Public Accounts Committee on Sept. 18th, 2024

Can you explain the question again? I missed it.

6:15 p.m.

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

Okay, yes.

I'm sorry about the noise. Can everyone please keep it down? The witness is not able to hear the question.

I'm sorry about that, Mr. Witness. I'll start again.

Can you elaborate on why this was your view?

As an Individual

RCGT was also hired by ISED, and that was a clear disaster, so why would we expect McCarthy Tétrault to do anything differently?

I can't speak for the whistle-blower you're talking about in that specific article because, again, it's not a single person, but I would again mention that if you truly believe that this statement you're mentioning and this defensive action are true, please release everyone from their NDAs so they can all speak about this. If you are actually truly interested in the abuses that happened, talk to your minister and ask him to release everyone from the NDAs. He has the ability to do that, because he has now appointed board members who are all from the federal government. He can, in one fell swoop, release everyone from the NDAs. We can listen to everyone's testimony and we can look at every single thing that McCarthy Tétrault says is true or not true.

I don't find this back-and-forth productive because, again, how am I supposed to stand up and provide examples when doing that might implicate someone in the NDAs that they have? I think it's a bad line of questioning that you keep focusing on. If you truly cared about the situation, you would maybe get the NDAs off everyone instead of talking about how great of a job McCarthy Tétrault did.

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

With all due respect, you're here to answer our questions.

As an Individual

I think I did answer the question.

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

I'd like to go back to your opening statement. You mentioned how you feel that “real accountability [still] doesn't exist.”

As an Individual

That's correct.

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

Would you like to elaborate on why you still, at this current time, feel that it's not—

As an Individual

Why doesn't the government release all the documents to the RCMP? Again, if they don't think there's a problem, they should release the documents to the RCMP. I'm not asking for the public.

Again, there's all of this lack of publicity. The minister didn't release the RCGT report to the public, and he wasn't even willing to release it to the committee. I think it's embarrassing that.... When we're talking about the ethics committee and what happened there, I personally got involved with politicians from all sides and gave them the report, because I had the RCGT report before the members of Parliament did. When you have to go to those extremes, I think it's embarrassing.

Again, on this question around why I don't trust the government, it's like, does anyone trust the government?

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

As SDTC programming is fully transitioning to the National Research Council, what are your recommendations to the government at this point in time?

As an Individual

Fire the useless executives and senior management who have been implicated.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative John Williamson

Thank you very much. There'll be another chance to continue that.

We're beginning our fourth and final round, in which there'll be six slots of various times for six members.

Mr. Stewart, you have the floor for five minutes, please.

Conservative

Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB

Thank you for being here today.

To the whistle-blower through the chair, one thing I'd like to ask for is the production of documents for the unredacted interim RCGT report and the unredacted final RCGT report. Is that something that we can get here?

Liberal

Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

Is that a motion?

Conservative

Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB

It's through the witness.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative John Williamson

I think that's for the witness. If the witness is able to table the reports—

As an Individual

I don't have the unredacted reports. I have one that's partially less redacted than what was given to the committee, so I can provide that.

The only thing I can provide for that interim report is the audio recordings and the transcript, which is verbatim the partner at—

Conservative

Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB

We appreciate that.

There was another thing as well, before I get into this.

In addition to the recordings, there's still an interest here in getting copies of the historical contribution agreements, as well as.... I understand there are some policy changes and there's an updated contribution agreement. Are you able to provide both of those agreements as well?

As an Individual

I think so. I don't know if I have the ratified one for the most updated, but I can provide contribution agreements six, seven, eight and nine, which are the ones that would be relevant to the time period we're talking about.

Conservative

Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB

Can the committee get the most recent ones within the production of documents?

As an Individual

I think you'd have to ask ISED or SDTC to provide the most recent one.

Conservative

Jake Stewart Conservative Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB

Okay.

Was anybody in the bureaucracy fired after everything that's been discussed here?

As an Individual