Mr. Speaker, I want to speak to the multi-million-dollar project in question that was raised by Councillor Alexa Loo. This is what the bank said about why the project did not go through:
National Bank initially said in a one-sentence response that “no specific directive has been given to our teams regarding this court ruling.”
In a second statement hours later, the bank said: “We cannot comment on specific cases for confidentiality purposes, but what we can confirm is that this is not a factor that is currently taken into account in our financing decisions, and no guidelines have been issued by the bank in this regard.”
What does this mean? It means that the fact that they did not receive financing is a separate matter. The bank confirmed it. It had nothing to do with the Cowichan decision.