[Inaudible—Editor] hear what Mr. Drouin has to say.
To answer MP Turnbull's questions, which I think MP Rempel Garner did extremely well, this, for those watching, is called a motion for production of documents. It doesn't take up any of the committee's study time. It's just saying, “Produce these documents.”
Why are these documents important? That's essentially what MP Turnbull was asking. This isn't some sort of determination by this committee of who should or should not get money. The production of the documents.... There are two basic documents. One is these things that have been referred to in every hearing so far on this issue and called “contribution agreements”.
SDTC, the green slush fund, is a foundation. It was a foundation set up by the Chrétien government. As such, it doesn't receive parliamentary appropriations like a Crown corporation does; it receives large lump sum amounts, the last one being just about four weeks before Minister Champagne took over, when $750 million was transferred from the federal government under former minister Bains before he went off to help raise cellphone rates for Rogers.
What does that do? Well, the industry department, which former minister Bains and Minister Champagne are responsible for, sets out an agreement with the board and the management of SDTC, the Liberal green slush fund, to say, “This is what you can spend money on within the parameters of how Parliament has allocated it, and you're limited to this.”
Why is that important? Well, I know this is a difficult thing sometimes for government members to accept, but the Auditor General is an officer of Parliament and is neutral. In the Auditor General's report, the Auditor General said that $58 million in taxpayer money.... That's a lot of money by anyone's standards. It's more than the sponsorship scandal under the Chrétien government, which was for $42 million funnelled to Liberal insiders. This $58 million is outside of the contribution agreement. That's not me: That's the Auditor General's finding, not just in a report, but in her testimony before committee.
Incredibly, former SDTC director Stephen Kukucha from British Columbia, who served in the office of former Liberal minister Anderson, who was also the organizer in British Columbia for Justin Trudeau, testified in committee that when he joined the SDTC board, they never gave him the contribution agreements to read—these secret documents. They're not out there. They're not available on the website. They've never done this. They've never released them, but yet the Auditor General is basing that $58 million on the fact that it's outside of the agreement.
They didn't even share them with SDTC board members. Talk about corporate governance failure under these Liberals. Annette Verschuren, Stephen Kukucha, Guy Ouimet, Andrée-Lise Méthot—all these people were appointed, including the nine directors who were found in conflict of interest 186 times by the Auditor General in her select examination of 226 transactions, which represents about half of what was done in that period of time. Of those 226, 186 were conflicted.
We're asking for those documents. I don't know why the government wants to prevent them from being released to the committee without redaction. The minister has said, and the deputy minister of industry has said, that some of this money should be paid back. Well, how do we know that some of these companies aren't now getting more money, the ones who got it outside of the contribution agreement or were in conflict? The only way is through transparency and tabling the documents.
Those are the two documents we're looking for. We're not looking for 12 more meetings on this. There are other things we can do on this at meetings, for sure, but to me, transparency, as somebody once said, is the best....
What is it? Sunshine is the best—