Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much to the witness, both for being present and for the immense courage to bring forward what is a terrible instance of gross corruption, conflicts of interest, disgusting corporate culture, to be quite frank, and serious issues relative to the treatment of staff at SDTC.
The issues that I think are pertinent for my first round are related to the instances of conflict of interest that you've brought up. You've mentioned several times the severe conflict of interest pertaining to executive members.
I also appreciate your opening statement in regard to what is a very idealistic mission and one that I think many Canadians agree on, which is to support innovation and technology towards the better development of green technology, something that you yourself have contributed to in Canada. I don't want to diminish that work, but, of course, it's come at the heels of taxpayers. It's come at the heels of the trust that Canadians should have in their institutions, and now it's incumbent upon the government and members of this committee to try to pick up the pieces of what has been a really devastating blow to public confidence in this type of work. I want to thank you for mentioning those facts.
I want to see if you can describe to me one of the examples that you mentioned in earlier testimony, in response to one of my colleagues today, related to when an executive takes a project. Let's say it's one of their projects. The normal process you mentioned takes six months from the time when an original application is submitted by a regular person not connected to the executive. Six months go by, and maybe they're approved. When executives want to have a decision, when they want to get support for their project, how long does that approval take?