Mr. Speaker, the Harper government cleaned this up and put in a new chair, Jim Balsillie; hired a new CEO; and got a clean bill of health from the Auditor General and Treasury Board in 2017. Then the chair, Jim Balsillie, started to criticize the government in public on its lack of action on the surveillance economy. Guess what Navdeep Bains did. He said Balsillie had to go because he would not shut up about criticizing the government.
The Liberals tossed Balsillie out and put in a chair who, they were told repeatedly by SDTC, should not be in the position because she was the first conflicted chair in the history of SDTC. Even a former PMO staffer, who did communications and was in SDTC, phoned her colleagues in the minister's office and the PMO and said this person was conflicted. Guess what former minister Navdeep Bains said. By the way, he is the guy in charge of the highest cellphone rates in the world at Rogers now. Former minister Navdeep Bains said the government would manage the conflict. They sure managed the conflict, with $390 million of taxpayer money going to conflicted directors.