That's correct.
Evidence of meeting #139 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sdtc.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #139 for Public Accounts in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sdtc.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
You shared months and months of concerns—300 pages of concerns laid out regarding allegations of mismanagement and human resource issues—with the ADM. I'm now telling you that likely the ADM, most assuredly, transferred that knowledge to the deputy minister, who transferred that knowledge to Minister Champagne. No one did anything until the fall of 2023. Is that accurate?
Conservative
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
My apologies, Chair. I do have one question. I have 30 seconds.
You referenced the 37 hours of transcripts of the ISED conversations with the ADM. Will you table those transcripts with this committee, please?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much.
Ms. Yip, you have the floor for five minutes, please.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witness for bravely coming forward.
I'd like to go back to some of Mr. Brock's references here, implying that the minister manipulated the views or slowed down the findings and so forth.
What evidence is there that the minister did that?
As an Individual
There are multiple recordings that provide evidence that the ADM and the deputy minister had actually given the minister and the minister's office updates as to what was happening at SDTC and the findings, whereas the minister himself has publicly stated that he had no idea what was going on between March and the end of September.
On top of that, there is even audio evidence that at the end of the reporting period, at which point the final recommendation was made to the minister, the reports and information were actually given to the minister verbally, at which point he asked for changes to the report and recommendations before it was officially registered.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
I'd like to follow up on Ms. Bradford's comment about how she had a hard time squaring your testimony with the conclusions of the McCarthy review. There are clear conclusions—from 62 interviews and 3,000 pages of documents—that differ from your view.
How can you explain this discrepancy?
As an Individual
As I mentioned before, I would ask you to give me an example of an organization that has a good culture and gets shut down.
However, I would also, again, mention other aspects of the McCarthy review. At a certain point, they had only negative testimony, at which point they went out of their way to ask other employees to testify for this report. I don't think that's a regular occurrence, where the lawyers are going to other employees to ask for testimony on the positive side.
I would also mention, again.... If the McCarthy Tétrault report is actually true, why don't they release the report, instead of seven slides with random statements? If they truly say that they have looked into these situations, why is there no public proof that they did, and why is there no public proof that they have actual evidence that goes against these statements? Just because a lawyer or a law firm says that these statements are incorrect, if they're not providing evidence, how are you attacking me, saying that the culture is good when the evidence isn't actually there?
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Did the other 20 whistle‑blowers also participate in the review?
As an Individual
I would assume so. A lot of them, as I said, weren't even interviewed, but I know for a fact that the ones who needed to be interviewed were interviewed.
Again, maybe I'll ask this of the minister. Why doesn't he actually get rid of everyone's NDA so everyone can hear the stories themselves? As of right now, the NDAs are on, so if you are so obsessed with disproving my claim, take off everyone's NDAs and let the public find out exactly what happened.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
The review noted:
Certainly, some participants used terminology such as “harassment” and “bullying” to describe executive treatment of employees in the workplace. That was, however, the minority, and the few examples that were offered as evidence revealed more of a discomfort with the direct style of leadership and/or disagreement with decisions made by leadership than actual harassment/bullying. Importantly, there were no examples of executives yelling or swearing, verbally abusing or physically threatening employees.
How should we square that with your testimony?
As an Individual
As I said, release the transcript that exists for all of these interviews. They took notes. If McCarthy Tétrault was saying they did all of this and they have evidence contrary to what everyone says, I would happily accept their findings if they actually released anything substantive.
September 18th, 2024 / 5:55 p.m.
Liberal
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much.
We are beginning our third round, and it is my intention to get through a third and fourth round.
Mr. Cooper, you have the floor for five minutes, please.
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
You stated in your testimony that the minister lied when he said he was first briefed about the RCGT fact-finding report. At committee, the minister was very clear that he first learned about wrongdoing, conflicts and mismanagement at SDTC. That would not be correct, would it?
Conservative
Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB
You referenced that there was an interim RCGT report, which contained many of the findings that ultimately made their way into the RCGT report that was issued in October. The interim report was written in May, and the department was going to establish a directorate to undertake a series of investigations. I presume the minister would have been briefed in or around May about that interim RCGT report. Is that correct?