Thank you so much, and thank you to the committee.
I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on part of the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe.
I'm John Knubley. I was a deputy minister for 12 years in the federal government. I served as deputy minister of industry in the renamed Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, or ISED, from September 2012 to June 2019. I am now a senior adviser and board director.
A deputy minister, as you know, is the senior manager of the ministry and portfolio. The role is the highest level of public servant. At the time, the department had about 5,000 employees, and the portfolio had about 24,000. Expenditures were about $7 billion annually. I supported several ministers—for industry, science, small business, tourism and broadband, including for appointments.
As I am no longer in the public service, I do rely on my memory for my testimony. I don't have access to my past agenda or basically to information from that time, so the following is what I remember.
There were 16 agencies in the portfolio. As the deputy minister, like those before me, I delegated authority for managing the interface between these agencies and the department to my senior executive, usually assistant deputy ministers. This is what was done for Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC.
SDTC serves a small economic sector with emerging areas of technology. Since its creation in 2001, it was designed to be independent of government, with business leaders from the clean-tech sector responsible for the work. It was not uncommon for business leaders involved to have experiences or linkages in the field. SDTC is uniquely defined by being a shared governance corporation with its own act.
When I began my role in the department, SDTC was not part of the portfolio. In 2015, SDTC was transferred to ISED from Natural Resources Canada and from Environment Canada. In 2016, the government gave ISED a broad mandate to promote clean technology and to lead this as a pillar in the pan-Canadian framework for climate change.
Canada was recognized for strong innovative capacity in this field, but it fell short in its ability to commercialize, which is a problem that remains today. New policy goals were developed to increase engagement with industry and to improve coordination across stakeholders in the clean-tech sector to help find new pathways to commercialization.
In 2017 and 2018, ISED made clean technology one of six CEO-led sector tables. This table made recommendations on how this sector could help boost Canada's GDP and exports. All of the initiatives were part of an innovation and skills agenda supporting talent, science and technology, access to capital, commercialization and streamlining.
The Auditor General's report of 2017 and the department's evaluation of 2018 guided the ministry's role in support of SDTC. The focus was on policy and on helping to improve its performance, its effective reporting and data on emission reductions, and its alignment with other departments and governments involved in the clean-tech sector.
At ISED, it was not typical for me to be involved in the many PCO-led processes for appointments to the portfolio agencies. In the case of SDTC, this role was delegated in 2018.
In terms of the milestones of the process, I was asked by PCO to have the department do outreach to stakeholders at the launch of the process and again in April. This was a common practice for the department to encourage a wide range of applicants. I do not remember ever talking about any SDTC candidates with former minister Bains or with his political staff.
I did talk to Annette Verschuren in late June, just before I retired. It was normal that, as a deputy minister, I would talk to her in the onboarding process. At the time, I was also reaching out to a series of key stakeholders to inform them that I was retiring on June 28. She and I had both been active members of the science, technology and innovation council created by Prime Minister Harper. We had also served as members of the CEO-led sector table on clean technology.
To be frank, I don't have strong recall of this particular telephone call. I was having lots of calls at the time, given my pending departure and retirement. In the call, I do remember talking to her about the go-forward modernization of SDTC. The aim was to move beyond just testing and piloting technologies. New activities were to be added to promote the start-up and scale-up of firms, as well as to focus on commercialization.
On the issue of conflict of interest, I was aware that she had engaged the Ethics Commissioner. I would also have expected that conflicts were fully addressed by the PCO appointment process. Moreover, on a go-forward basis, I generally expected, as a deputy minister, that all government departments and agencies, big or small, would regularly develop, refine and implement policies for real or perceived conflicts, including SDTC. Canadians do have a right to expect this.
Let me conclude by saying that SDTC has played a key role in supporting the clean-tech sector in Canada. I was struck then by how Canada had 11 of the top 100 global clean-tech companies, second only to the United States, and now there are 13. SDTC played a role in supporting many of them.
