One of the complaints that I referred to was lodged by my organization. It was before I started working for the Halifax Initiative, but I'm aware of the case. It concerned a nuclear energy facility, and it was concerned with the review of that project. So it was Export Development Canada's due diligence when it reviewed the project and was making a decision about whether to support it or not.
The reason my organization was discouraged then from launching other complaints, or advising our colleagues who are impacted by EDC projects to launch further complaints, was because of the problems that I enumerated in my comments. That is, it's a very closed, internal process. In fact, I don't believe my colleagues were entirely clear on what the process was. At the end of the process, when we received a response, which was that the corporation was in compliance with its internal policies, that was the only answer we received. We did not receive information that explained how the officer had come to that determination, how they had made that determination, what the investigation consisted of, and so on.
It's very closed, it's difficult to access information, and, as I said earlier, even in the case of an audit that finds there's non-compliance, there's no obligation on the part of EDC to then take that up and make changes. Again, effective community civil society organizations have scant resources, human and otherwise, to take the time and energy to make a complaint before this kind of body, and knowing the chances of there being some impact at the end of the day, on balance it's not a worthwhile endeavour.
That's why we're excited about the mechanism under Bill C-300, because it's more transparent, because it's independent, because the process will be known and understood, the results will be released publicly, and there will be some consequence if there is a finding of non-compliance.