Public Accounts Committee on Sept. 3rd, 2024

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I move:

That, as part of the committee's ongoing study of Sustainable Development and Technology Canada (SDTC), the committee agrees to:

(a) extend its current study of the Auditor General's report by inviting the following additional witnesses:

These are in addition to the list of outstanding witnesses in our study that is going on now in, so these are new additional witnesses giving their testimony.

(i) John Knubley, former Deputy Minister of ISED;

That's where a lot of this happened.

(ii) Cassie Doyle, acting board member of SDTC;

(iii) Marta Morgan, acting board member of SDTC;

(iv) Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change;

I'll explain why we've added him in a few minutes.

(v) Andrée-Lise Méthot, founder of Cycle Capital;

(vi) Stephen Kukucha, former board member of SDTC;

(vii) Guy Ouimet, former board member of SDTC; and

(viii) Annette Verschuren, former chair of SDTC.

(b) that the committee report to the House that it asks the Auditor General to undertake a value for money and performance audit on the work done by SDTC since Monday, January 1, 2017.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Hold it there. I'm going to suspend just for a second. I'm going to first endeavour to get this out to all members. Hold on a second....

I'll call this meeting back to order. The email has been sent.

I'm going to allow Mr. Perkins to wrap up his comments briefly. I have a request to then have the last member ask the witnesses questions. It will take five minutes. If there's agreement, I'll do that.

Now, that does circumvent the normal procedure, which is to turn to motions right away. I will remind people that this opens up the opportunity to end the meeting, but I will bring us back to deal with this matter immediately if that happens.

In good faith, I think we're going to do that. I have been not scheduling meetings next week during caucus, but if there is funny business on this and this agreement is upended for any reason, I will use the powers I have to return to this forthwith.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor briefly. I will then turn to Ms. Bradford to ask her last round of questions; then I will excuse the witnesses, and we'll turn to this motion.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Briefly, we have an existing motion with regard to continuing studies, and I know there are a number of witnesses that the clerk has been trying to get before the committee, but in light of the testimony today and some of the earlier testimony, perhaps I could briefly explain the addition of these folks.

John Knubley, the former deputy minister, was there. As most know, I think, Simon Kennedy has been the deputy minister there for only about a year, but most of what has happened under SDTC's term, including the appointment of some of these directors who were brought out in the Auditor General's report, was under Mr. Knubley's tenure as deputy. He was involved very much in the discussions of what was called “managed conflict” between the former president of SDTC—Leah Lawrence—and the government in seeking out a chair replacement.

I think we've had a lot of testimony today already about the clarification that the witnesses have given us about their current roles and responsibilities versus those of the acting board that the minister appointed. Our current motion in the existing study has the current acting chair on the list, but it does not have Cassie Doyle or Marta Morgan, the other two whom the minister appointed, so I believe they should also appear.

Stephen Guilbeault, the Minister of Environment, in his public disclosure, continues to hold shares in one of the largest recipients of funds from the Liberal green slush fund. Cycle Capital received over $200 million. Stephen Guilbeault not only worked there before being elected but also still owns shares—in his public disclosure—and is benefiting from the investment by SDTC in Cycle Capital's businesses. Andrée-Lise Méthot was his boss at Cycle Capital and is the founder there. Again, as I said, her company has received, since its inception, over $200 million of green slush fund money.

Stephen Kukucha and Guy Ouimet, both of whom were directors of SDTC, also had conflicts of interest pointed out by the Auditor General in terms of funds that went to companies they had interests in. In fact, the Ethics Commissioner's report mentions Guy Ouimet but doesn't actually proclaim anything about him, even though it's clear from the evidence that he voted in favour of $4 million for his own company.

Annette Verschuren, who we all know was the chair of SDTC, was appointed knowing that she had been doing business with SDTC, and that set a culture of conflict. That culture of conflict, as we know, is that 196 of the over 226 projects that the Auditor General looked at were actually projects that had some sort of conflict of interest declaration, so she set the tone when she joined on the issue of it being okay to just leave the room when 82% of the transactions being approved by the board were with regard to conflicts. That clearly goes way beyond just bad legal advice.

