Thank you, Chair, and thanks to all of you for attending today.
I'd like to pick up on that last point, but before I get to my questions, I just want to do a bit of a scene set recap of the chain of events.
It's not surprising there's a widespread belief that a political fix of sorts has been in for Sidewalk Labs' preferential treatment, since Justin Trudeau met with Alphabet's former chair Eric Schmidt at the Google Go North summit in 2017. As you've just referenced, Waterfront Toronto chose Sidewalk Labs to develop a data-driven neighbourhood in a process that the Auditor General, I believe, did in fact question as preferential and certainly rushed. John Brodhead, one of the Liberal government's top infrastructure operatives, the infrastructure minister's former chief of staff and a long-time friend of the former PMO principal secretary, was then installed in a senior management position.
Next, after those very notable resignations from Sidewalk Labs' associated panel over the secrecy and privacy issues, we suddenly discovered last week that far from a relatively compact 12-acre digital neighbourhood, Google's plan—or Sidewalk Labs', Alphabet's plan—is for the entire 350 acres of Toronto's Port Lands.
Those leaked documents basically indicated that in return for its investment in the 12 acres, Sidewalk Labs wants a share of all eventual development fees across the dockland, and property taxes on appreciating land values as a result of the Quayside project, apparently in perpetuity.
Do you believe that even after these revelations—of which the Toronto mayor's office, the Toronto council, the premier's office and the cabinet were unaware—the original RFP and the agreement that was subsequently signed are still valid?