Information & Ethics committee  Yes.... I'm sorry. Can you reframe the question? I'm not sure I quite understood.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, absolutely. First of all, I reviewed the extensive binder that the complainant had created. Then, as I mentioned in my opening statement, I had almost weekly meetings with them throughout the process.

Information & Ethics committee  No. The documents were provided to ISED in February.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm sorry, but maybe I'm not understanding. What documents are you referring to?

Information & Ethics committee  ISED's involvement in this exercise came about when PCO had referred the whistle-blowers' documentation to us. It was very large—an approximately 345-page binder—that we had received on February 16. After internally reviewing that material, the decision was made to launch a fact-

Information & Ethics committee  I did not, no.

Information & Ethics committee  Not at all. I spoke to the deputy minister, yes, of course—I report to the deputy minister— but I've had no engagement with the minister or his exempt staff.

Information & Ethics committee  We've had minimal discussions. I certainly never discussed it in any degree of detail with PCO. But we had received the debriefing from the SDTC committee that had—

Information & Ethics committee  Frankly, ISED was not involved in the Osler review. We didn't have visibility into the methodology or any real details—

Information & Ethics committee  We had a Teams meeting where we were debriefed verbally by the lawyers, who conducted the review at Osler.

Information & Ethics committee  My understanding in the case of SDTC is that the organization was created by statute in 2001. It was a decision of Parliament to—

Information & Ethics committee  As a general rule, which is not pertinent to this case at all, third parties are often used because they have greater proximity to the target market or whomever the recipients are in the end. They may have specialized knowledge and expertise that doesn't exist in government, and

Information & Ethics committee  Generally speaking, these contribution agreements have numerous reporting provisions in them, and governance provisions as well, that allow for public servants to be observers on the board and allow for annual reporting requirements and other methodologies for managing the contri

Information & Ethics committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. The [Inaudible—Editor] obligations of the department require us to protect third party information, whether it be from the complainants, from those whom the allegations are against, or from the ultimate recipients—who, frankly, have not don