Finance committee  Sir, all of those people—

Finance committee  I will happily stand corrected by our counsel, but based on my understanding, I don't believe those things you identified, including hiring the adopted Ugandan daughter of an individual and hiring the mother of an elected official, not in an elected-official capacity but as a spe

Finance committee  If I may clarify, some of the senior team in Kenya were themselves refusing to leave because they were arranging the medical response. We have a hospital there that treats over 800,000 people in a region. We have a medical college. Marc went in to also make the medical arrangemen

Finance committee  However, I know I said it, but allow me to say it again, that although we started working on May 5, we were aware that despite our building a network in support, if the contract were not signed, we would not be reimbursed. We took that risk on in full knowledge ourselves.

Finance committee  That was a conversation we started to have. It was close to the 4th or 5th. It was in that ballpark.

Finance committee  The eligible expenses are deeply outlined in the contract through an extraordinary amount of detail.

Finance committee  No minister, to our knowledge, were we in touch with in March at all, sir.

Finance committee  To my knowledge, looking at the timeline provided to me by my team and staff, the only touchpoint was with ESDC civil servants on March 6 when there was a comprehensive service learning white paper presented as per their request. That was with civil servants.

Finance committee  I can say with confidence, sir, that we did not, and the senior-most leadership was not in touch with anyone in the government in March. That being said, sir, we will check more broadly in the organization if there were any touchpoints that took place.

Finance committee  Yes, sir. I'm happy to speak to that. On April 7 there was a conversation with Minister Ng. It was a first-time, introductory phone call. It was the first time ever I spoke to her. On April 9, as per that conversation, I sent her a proposal that we had previously created on you

Finance committee  Correct. However, sir, I will tell you that I did, during the conversation.... He called me to ask questions about, generally, our view of the non-profit sector and youth. I did raise with him the fact that we had spoken to Minister Ng and submitted a proposal to her on social

Finance committee  Correct, sir. I would say that of the length of it, it was maybe two minutes; I mentioned it very quickly. But, yes, sir, I proactively did raise with him that we had submitted this to Minister Ng on April 9.

Finance committee  A different proposal, again, I have to underscore. Not an iterative...nothing to do with youth service; purely helping youth create businesses.

Finance committee  Sir, we have an entire foundation dedicated to mental health. We've created K-to-12 curricular resources on well-being—

Finance committee  She is one of the most famous people [Technical difficulty—Editor] who first broke through the issue of mental health in the public domain in Canada.