With regard to part (b) of the motion, because the Auditor General only did a selection of the projects and did not look at the full $836 million that was given out in that audit period of the $2.1 billion that the green slush fund has given out since its inception, we are asking the Auditor General to do a full audit of everything, because we believe that we've only scratched the surface with this random sampling of projects.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

As I said, there were some discussions that we proceed to Ms. Bradford as the last member on the docket to ask questions for five minutes. Do I have agreement?

Generally, we'd go right to the motion, but there was some back-and-forth. Do I have agreement to turn the floor over to Ms. Bradford for five minutes, and then we'll go back to Mr. Perkins' motion?

I'm seeing yeses. Okay.

Ms. Bradford, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

ISED published a report in October 2023 with suggestions and an action plan that SDTC had to implement by December 2023. Has this action plan been implemented, and are there any updates?

[Mitch Davies]

The question is about the responsibility of ISED and the follow-up. I know there was a discussion at the committee with the deputy minister of the department. Obviously, it's up to ISED to provide an account to the committee of its actions and follow up on that action plan that was shared with the public.

The NRC is working in collaboration with ISED and SDTC on the transition process that we've described today to ensure that it's done in a timely way, and to provide some stability for the stakeholders who work with SDTC, as well as for the employees who are involved.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

The government announced this major programming transition back in June. Are the timelines that you're currently working with the usual practice for this type of transition?

[Mitch Davies]

Mr. Chair, as I said in my opening comments, we're endeavouring to get this work done within a year. There's a lot to do, for all the reasons that are clear from the conversation that is taking place today. This includes looking at the files and being able to prepare them for transfer to us, and then preparing the systems. Our offer to employees is for them to carry on with the programming.

We're hoping to do this hopefully earlier than that year. We're endeavouring to meet that commitment to Canadians. It's what's expected of us to get this transition under way and carry it out as quickly as we possibly can.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Given that it's no longer an arms-length organization, can you speak to how exactly SDTC is now subject to the FAA, as is customary for all government agencies? What are the implications of this?

[Mitch Davies]

Mr. Chair, to be helpful, it's probably best to ask this of SDTC or ISED to get a specific answer.

Because SDTC was established under its own legislation and set up as a foundation, I'm not certain whether the Financial Administration Act directly applies to SDTC and its activities. That is something that would be best addressed by experts in the department who could talk about it.

I know the Financial Administration Act applies to the National Research Council.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

How are you going to ensure that the mission of clean tech is back at the core of what SDTC does and the potential it has to do good for Canada's clean-tech firms and industry, which need its support?

[Mitch Davies]

Mr. Chair, I'd say first that the strategic plan of the National Research Council has among its priorities climate and sustainability. In fact, it has a lot to do with research work we do. Also, the support for innovation that is provided through NRC IRAP to further the programming we'll be able to provide for sustainable technology will move to the NRC IRAP organization and the appropriate staff who can make sure that we deliver that.

This will take into account the economic goals and objectives to the program, but also the sustainability objectives that are now being and have been reviewed by SDTC in its consideration of files. We'll obviously bring those employees and expertise over to NRC IRAP to continue that work.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

I know that many of the small and medium-sized businesses would not be able to survive without these funds and would incur the capital outlay to transition to clean, green tech. Hopefully, you'll be able to ensure that this continues.

I have no further questions.

I want to thank you very much for attending today and answering all of these multiple questions so fully. I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Ms. Bradford.

In a moment, I'm going to suspend for a few minutes.

In the meantime, I will thank the witnesses for coming in today and for answering our questions to the best of their ability.

There were some requests for information. If you could, send that information through to the clerk. There was a timeline for one request made by Mr. Desjarlais. We will look for that information when it is available.

You're excused. Thank you very much.

