Madam Speaker, the Sustainable Development Technology Canada organization was a body that started back in 2001 to fund companies creating technologies that promoted sustainable development. It is not a bad idea to invest in technology, not taxes. Where have I heard that before? I think it has been coming from this side of the House because it is a good idea.
However, the Liberals applied one of the principles that I outlined earlier: When something works well, bring in some Liberal insiders and break it. That is exactly what the Liberals did. They hired Annette Verschuren in 2019 to chair the board of directors that oversaw payments from the fund.
She is an individual from an organization that had received SDTC funding in the past, so a couple of red flags went up across the bureaucracy, and I applaud it for that. However, despite being warned, the Liberal government went ahead and appointed her anyway. Under her watch, an environment rotten with conflicts of interest thrived. The Liberal-friendly board awarded funding to organizations that they individually had a financial interest in. The gravy train, unfortunately, could not go on forever for those board members—