Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 18th, 2024

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Do you want to try to answer, Mr. Knubley?

Mr. Perkins, your time is up.

[John Knubley]

I'll just clarify that I thought Mr. Perkins was talking about my relationship with the minister, not Andrew. I'll leave it at that for now. I apologize.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Perkins, we're going to come back to you, and you can take it from the top again.

Ms. Yip, you have the floor, please, for five minutes.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

Do you need to take a moment?

[John Knubley]

Who, me?

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Yes.

[John Knubley]

No, I'm fine.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Okay. I just wanted to make sure.

[John Knubley]

Carry on. I can say I'm looking forward to one o'clock.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Certainly.

Is there anything you'd like to clarify before we go on?

[John Knubley]

I wasn't sure exactly what Mr. Perkins was asking about Mr. Noseworthy, but I did, I believe, have a trusted relationship with him. I did speak to him regularly.

As I tried to explain earlier, our focus was on performance and policy and alignment related to SDTC. It was one of 12 departments that offered clean-tech programs, so this is what we focused on.

In terms of conflict of interest and the financial audit types of issues, what I mentioned is that it's a very delicate relationship between a department and an agency that is independent. As Auditor General reports have demonstrated, there is a requirement that the CEO, the executive and the board are the ones that lead in terms of conflict of interest and the eligibility criteria of contribution agreements.

I think that's the way Mr. Noseworthy thought about the job—but again, I would encourage you to clarify that. It was about policy, alignment and performance.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Since we're talking about the Auditor General's findings, did you have any further thoughts about those findings and her recommendations to share with this committee?

[John Knubley]

Well, I have two thoughts. One I mentioned earlier, which is that I do agree with her that the relationship between the department and SDTC would benefit from an MOU or something that spells out clearly what the relationship is and how it's managed.

The second thing, and I noticed it in her testimony, is that she raised how the 2001 act needs to be modernized. Specifically, there are issues related to membership that are reported in some of the 2017 and 2018 documents. However, the real issue for me is that the SDTC Act actually requires the directors and the chair of the board to approve projects. In my experience—especially now that I've gone to the the private sector and been on boards—most of the boards like SDTC, in fact, do exactly the opposite. They ensure that the role of the board is to provide strategy and oversight of operations, but in terms of approval of projects, this is not their job.

I personally believe that one of the lessons from all of this is that perhaps I should have taken seriously the need to modernize the act and change it. All I knew at the time was that there was this issue around members, so I didn't see that that could go throughout the House in any successful way. Now I know that I really should have focused on how we needed to change the requirement that the directors of the board approve projects.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Now, knowing what you know, what other changes would you recommend?

[John Knubley]

In terms of lessons, as I said, I would recommend modernization of the act and specifying more clearly the role of the departmental liaison. Then I'll add a third. We were working on this, but I just want the committee to fully understand how important it is. It's all about the data and the framework that you use to judge the data. You need strong data and strong frameworks to actually assess eligibility requirements and to actually report on the way these are leading to emissions reductions.

I think we were doing the right thing working on this, but I would say that, again—and this is true of all other sectors that are trying to measure climate change impacts—you have to have a baseline set of numbers in order to be able to rigorously assess eligibility requirements and performance.

I have one last point. The other area of weakness that I recognized as I looked at all the testimony had to do with the surveys of the businesses. There was this issue of the businesses not completing the surveys at the end of their technology demonstration. What I knew was that these are very small businesses. They don't have a lot of capacity. One of the surveys—I think it's in the evaluation—remarks that they heard from all the businesses about how onerous this process is. At any rate, how do you address that? I think the department or an agency somewhere in the government could have provided some support to the businesses to help them, again, do their reporting, do this owner's reporting related to the projects.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Ms. Sinclair‑Desgagné, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Lawrence said she spoke to Mr. Noseworthy twice. The first time was when she learned that Ms. Verschuren's name was on the short list of candidates. The second was when she was told that Ms. Verschuren was going to be the chair.

So, one of the times Ms. Lawrence apparently spoke to Mr. Noseworthy was before Ms. Verschuren was made chair. At that time, during her conversation with Mr. Noseworthy, she said she had concerns.

Were you made aware of that conversation between Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Noseworthy?

[John Knubley]

As I replied earlier, the answer is no.

I do think I should say one thing about Ms. Lawrence. I am speculating here, but she must have known that I was retiring. I actually announced my retirement in the middle of May.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Excuse me, sir.

That has nothing to do with the question I asked you. I'm going to continue with my questions.

[John Knubley]

My answer was no.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Knubley, just to recap, Mr. Noseworthy was on the board when the conflict of interest policy was violated.

I gave examples that the Auditor General picked up during your time as deputy minister. Mr. Noseworthy received calls from the CEO, who shared Ms. Lawrence's doubts and concerns about Ms. Verschuren's appointment. However, he didn't talk to you about it.

There were several things that you were not aware of, even though a deputy minister is supposed to have this kind of information, especially when he's appointing assistant deputy ministers to the boards of foundations. It would appear that the information was not shared with you.

When you learned of the findings in the Auditor General's report, did you realize that you were unaware of a number of things that were going on at Sustainable Development Technology Canada?

[John Knubley]

Well, I took very seriously the Auditor General's report, and I do believe in the mission of SDTC. I hope that my former colleagues who are now managing the transition are successful in making that transition.

On the issue of reporting to me, I feel that I'm repeating myself, but there are two things. One is that there were these two reports that I had just seen in 2017 and 2018 that gave it a clean bill of health, and the second thing is the job that Andy Noseworthy was mandated to do about policy—

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Mr. Knubley, I'm sorry to interrupt. I have another question for you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Please keep it brief.