Evidence of meeting #20 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was company.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Yes, you have five more minutes, so you'll be okay.
Mr. Jordan, you will understand what goes on.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
We can commence. We have a quorum. The floor was Ms. Coady's, and you had five more minutes left.
Continue, Ms. Coady.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Yes, it was. Why, thank you.
I'm so sorry that we were interrupted. I believe my question was on whether or not your companies had received any funding from the federal government. I believe we left off when you were telling me about SODP, the southern Ontario development program, for which you had put in a proposal.
President, Canadian Solar Solutions Inc.
We had put in a proposal last fall for that but did not get any funds.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
That wasn't submitted by Mr. Jaffer and Mr. Glémaud on your behalf?
President, Canadian Solar Solutions Inc.
No, we used a registered lobbyist to do that.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Okay. I just wanted to put that on the record. You had another registered lobbyist.
Director, Upper Canada Solar Ltd.
In 2006 our company got a line of credit through the Community Futures Development Corporation, which is an Industry Canada outreach office in the riding. I checked, and we're in good standing in terms of that line of credit.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Great. Thank you.
Again, just to refresh everybody's memory, you didn't engage Mr. Jaffer and Mr. Glémaud to provide any services whatsoever, though I understand, Mr. Hammerbacher, that you have hired lobbyists on other occasions.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
It was interesting that a proposal was submitted, and it looks like it was on your behalf. It certainly does talk about both Upper Canada Solar Ltd. and Canadian Solar Incorporated looking for upwards of millions of dollars, looking for money. There was no correspondence by Mr. Glémaud or Mr. Jaffer's company to either of you regarding this? Were there any questions? It was literally followed through by the minister's office, and we have correspondence that was submitted to the committee talking about how they're going back and talking to proponents about certain issues. Do you care to comment on that?
President, Canadian Solar Solutions Inc.
Certainly there was no correspondence with me on that matter. I wasn't even aware of that till the press announcements a while back.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Nothing was told to you by Mr. Jaffer or Mr. Glémaud? Nothing came back to you, even though ministers were running around, meeting with Mr. Glémaud on these issues, and were sending correspondence to senior executives? It just seems unusual that neither of you had any correspondence with Mr. Glémaud or Mr. Jaffer on this issue.
Director, Upper Canada Solar Ltd.
Actually, I have the e-mails. I have it here. I'll supply the committee with—
Liberal
Director, Upper Canada Solar Ltd.
—the document that I sent, which was an overview. It said “Briefing Note” at the top. The purpose of that was a follow-up of the discussion about how Mr. Glémaud was going to determine whether or not this program criteria matched anything we were doing.
I just need to qualify that a little bit. This industry is one where there is all kinds of information being shared among partners. One of the characteristics of the FIT program is that you have a contract for a specific location, so you don't really see other players as your competitors. There was a free flow of information going around, and it was just a situation where he was going to find out whether the PV, or photovoltaic, solar projects qualified.
In the case of the project as it's presented in that document, it makes no sense, because you can't hook up to the grid in Ontario without a contract from the Ontario Power Authority. So the idea that you could get a chunk of federal money to build an installation...it would be an albatross because you couldn't hook it up to the grid.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Again, what Mr. Glémaud and Mr. Jaffer's company was using was this kind of access to the government to seek whether or not there would be funding proposals, and then, as we've heard from other witnesses, they would charge a finder's fee. As you may know, what we've heard in committee is that it would be up to a 10% finder's fee. They were looking at $15 million. That would be a significant finder's fee.
Director, Upper Canada Solar Ltd.
We certainly had no conversation about that, nor would we. I don't know. I'm not going to speak for Canadian Solar. I had no idea that a document with the company's name on it was being formally submitted as an application for funding.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Are you concerned that other documentation...? Here we have access to the government. There were submissions made on behalf of...I'm reading from the memorandum to Minister John Baird and Brian Jean that says GPG, on behalf of your companies, both of them.... Wouldn't you be concerned then that the government was taking proposals and running them through the course of looking at whether or not the potential funding is there, fast-tracking it using access?
Director, Upper Canada Solar Ltd.
I certainly was surprised at the level of attention a page-and-a-half document got. I did bring, just for the committee's attention, an application for the sustainable development technology fund, which is a program that I think has a limit of a couple of million dollars. This is the application. It's 40 pages long. I have another one here from the P3 program, the public-private partnership program. This is a guide on how to apply, and it has to be 20 pages long.
On one hand, I guess I was surprised when I saw that the department had actually expended resources on this lunatic idea, but it was comforting to know that they kicked this thing to the curb pretty quickly. It was so quick that they just decided not to offer to take my company public. I never heard from them again.
I guess what I'm saying is that the system eventually worked. This was not a project the government should have even considered funding, because of the structure of it. I was a little confused about the attention it got.