Mr. Speaker, once again we see a Liberal MP trying to play word games and thinking he is smarter than everybody else in the room when he is far from it. This is a constant theme with the government. Its members play games and pretend that they know more than everybody else in our country, but the reality is that they do not.
Let us recap the abuse of taxpayer dollars that the Liberal MP for Milton would like to scoff at and gloss over.
For ineligible projects, there was $58 million. For conflict of interest violations, there was $334 million across 186 projects. Contribution agreements were ignored for $58 million of taxpayer money. Added up, $400 million of taxpayer money was wasted, and the Liberal government would like to avoid any accountability and transparency over it.
I think a lot of Canadians do not know a lot about SDTC, and there are some natural questions to ask about how an organization backed by so much money from the federal government crept away from its mission and core responsibility to the extent that it gave out hundreds of millions of dollars without any accountability and had its mistakes covered by the current Liberal government. I have done a lot of reading and a lot of research on SDTC, and I would like to share some of what I have learned, share some of the distractions and the way that SDTC understood its ethical responsibility to the Canadian people.
I read the SDTC code of ethics, document 12.05, and it shows a social activist agenda far outside the scope of what the Canadian public had entrusted the organization to do with taxpayer dollars. I would like to quote from that code of ethics:
SDTC recognizes that equity, diversity, and inclusion enable organizations to leverage the range of perspectives needed to address today’s complex challenges. As a result, equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is an important consideration for optimal operation of our organization, as well as for Funded Companies.
This is what SDTC thought the ethical management of Canadian taxpayer dollars looked like. It had completely embraced a social activist agenda that had nothing to do with why SDTC was funded, why it was incorporated and what it was entrusted to do on behalf of the Canadian public.
In fact, when we look at SDTC's most recent corporate plan, we find it being very clear of its social activist agenda: “Equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are foundational to our culture.” Once again, it reiterates the social activist agenda that it put at the centre of the organization's operations, far outside the scope of what it was asked to do.
It goes much deeper than that, because SDTC was an advocate for and a supporter of one of the Liberal government's most far-reaching social activist projects, the 50-30 challenge. Many Canadians might not know what that is, so I would like to explain it. The 50-30 challenge is about a micromanagement of the race and gender representation of boards of directors and senior managers at companies across the country in a wide range of industries. If we look at the businesses that have been drawn to this, we find that many, though not all, are in industries that are currently doing a massive disservice to the consumers of our country, such as the cellphone companies overcharging people on monthly bills and the banks charging Canadians over-the-top banking fees.
The 50-30 challenge seems to be a light to the moth for companies making efforts to virtue signal and look like they are compassionate and nice and care about people, but at the end of the day, they show very little regard for the Canadian consumer or the Canadian taxpayer. SDTC fits into this group of businesses beautifully. It is a great fit for SDTC, because it was a hustle to create a certain kind of perception and image of what it was doing. However, we know now, because of whistle-blowers and other documents that have been released, what exactly it was doing, which was engaging in corruption and making sure that its Liberal elite insider buddies were given cash.
What else was SDTC up to? These are important questions for Canadians to know the answers to, because I think we need to understand how an organization turns into the scandal it has become.
There is another acronym that SDTC was very interested in, and obsessed with, in fact, which is ESG, or environmental, social and governance. It embraces an entire framework of understanding as to what an organization's ethical responsibilities are to the public. Through that, we understand exactly the kinds of distractions and priorities that SDTC decided to occupy itself with, while making a series of decisions that led to the mismanagement of public funds.
For those who are unfamiliar with ESG, it is a form of stakeholder capitalism. It is a form of capitalism that asserts that the responsibility of big businesses and well-funded organizations is to engage in social activism outside of the scope of the actual business purpose.
Just to remind people, what was SDTC's business purpose? Why did it exist? Why was it funded? Why was it incorporated? I will provide its own description from its website, which states, “(SDTC) helps Canadian companies develop and deploy sustainable technologies by delivering critical funding support at every stage of their journey”.
We know very clearly, based on the numbers, that SDTC dramatically failed to achieve its business purpose. We know that because $58 million of taxpayer money went to ineligible projects that did not meet the purpose of SDTC. We know it failed its business purpose because 186 projects, accounting for $334 million, had conflict of interest violations that went unaddressed by the organization. We know that contribution agreements were ignored in the amount of $58 million of SDTC money.
Therefore, instead of being focused on its actual business purpose, which was the reason it received taxpayer money from hard-working Canadians, it was more concerned with ESG. We can find references to ESG in lots of its documents.
In its 2022-2023 corporate plan, SDTC says, very clearly, “In keeping with our mission to enable environmental and economic prosperity for Canada, we struck a task force...to look at...(ESG)”.
An SDTC press release from 2021 states, “the demand for #ESG investment products is accelerating the trend of Canada's best cleantech ideas”. In fact, in that press release, it used a hashtag for ESG. It was very excited about it.
It goes on, talking about one of its most recent board appointments and explaining why it chose this member. This is the description in her bio, which states, “Her deep sectoral knowledge and expertise in...(ESG) performance and data driven approach uniquely compliments exercising governance best practices and overseeing risks.”
It would appear that building an organizational strategy around ESG led to putting people in positions of influence at SDTC, who in fact did not exercise governance best practices and in fact did not oversee risk.
We are here, in a position of scandal, because SDTC is very exemplary of a broad trend in our economy right now of organizations and powerful businesses, entrusted with either public dollars or the confidence of consumers, that decide they would rather engage in politics and social activism than do what they have been tasked with in our economy.
SDTC is a glaring example of that trend. Its obsession with ESG and with DEI betrays a real lack of attention to the reason it existed in the first place. All the staff time, the board time and the director time that went to its political agenda may very well, and I would argue that it probably did, contribute to it keeping its eye off the ball, leading to so many disastrous decisions, not only for its organization, but also for our country and for taxpayer dollars.
Now, I would like to continue on with some observations about the deeper problems with ESG. I think there are many organizations that have bought into this framework and have bought into a way of looking at doing business that is going to pose many of the same risks that SDTC provides us a case study of. The National Review's Andrew Stuttaford has written extensively about the ESG and stakeholder capitalism problem. He has argued that businesses should be focused on their economic objectives and that it is a threat to the democratic order for CEOs to pursue political objectives unconnected to their company's economic objectives, on any reasonable reading.
With SDTC, we have a very clear example of that. We have an organization that opted to creep away from its actual mission and instead try to influence, through public dollars and its investment in other companies, an entire social activist agenda requiring many other businesses, in order to be able to appeal for the cash that they were distributing, to have a willingness to comply with an ideological framework that had nothing to do with clean-tech innovation, nothing to do with being able to turn a profit and nothing to do with building the technology that many Canadians trusted, over a long period of time, SDTC to actually be interested in.
Additionally, I would like to share some points on the problem of ESG and stakeholder capitalism, big businesses and well-funded government organizations creeping into this area of social activism. I have some thoughts from a colleague, a Conservative member of Parliament, Tom Kmiec. I know I am not supposed to name him, but I do not know what riding he is from.
Mr. Speaker, maybe you could tell me. I cannot remember all the riding names.