From what I understand of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, and what's happened in the last few months, it seems pretty clear to me that human resource practices have been a problem there.
Perhaps it was the internal organizational culture or very rigid atmosphere that led some people to mobilize to shed light on the events and speak out against something.
The second problem may lie in the note-taking by the board of directors for the reports that have been produced, among other things.
As I understand it—correct me if I'm wrong—one of the governance issues identified for all the projects and companies that received funding from SDTC is that the projects had been approved several months or years before the fabled additional funding for COVID-19 benefits came into effect.
As a result, all board members who were in a conflict of interest withdrew. The projects have not been analyzed.
Several months later, once all the necessary checks were done and everyone who had declared a conflict of interest withdrew, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, creating an emergency context.
So they wanted to add tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to save the intellectual property of these companies. At that point, you took the advice of a law firm and decided to treat all the projects as a block.
Since conflicts of interest had been declared and no new analysis was conducted, with the additional funding being provided in the exceptional circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, you decided that it wasn't necessary to analyze the projects one by one and they were ultimately approved as a block. All the members were there.
Is that what happened?
In your opinion, does that constitute a conflict of interest?