We will return in about five minutes to pick up Mr. Perkins' motion. I'll give him the floor first.

[A voice]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right. We'll make it 10 minutes now that we have you here. We'll be back in 10 minutes.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm going to call the meeting back to order. I'm sure this will prompt whips to ensure that members are back in their seats forthwith. I will give a few minutes for this to happen. I do see people coming back online.

Mr. Perkins, you have the floor for your motion.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I had left off at the rationale for the individuals. This is of concern, and today with the NRC it was quite disturbing as well, because it appears that the new SDTC is still the old SDTC. It is still independent and reporting to the minister, through a different board of three different people, but it has the same management and no evidence of real change. This is why we wanted to have the NRC here today. It was to get a sense from them about how they were going to run it and whether they have been running it and what they've been doing to prevent the challenges that SDTC has, as identified by both the Ethics Commissioner and the Auditor General, yet today we see that the process hasn't even started. It's still the same old green slush fund, which had 186 votes out of about 400 that were conflicted, according to the Auditor General.

The Auditor General said there were over 400 votes, but the Auditor General didn't actually go through all of those votes. The Auditor General went through a small sample size of 226. Of those 226, 186 were conflicted, so 82% of what went before this board were conflicted payments to companies in which those same directors had an interest. There's quite a list of some of them that the Auditor General had given us, in addition to what was in the report.

It seems that every time we have a witness or have a report by an officer of parliament, it uncovers more and more. It's not that this is all of it. As we know, the House of Commons voted for a production of documents order on the Liberal green slush fund. That production of documents order required every government department and SDTC to turn over their documents to the law clerk of the House of Commons so that the law clerk could turn those over to the RCMP.

We now know, from letters received before this committee, that the law clerk has written to the Speaker informing the Speaker that the Prime Minister's own department, the PCO, gave direction to all government departments to actually redact elements of any documents they have, using the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act changes, although he points out in that letter that there was no such restriction put in the House of Commons motion that passed with the majority of members in the House of Commons. The House of Commons motion is supreme on this. It's not restricted by any act of Parliament, yet the Prime Minister's Office clearly interfered through the PCO in trying to prevent the information from getting out.

That's why this committee, the public accounts committee, which examines the Auditor General's reports on the expenditures of money, needs to have an expanded study on the Liberal green slush fund. We know that where there's smoke, there's fire. There's probably a lot more going on here than the 226 projects the Auditor General looked at out of the billion-dollar Liberal green slush fund.

As a result of that, we need to ask these directors who are involved in the current transition, as well as those who are named in the Auditor General's report, for more clarity before this committee. We need to ask that the Auditor General herself do a more extensive study of what's been going on in the Liberal green slush fund than she did in her selective sampling, her random sampling, of projects.

I would hope that all committee members support that we get to the bottom of this, because right now, we don't know if anything's changed.

The NRC doesn't know if anything's changed, contrary to what the minister said. The minister said that as of the date, the NRC has control and it will be up to this pristine level of accountability, yet the minister himself has not met once—not once—with anyone in the NRC to figure out how the heck this thing's going to get cleaned up. In the 40 months that Minister Champagne was the minister during SDTC, he did nothing, even though an ADM who reports to him sat in every meeting where this happened. He did nothing until it made it into the media. He did nothing through all the parliamentary hearings, and his only response has been that he is going to transfer it to the NRC and that this will clean it all up. He cares so much about it that he hasn't even met with the NRC to see what they're doing and to give direction, and neither have his staff.

I think it's essential that this committee keep examining this to get to the bottom of the issues that have been raised today and raised also by the Auditor General and the Ethics Commissioner.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Perkins.

I have Ms. Khalid. You have the floor.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I'm not really sure why the Conservatives are so hell-bent on politicizing a process. If we go through the timeline here, the minister responsible for SDTC identified an issue, acted on it, read the report of the Auditor General, who is an arm's-length person who provides the oversight of our public accounts on how taxpayers' money is spent, took in their recommendations and took some substantial steps with respect to how to fix the process.

