He didn't.
Evidence of meeting #105 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was meeting.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #105 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was meeting.
A recording is available from Parliament.
O.C., As an Individual
During the time I was there, SDTC got increased funds because it was performing so well. We got additional funds—
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I understand that. You got an additional $750 million, I think it was, 35 months ago.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I'm sorry, but I have limited time.
Did you as chair ever have chats with the minister or anyone in the minister's office about the fund?
Conservative
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Even though you were at a number of presentations and announcements with the minister on SDTC funding, you never talked to him about the business of the fund?
O.C., As an Individual
He was extraordinarily interested—and I loved his energy—in the performance of the entrepreneurs. That's what we spent our time on.
He would come to the meetings and we would celebrate entrepreneurs and we would make announcements together.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I would say he appreciates these big photo ops. I agree that he's big on photo ops.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
Thank you very much, Mr. Perkins.
I'll now yield the floor to Mr. Sorbara for five minutes.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the witness for being here this morning.
Thank you to all my colleagues for their questions as we continue to analyze the issues at hand.
Ms. Verschuren, I want to follow up on some questions.
When you were attending the board meetings, specifically when decisions were made around COVID-19 funding.... I understand that at that time there were a lot of things going on in the economy and a lot of things going on with our health care system. A lot of decisions were being made, but obviously the governance practices and so forth always needed to be followed.
If I understand correctly, in previous testimony you stated that you had a legal opinion that justified your not having to recuse yourself in certain decisions. Do you stand by that advice and the decision you made?
O.C., As an Individual
This was in respect to the COVID situation.
Look, Mr. Sorbara, you have to put this in context. This was a month after the announcement of this pandemic. Supply chains were a disaster. Many of these companies—most of them, quite frankly—were pre-revenue. It was scary for them. I talked to many of these organizations, and they were really....
It was in that context that management recommended...and we received an opinion, a holistic package, an envelope of funds. They're in the minutes of the board meeting. You can see them. Basically, the partner in a law firm made this assessment and recommendation to us, and we accepted it.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
I understand the context of the period of time when the entire world was being impacted by COVID. Supply chains were being impacted. Businesses were being impacted. We all know that. We all know as MPs, all 338 of us, that that's what was happening in our ridings.
Fast-forward to today. We're in the position of, to my understanding, the fund's being frozen, and there are investigations under way that are looking at this. My perspective is that all the governance in place of any entity—especially and particularly entities where funds are provided to invest in companies, in this case by a government, so they are taxpayer funds—is followed, whether the context is COVID or not COVID. I think that, in my mind, is what I'm looking at.
Would you still stand behind your decisions in terms of being there when there's a potential conflict, or an appearance of a potential conflict, in your decision-making or any of the board's decision-making? Should that have happened?
O.C., As an Individual
You know, I wouldn't have changed what we did, but in what we've done now in terms of taking a look at policies and procedures, if ever we get into another pandemic, if ever we get into another disaster, I think those are things on a forward basis that we should be looking at. There's no question about that.
At the time, Mr. Sorbara, I would have made the same decision again.
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Following practices that are not “robust”—I'll use that word—is something that we all need to look at. Whether you're an MP filming videos using parliamentary resources or you're a director of the board such as you—
Liberal
Francesco Sorbara Liberal Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON
Yes. I'm speaking about the MP—the Conservative House leader, if I'm not mistaken.
In terms of the practices put in place, we need to always try our best to be what I would say is above board and even leave a big gap of space where you're even more above board, if I can say that.
I think in this case practices may have been followed that.... I haven't read all the minutes, as some of my other colleagues have done, but I've tried to delve in as much as possible. That is what Canadians expect. They expect it from their MPs. They expect it from individuals who are making decisions utilizing the funds of taxpayers, in this case in SDTC, to invest in Canadian companies.
The fact is that at SDTC the track record is actually quite good. I'm a finance person. I have read everything or have tried to read everything at SDTC. The track record of investing in Canadian technologies, especially your early-stage Canadian companies, is really, really good. It's really unfortunate that the practice on the governance side, whether the context was COVID or non-COVID, was not as robust as I would have liked it to be and so forth.
I will stop there, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Joël Lightbound
That was more of a comment than a question, Mr. Sorbara, but that's okay. It concludes the time you had for questioning the witness.
This concludes our time for today. I want to thank Madam Verschuren for taking the time to appear again before this committee.
I see that Mr. Perkins has a point of order, but you're free to leave, if you like. Thank you very much.
O.C., As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To the committee, I thank you. Have a happy holiday.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Given the testimony that we've heard here and that almost $60 million of taxpayer funds have been funnelled to the companies of four directors, I would like to propose that we need to hear from a couple more witnesses—the Ethics Commissioner and the ethics adviser at SDTC, the person who, as per a lot of the testimony we've had here, was giving them this advice.
Ms. Verschuren confirmed that the bureaucrats...that the ADM was at every board meeting and was having regular conversations with her inside and outside of the board meeting. In his testimony, Mr. Noseworthy didn't remember anything. He played Sergeant Schultz when he was before the committee, obviously misleading the committee, in my mind, when saying he couldn't remember anything he had ever done at any board meeting. He couldn't even remember whether he had gone to every board meeting.
Given that we have had contradictory testimony from the chair of the board herself on his participation, I propose that we recall him and the deputy minister as a witness as well. I would think that you could do all of that in one meeting.
Conservative