—in trying to call this more than what it is, but we know that the Ethics Commissioner said it was “a technical violation”. That's what he called it. That was his term. I asked him very specifically about what the difference is between abstention and recusal, and he said, well, it's basically a technical violation of the act.
The Conservatives want to say that this is corruption and this person is a Liberal insider. They're saying it every day in the House of Commons and it's not true. It's false.
You want to continue to do that. I get it. I get that this is politics and you want your clicks and your little videos to put out on social media, but that's not what's actually happened here. I know that you want to make it seem like that's what happened, but I really don't think that we should be using committee time essentially to question small and medium-sized enterprises across Canada and jeopardize the funds they need in order to scale and grow their businesses. That includes businesses in Sherbrooke. It includes businesses in Calgary, Victoria and Thornhill. There's a long list.
I don't think the Conservatives—or I hope, anyway—are jumping to the conclusion that every clean-tech business in the country is now a target to be ripped down and torn down because of a few technical violations at SDTC, which have been accounted for. The individuals have been held to account and the organization has been completely transformed to have better oversight and a tighter governance model and framework.
To me, that seems like you got what you wanted, which was accountability. We all wanted that, but now you can't put it to bed. You've got to keep wanting to study it. I just don't understand the rationale.