The buck stops with the minister. It's within her department.
By the way, if the member wants a history, I can provide a long history of the cover-up that occurred under the current finance minister when he was minister of industry, including suppressing and blocking the release of a fact-finding report and tampering with evidence according to a whistle-blower, among other evidence that came to the attention of this committee in the last Parliament.
I can go there, but for now, I will note that the minister, in response to the question put by Mr. Berthold, said that there was $34 million that went out the door improperly to ineligible projects. The minister acknowledged it. This is a damning admission, on its face, of gross mismanagement that occurred on the government's watch.
Further to that, notwithstanding that 34 million tax dollars went out the door improperly, Minister Joly said that it was not “in the public interest” to recover those funds, due to what she characterized as “sound stewardship of public funds”. It was “not in the public interest” to recover 34 million tax dollars that went to ineligible projects, and this constituted “sound stewardship of public funds”, according to Mélanie Joly.
Talk about gaslighting, Mr. Chair. This is an insult to taxpayers to say it's “not in the public interest” to recover $34 million. How could it be possible that it's “not in the public interest” to recover $34 million that went to ineligible recipients? At the very least, Mr. Chair, Canadians deserve transparency about this decision, and the Liberals have provided zero transparency in addition to recovering zero taxpayer dollars.
Canadians deserve a cost-benefit analysis. The minister says it's in the public interest. She provides no cost-benefit analysis to justify why the government is walking away from 34 million taxpayer dollars. No legal rationale has been provided. There is no substantive explanation as to why it is, according to Mélanie Joly, “not in the public interest” to recover $34 million that improperly went out the door.
Is it because, for example, there were no standard clawback provisions in the agreements? Who drafted these agreements? Who allowed tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to go out the door to ineligible projects with absolutely no mechanism available to recover the funds? If this is the case, if it's the reason the Liberal government has decided not to recoup the funds, then it would speak to, in addition to gross mismanagement and corruption, staggering incompetence layered on top of that, of which there certainly was plenty at SDTC, or the green slush fund, as it's become so famously known—for very good reason.
Then there's the question, in terms of transparency, that I referenced—and Liberals really don't like to be reminded of it, but I'll remind them again—about 330 million tax dollars that went to companies that board members had interests in. There were 90 cases in which board members voted directly to fund companies that they had an interest in, totalling $76 million. There were tens of millions of dollars—hundreds of millions of dollars more involving other conflicts of interest; there were 186 conflicts of interest in total.
The question is this: Of the companies that were ineligible as recipients, were any the companies of board members who were involved in conflicts of interest, who benefited from funnelling money into their companies while they sat on the board? Canadians deserve answers regarding that, but we have no answers.
Instead, what we have is effectively a cover-up by Mélanie Joly and the Liberals. I say it's effectively a cover-up because this decision not to recover 34 million tax dollars was done in secret. They tried to hide it from Canadians.
It was only because of the Order Paper question put forward by Mr. Berthold—an Order Paper question being one of the few procedural tools that we and the opposition have to compel the government to provide a response—that we got the bare minimum response from the minister. She was forced to acknowledge that, gee, there was $34 million that they decided not to recover, and then she tried to gaslight Canadians by claiming that it was in the public interest and that this was consistent with sound stewardship of public funds, with absolutely no explanation, no cost-benefit analysis, no legal rationale—nothing. We're supposed to take it at face value. Give me a break. It's outrageous.
It's part of a pattern. I was here through all of those hearings at this committee. I can recall when the Auditor General appeared several times in relation to this massive scandal.
I can recall when the whistle-blower came to this committee and spoke about how the current finance minister, when he was the minister responsible for ISED, blocked the release of the RCGT fact-finding report, interim report, in May 2023. According to the whistle-blower, the minister tampered with evidence, including trying to water down findings of the RCGT report, delaying its release until September. When it was released, the minister stood by the board, despite the overwhelmingly damning evidence and findings in that report. Yes, it was a cover-up then, and it's a cover-up now.
Mr. Chair, in closing, it's not at all obvious how it's not in the public interest to recover $34 million, but it certainly is in the interests of Liberal insiders who profited handsomely at SDTC, a.k.a. the green slush fund. Canadians deserve answers, but above all else, they deserve their money back. This is an opportunity to send a clear signal to the minister to do just that.