Evidence of meeting #91 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was project.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
How many version of the RCGT report are there, Mr. McConnachie?
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Management Sector, Department of Industry
It's detailed in the report itself. There is a version control page. I believe there are four versions.
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
Did ISED ask for any parts of it to be removed?
Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Financial Officer, Corporate Management Sector, Department of Industry
Conservative
Michael Barrett Conservative Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON
I have to say, it's an incredible story to hear your words today when placed against your words as this has been unfolding.
I have about 35 seconds left. I'd like Mr. Brock to take it, please.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Ms. Lawrence, Mr. McConnachie is on record saying that ISED confronted you and you admitted that when Osler did their investigation, it was raised to their attention that they weren't religiously documenting conflict of interest.
You went and did the retroactive documentary—documented retroactive declarations that should have made at the time and that weren't disavowed or anything.
The grant report also confirms this was done on the advice of the corporation's external legal counsel. This is criminality. This is fraud. This is forgery on the Canadian taxpayer. This warrants a police investigation. This is staggering.
Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Thank you, Mr. Brock.
I'm going to give you less than a minute, Ms. Lawrence, to respond to that.
Go ahead, please—quickly.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Sustainable Development Technology Canada
This is factually untrue. This is an error in the report, and it has been noted in the materials that were given to you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Good. Thank you.
Ms. Damoff, you have five minutes to complete.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Thank you.
I want to go back to some of the questions that Mr. Green was asking earlier of you, Ms. Verschuren. He was very specific in the first round of questions about your recusing yourself. Your responses to him were that all of this happened prior to your being on the board. You went through an elaborate process that you followed prior to joining the board—a two-hour interview with the Ethics Commissioner.
In response to Ms. Fortier, you went through a long list on your résumé of the number of boards you've sat on. You obviously have a lot of experience.
When this one thing came to the board.... You keep referring to legal advice that you had. It's obvious by your answers and your experience that you must have had.... Common sense to me would dictate that you would question the legal advice and, out of purely best practice, recuse yourself from that. Whether you got the legal advice or not, given your decades of experience, I'm wondering why you wouldn't have trusted your own instincts on this, given that.
Chair, Board of Directors, Sustainable Development Technology Canada
At the time, the board decision.... They did seek legal advice. Because there were 140, or more, of these projects, it was considered an operational issue. Everybody was treated the same. Everyone had the same amount of money. We received that legal opinion that demonstrated this; therefore, it wasn't necessary to declare all the conflict.
Chair, Board of Directors, Sustainable Development Technology Canada
Those conflicts were already declared.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
I know. I don't understand, given your experience and the extreme lengths you went to before you joined the board to ensure that there was no conflict, why you wouldn't have said, “Out of an abundance of caution, I should probably walk out of the room and recuse myself on this one.” This is just my opinion. We'll leave it at that.
Ms. Lawrence, in response to one of the questions, you said that you have the highest and best practices with the board, and yet the report highlighted a number of things that you've acknowledged need to be improved.
Granted, things change over 20 years, but things such as a formal mechanism or process for recording, reporting and acting on employee complaints and whistle-blowing.... Just from some of your testimony today, even some of the recording of minutes at the meeting seems to be somewhat lacking. Why wasn't this addressed before by the board over the years?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Sustainable Development Technology Canada
I think there are two parts there.
I completely accept that the minuting needs to be improved. We're working on that.
We do have formal processes for when an employee raises concerns. In fact, I can give you two examples of when they were used in recent times.
In the first example, about three years ago an employee raised a concern about a leader. We brought in a third party to review the situation, as is required by our policy in that instance.
The second, of course, you've heard about today. There was a complaint that went to a board member. A special committee was struck and the investigation was launched.
We do have those policies and procedures. We do follow them.
In these instances, they were followed. That's the situation.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
With regard to some of the things that came out in the report talking about governance, in a 20-year-old board, why did it take this report to have you start reviewing these things? Going back to the ethics adviser, again, it was a full year from when you said it was really important until it actually happened.
As a matter of course, I would think you would be reviewing these policies, and minuting is something that should not be.... You shouldn't require a report to show those glaring deficiencies.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Sustainable Development Technology Canada
Point taken, honourable member.
We do governance reviews every three years. Those are implemented.
I take your point that perhaps we could have acted more quickly on, for example, the ethics adviser.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Okay.
Chair, I have only 30 seconds left, so I'm going to turn it back to you.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Brassard
Yes, yes, go ahead. If you pause a little longer, you're only going to have 30, but go ahead.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
No, that's fine, Mr. Brock, you don't have to take the time.
Conservative