We had witnesses here today from the NRC, and they talked about what that transition looks like. They talked about what the impact of a program like this is on small businesses. They talked about how we are going to improve the system. That is exactly what the role of members of the public accounts committee here is. Our role is not that of a judiciary. Our role is to find issues and challenges, to take the advice and the recommendations of the Auditor General and others, to help in improving the process and to ask the relevant questions on what is next.

I'm not sure why the members opposite feel that if there's smoke, there's fire, and that we should go on a witch hunt, bring in everybody and basically demolish public trust by calling the same witnesses again and again and again.

People have been on record. The Auditor General has expressed how uncomfortable she feels with people telling her how to do her job. The member opposite spoke about getting her to do her job even more. I think that she and her office are at arm's length. They are doing their job. They just released this report. We don't need to dictate to them how to conduct themselves.

What we're seeing here, Mr. Chair, is a fishing expedition on the backs of industry and of small businesses. It's unfortunate. I have sat in committees over the past number of years and I have seen again and again businesses being brought in and put through the wringer, to the point where they become targets. I don't think that's fair and I don't think that's the job or the responsibility of this committee. Sure, if we are going to proceed with this motion, there are some amendments that need to be made and we should be focusing on ensuring that we are doing the right thing in order to improve the process as opposed to creating a witch hunt process in which we're hauling in anybody and everybody who the Conservatives seem to think is enemy number one, anything to get an extra click, anything to raise an extra buck for their party. It's unfortunate.

I would like to amend this motion based on who is responsible for what.

First and foremost, the Minister of Environment should be struck from the list of witnesses who are required in this motion, because neither he nor his office has anything to do with any of this.

Second, I'd like to include two names in the text of the motion—the Auditor General and the RCMP commissioner—because I believe that both have important testimony to provide on Parliament's continued study of SDTC, including their grave concerns regarding the CPC June 10 motion, which is compromising their independence, as they have stated. An article in the National Post from a few days ago dug more into this, with a former senior parliamentary counsel for the House of Commons quoted as saying that the Conservative motion is both completely unprecedented and likely an abuse of Parliament's powers.

Academics have already raised concerns. As stated in the National Post article, “by demanding the documents with the sole purpose of passing them on to the RCMP”, the House of Commons is overstepping its bounds, and these actions raise “a number of constitutional issues”.

Our job as parliamentarians is to ensure proper oversight and accountability of public funds. It is not to act outside of the bounds of parliament, Mr. Chair. I think it's incumbent on us to hear from both of these witnesses, the Auditor General and the RCMP commissioner, who have brought these real concerns with regard to Parliament's actions on SDTC. Any extensions of this SDTC study should include testimony from both of those witnesses, in my view.

I would propose that we remove Minister Guilbeault from the list and that we add the Auditor General and the RCMP commissioner to the list of witnesses for more comprehensive testimony as to what exactly is going on here.

Mr. Chair, it's time for us to start doing the right thing amongst all parliamentarians at this table.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

I have amendments to the motion, which we will deal with here and now. There's, of course, a speaking list to the main motion, but let's deal with Ms. Khalid's amendments.

Ms. Khalid, if you're agreeable, I'll do them as kind of one, two and three, because I suspect you might have shifting support. I'm going to do, maybe, a vote on striking the minister.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

I'd like to just present it as one, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right.

The amendment is to strike the Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. I apologize for having to interrupt just before you read....

To get clarity on the proposed amendment, can we have that amendment sent to us? In addition, is it possible if maybe, by unanimous consent, we can get a compromise to sustain the witnesses that were submitted by the Conservatives, including Minister Guilbeault, in addition to adding the other witnesses proposed by the Liberals?

I'd be happy to vote in consensus if we can just invite all of the witnesses and do away with the fact that we have to vote.

It's just a recommendation.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Yes, that's what I was trying to work through. I think Ms. Khalid would like to present them as a package, which could present a subamendment to the amendment.