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.
NDP
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much. I'm afraid that is your time, but you will have one last opportunity, Mr. Desjarlais.
Mr. Perkins, you have the floor for five minutes.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Earlier, you mentioned the Mercer report on compensation and that it was altered. If you have copies of both of those, can you table them?
As an Individual
I don't have copies, but I can provide.... Again, people have to be taken out of their NDAs to provide evidence of that happening, but there are executives and other employees who—
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Okay.
I'll ask for the committee's consent to ask for the tabling of those documents—the unredacted Mercer report, or the pre- and post-edited Mercer reports the witness referred to.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
I'm sorry. I just stopped the clock.
Mr. Perkins, what are you asking for?
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
I'm asking if the committee will request the production of those from SDTC or PCO, whichever the appropriate body is.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
It's the Mercer compensation reports the witness said were altered.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
All right.
Is there any disagreement on that? There is none.
Thank you very much, Mr. Perkins. You have four minutes and 20 seconds.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you.
You mentioned the meetings. ADM Noseworthy was in all of the meetings where the investments were decided. Now, the Auditor General found that 82% of her selections were conflicted. My understanding is that those meetings started off with the recitation of which directors were conflicted with which projects.
Is that correct?
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
They briefed all the investment committee members about which director was conflicted with which project, before they said, “Now we're going to vote on Jake's project.” They all knew whose project it was. That's awfully convenient. Maybe that's how 82% got—
September 18th, 2024 / 6:10 p.m.
As an Individual
I would also mention that, when the ex-chair was at committee, I think, on Monday, she mentioned that, regardless of the lack of recusals, there was a full and thorough review done by the board members on every single project. This is also a lie because, at that point in time, SDTC was doing bulk approvals of projects. They would present maybe four or five projects to the committee. The rest of the seven or 10 projects would get approved automatically, as long as no one had a question about it.
The board and the project review committee—which, again, had the fiduciary obligation to approve them—would not even review the projects that, in many cases, were conflicted among board members.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Okay.
Ms. Verschuren claimed.... Was there anything else in her testimony to the committee that you thought was not truthful?
As an Individual
I think another thing to mention is that when we're talking about the COVID payments that existed, one thing that continues to not be described is the context of what happened, because board members had actually agreed to not provide a second COVID payment in October 2020.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Okay. We're going to come back to the COVID payments if we can, but I have a short time and a couple of other questions.
On other directors, you mentioned Andrée-Lise Méthot, who was a beneficiary of this. She actually left the SDTC board and went to the Infrastructure Bank board—the Liberals appointed her there—and then she was part of the team that approved $170 million for the project of the chair of the SDTC board.
When I go through some of these things, while her time on the board.... Are you aware of Enerkem Alberta Biofuels, MineSense, SPARK Microsystems, Concentric Agriculture or Polystyvert? There are about 20 or 30 companies here that Ms. Méthot had financial interests in through Cycle Capital. While she was on the board, they received $114 million, it seems, by my calculations.
Was this part of the problem that was going on? Andrée-Lise Méthot gets $117 million, and she goes to the Infrastructure Bank and helps out her friend who got her this.
As an Individual
That's correct. I think the board members and a lot of public.... There's this excuse that continues to be perpetuated that this is a small industry and we cannot find anyone else within this small industry who has the technical expertise to approve projects. That's a false narrative.
There are thousands of people. Canada is a huge country. They had the right people. They could find the right people to not have conflicts, but that didn't happen. They purposefully allowed—
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
There's no way these few board members represented 82% of the green technology industry in Canada.
As an Individual
Exactly. Again, the issue is that they are at the front of the line, not just at SDTC, but at all of these other organizations: BDC, EDC, the Infrastructure Bank. They are friendly with everyone there, and their companies get money from SDTC, and then they go to the next organization, using the approvals and due diligence from SDTC, and they keep going. It's this perpetual cycle where funding from Crown corporations, government, continues—
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
The Auditor General did only 228 of over 400 transactions in the audit period and identified $390 million of $800 million that was inappropriately allocated to directors' conflicts of interest, and outside the.... Do you think the rest of those transactions, the other 200 or so, represent the same amount? Could we possibly be dealing with about $700 million, maybe $800 million almost, of money that was—
Conservative
As an Individual
I don't think so. I would have to look at the projects to see what that looks like.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you very much.
Ms. Yip, you have the floor for five minutes, please.
