where federal public service employees have a right to engage in political activities while maintaining the principle of political impartiality in the public service, and there's information in that regard.

Is that something that you also recall signing?

[David Yeo]

It's definitely in the offer, but the political side of it was back in 2021.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

All right, and then going back to when you did decide to become a member of Parliament, I'd like to hear why you decided that, because, at the time, you were operating Dalian, and you had contracts with DND that were involved in the ArriveCAN, and, as other colleagues have pointed out, it's hard to believe that you did not know that Dalian was working on ArriveCAN.

Why did you decide to become a member of Parliament to run as a candidate?

[David Yeo]

In true form, on my indigenous heritage side of it, my great-grandfather signed the treaties in November 1923. In the spring of 1924, the colonials came back through and enfranchised my whole entire family. They enfranchised hundreds of people, and they enfranchised thousands of people—