When we're talking about the SDTC act legislation, one of the issues that we found was that it seemed like no one was actually keeping organizations in compliance as it related to that. The act exists, and when I'm mentioning these committee members who were illegally being appointed to the board, we still didn't know who had authority to oversee that issue. It's still not being addressed, even though that's a serious issue of governance at SDTC.
There are obvious rules that already exist for, let's say, board members. I can read off the federal government's ethics policy, where it says:
Governor in Council appointees are required to perform their duties in the public interest. Their personal and professional conduct must be beyond reproach.
I don't think anyone here can actually say that the conduct of the SDTC board was beyond reproach. On top of that, there's also other language within that agreement that says:
Public office holders have an obligation to perform their official duties and arrange their private affairs in a manner that will bear the closest public scrutiny, an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law.
That's the other thing. Many board members and executives come here and say they have done everything right, because they talked to their own lawyers. That's not good enough when these are taxpayers' dollars. There's clear language across multiple acts and across multiple policies the federal government has that clearly shows that everything that has been done up to now by the executive and board members doesn't even meet that minimum threshold. I think the issue is, even if there's more language that exists, who's going to actually enforce this? There's no enforcement in any of this.
Had ISED actually enforced its contribution agreement, none of this would ever have happened. That's where the issue was. You can have as many agreements as you want, but if no one's enforcing anything and no one's overseeing the actual day-to-day functions.... There was even a non-observer board person, but that person was clearly incompetent and didn't understand what was going on.