Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Verschuren, this is the first time I've spoken to you, but I can't help but say how much your action or inaction has plunged us into an unprecedented crisis in the Canadian Parliament. The saga you started, which led to a scandal, has us grappling with a procedural stalemate caused by the stubbornness of the Liberal government and the official opposition. All Canadians are paying the price today.
Nothing has been happening here for weeks. We can no longer discuss any bill or any budget. I just hope you're aware of that.
On December 14, in response to my colleague Brian Masse, you stated:
The project would be at the board level. The vice-president of investments would be making a recommendation. Those people would leave. We would all leave that meeting when that discussion happened and that decision was made.
Then we'd be invited back to come in once the decision was made. We wouldn't know what that decision was until the SDTC announced those decisions the next day.
But the whistle-blower, Witness 1, said:
The second one specifically was the Verschuren Centre application. Employees complained multiple times, even by email to executives, that this was an obvious conflict of interest, yet not a single one of those issues was heard by executives. We were continually ignored up until it went to the board and other board members finally admitted this was an obvious conflict of interest. Even after it was rejected, the executives then forced employees to personally go to other federal or provincial funding organizations and use SDTC's reputation to see whether they would be willing to give the Verschuren Centre funding.
Either your testimony is wrong, or this whistle-blower is telling us nonsense and lies.
How do you reconcile these two statements? They can't both hold true.