Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, honourable members.
I am proud of my track record in leading major transformational companies that create jobs and opportunities for Canadians. I am particularly proud of my role as chair of SDTC, joined by my two strong female leaders.
SDTC provides funding to Canadian entrepreneurs developing and deploying innovative sustainable technologies. We have 229 companies in our portfolio today, representing every province in our country. StatsCan data shows that our companies regularly outperform other small and medium-sized businesses. Every dollar SDTC invested since 2001 has resulted in more than $7 in follow-on financing from the public and private sectors—7:1.
The allegations made by this small group of former employees are false, and we are here today to set the record straight.
I have the privilege of sitting on the board with 14 other senior private sector leaders who have deep expertise on governance, operations and delivering real results. On behalf of the board, let me tell you this is one of the best-run organizations that we have ever been part of.
The former employees raised their concerns with us earlier this year before the ISED fact-finding exercise even started. We took it very seriously. We convened a special committee and hired a top law firm, Osler, to do a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it. No evidence was found to support the allegations.
Let's compare this with the RCGT process. Whereas Osler conducted 23 hours of interviews, board directors interviews with RCGT were as short as 15 minutes. What's more, important documentation that was provided to RCGT was not reflected in the report.
The result is a report that contains numerous errors, and misrepresentations of our policies and procedures. We tried to raise these issues with both the RCGT consultant and the CFO at the time. We have since shared the full list of the mistakes with the department and have now tabled it with this committee.
I will now turn things over to SDTC's CEO, Leah Lawrence.