Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Auditor General identified a number of board members who had conflicts of interest. The one who had the most by far on the Auditor General's list was Andrée-Lise Méthot. Her firm, which she founded in 2009, called Cycle Capital, is a firm that invests in green technology. It's based in Quebec and has had considerable business.
The green slush fund is at a little over $1 billion since its inception, including those projects identified by the Auditor General and others that Andrée-Lise Méthot identifies on her own website that she's invested in. The total so far is—are you waiting for it—$250 million of green slush fund money. A quarter of the green slush fund money has gone into organizations and businesses that Cycle Capital has an investment interest in.
Now, on the wonderful website that was in the news on the weekend, called LinkedIn, you can find out wonderful and incredible information. The current radical Liberal environment minister Guilbeault proudly lists that he was the strategic counsel for Cycle Capital for a decade before he was elected in 2019.
Guess what he did in that role? He was the paid in-house lobbyist. During his time as a paid lobbyist for Cycle Capital, Cycle Capital received $172 million of the $250 million that came out of the green slush fund. In the year and a half before Minister Guilbeault was elected in 2019, he lobbied the PMO and ISED 25 times, according to the lobbyist registry, on behalf of Cycle Capital, for SDTC funds. He was a very successful lobbyist, obviously, and as part of Minister Guilbeault's reward, he got shares as compensation in Cycle Capital. Those shares are not held in a blind trust. They are publicly available to see on his conflict of interest disclosure through the Ethics Commissioner's office. He still owns those shares.
Since he joined cabinet, in the dying days of former minister Navdeep Bains' time as the minister of industry, Cycle Capital received $750 million of additional money. Former minister Navdeep Bains, you'll recall, is now selling the largest and most expensive cellphone plans in the world. Rogers, as his reward for bringing down Rogers' cellphone rates, rewarded him with a job to promote the most expensive cellphone company in the world.
He gave Cycle Capital $750 million while Minister Guilbeault was in cabinet. For 40 months or so, while Minister Champagne was the minister and had a senior assistant deputy minister in every investment committee and board meeting, 82% of the time they were voting on conflicts of interest, including declared conflicts of interest in companies that Andrée-Lise Méthot owned through Cycle Capital, which Minister Guilbeault has shares in to this day.... That happened
Not only does the line extend from the Prime Minister's Office, which hand-picked and appointed the chair over her conflicts, even though it was warned about them—the PCO has said that's where it came from—and not only has the Prime Minister's Office tried to thwart the House of Commons by asking departments to redact their documents from the disclosure the House of Commons asked for from SDTC, but we have an actual minister of the Crown, who happens to be the minister of the environment, who might have some interest in SDTC and its performance and is actually financially gaining from it.
By that, I mean that Cycle Capital, since Andrée-Lise Méthot was put on the board in 2016, tripled in value, from $200 million to $600 million. It's a pretty good return for all of this.
As we know, because we've had lots of testimony on it, when a company received a grant from SDTC, it was like a stamp of approval from the Government of Canada. This allowed those companies to then go out and arrange for other funding, which they may otherwise have had difficulty getting. It was not just funding from other parts of the government, but generally raising capital.
Minister Guilbeault needs to attend our study. He was not on our original list, but evidence has come up as a result of the examination of his public disclosure. I believe he needs to be accountable to this committee and testify as part of our ongoing examination.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.