SoVote

Jun/6/24 10:57:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, yesterday, former minister Navdeep Bains appeared before the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. The Auditor General's report very clearly indicates that the minister at the time had the power to request that Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, be audited to see what was happening, so I asked the minister how many audits he had requested. Not only did the former minister not respond, but we know that he did not request any audits. He told us that this was a completely independent fund. What does my colleague think that Minister Bains should have done at the time when allegations of wrongdoing were already circulating in his department?

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Context: House Hansard - 326 - Jun/6/24

Ms. Christine Normandin (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Jun/6/24 11:41:43 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is always difficult to follow my colleague from Terrebonne, but I will do my best to address the day's topic, the production of documents following the three rather explosive reports just made public by the Auditor General of Canada. I will quickly address the Conservatives' motion because I may have a few proposals to make at the end of my speech. The Conservatives' motion essentially asks that the House order the government and Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, to produce several documents within 14 days following the potential adoption of the motion. They want all files, documents, briefing notes, memoranda, emails or any other correspondence exchanged among government officials regarding SDTC; contribution and funding agreements to which SDTC is a party; records detailing financial information of SDTC; SDTC conflict of interest declarations, which we will be talking about in detail; briefing notes and so on. They also want these documents to be provided to the RCMP for its independent determination of whether to investigate potential offences under the Criminal Code. I will circle back to that later as well. In short, this motion relates to the performance audit of SDTC submitted by the Auditor General of Canada two days ago, on June 4. The Auditor General looked into the organization's activities between April 1, 2017, and December 31, 2023, and her findings were as numerous as they were damning. Let me name a few. She revealed that SDTC “did not always manage public funds in accordance with the terms and conditions of the contribution agreements for the Sustainable Development Technology Fund”. That was the basis for her findings. She also revealed that “the foundation had not established targets or clear guidance for assessing eligibility criteria” of the projects it was going to fund. Despite the eligibility criteria, when it finally arrived at the conclusion that a project was ineligible, in some cases, the foundation gave the projects funding even if they did not support the development or demonstration of a new technology, or if “their projected environmental benefits” had been exaggerated. The foundation did not inform Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada of funding that needed to be recovered. The foundation poorly managed its conflicts of interest in several respects. Its records show that “the conflict-of-interest policies were not followed in 90 cases”. The foundation's conflict-of-interest policies simply did not comply with its enabling legislation. It did not even have an “effective system to maintain records over disclosures of conflicts of interest and related mitigating actions.” SDTC's conflicts of interest were linked to approval decisions representing nearly $76 million in funding awarded to projects. This is no small matter. The foundation did not declare its conflicts of interest to the department. The board of directors failed “to oversee the foundation's compliance with key legal requirements.” Right from the start, the board was not set up correctly, since the number of directors did not comply with the enabling legislation. There were only two, rather than the 15 who were supposed to sit on the board. Nevertheless, SDTC should not take all the blame. The minister did not provide sufficient oversight of the foundation's use of public funds. That, my friends, is another problem. Despite whistle-blowers having sounded the alarm a long time ago, nothing was done. As one of my colleagues, the member for Mirabel, mentioned in his question to a Conservative member, former minister Navdeep Bains could have requested audits but did not. As the saying goes, the longer we wait the worse things get. In this case, the wait was long indeed, and things went from bad to worse. In short, what the Auditor General of Canada did two days ago was to finally confirm what we have suspected for months. She tabled three reports the same day and with the same ultimate finding, which is especially striking: The Liberals have completely lost control of the machinery of government. If we needed another blatant example of this, we got one today. As my colleague from Terrebonne mentioned yesterday during a question, Ottawa should get its own house in order instead of trying to manage the provinces. It should begin by doing its own job before trying to do everyone else's. This shows there are systemic problems within the machinery of government. The widespread trend to contract out and create increasing distance between the government and the projects it manages leads to an absence of accountability and transparency. This doubles and even triples the number of intermediaries, causing us to lose the thread concerning who does what. We are unable to follow the money, and we lose track of everything. This is probably something the government can at last understand. It truly tends to be incapable of following up on programs because they have been outsourced to third parties. If the government were asked to do an eight-piece puzzle, it would probably not be above making sure the puzzle was manufactured by a Liberal and creating a non-government agency specializing in solving puzzles. It might even hire a consulting firm to get engineering advice about puzzles, but it would certainly not be able to determine how much it ended up costing them to finish the stupid puzzle. It might not even be able to finish it because one of the pieces was lost in the sofa cushions. That is how the current government is running things, and here we have a clear example of that. Essentially, the problem is that we need to support the development of sustainable technologies. At a time when climate change is likely to cause not only health problems, but economic problems as well, we need to deal with it and develop technologies that can help mitigate it. The problem is that, by suspending funding activities for SDTC because it was so rotten, they also suspended the funding needed to develop these technologies. In the meantime, we are continuing to fund oil companies and engage in greenwashing by asking the same oil companies to develop their own sustainable technologies. Ultimately, it probably suits the Conservatives to be able to blame the government for its poor management inasmuch as we know they are climate change deniers, but we still need to tackle the underlying problem and fund the development of green technologies. That being said, there are interesting things in the Conservatives' motion. My colleague alluded to them. Asking for the rapid production of numerous documents may help us prevent a few of them from getting lost in the sofa cushions. They are sending the message that members of Parliament intend to look into the matter, which is not bad in itself. We need to shed light on this issue to make the government stop constantly delegating its authority and its project management to other entities. Let us not forget the importance of transparency in the government's management of different projects and the subsidies it grants. However, there are two things in this motion that bother us, and we need to point them out. They are asking that the documents be produced within 14 days of the adoption of the motion. The Conservatives appear to have forgotten that there are two official languages and that the Bloc Québécois works in French. Fourteen days will not be sufficient to have all of the requested documents translated. It might be a good idea to show a little flexibility in this respect without going overboard. Furthermore, regarding involving the RCMP, as worded, the motion seems to be giving the RCMP instructions rather than simply allowing it to access documents, which it would be more than capable of obtaining through warrants, anyway. In short, we are open to talking with the Conservatives about minor amendments to their proposal. We invite them to come talk to us. We will be in the House fairly late this evening anyway. Properly managing the Liberals' legislative agenda means we will be working for quite a while. The Conservatives should not hesitate to come see us to discuss proposals and amendments. We are always open to discussion.

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Context: House Hansard - 326 - Jun/6/24

Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

Jun/6/24 4:40:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, my colleague made a good speech and underlined the fact that Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, was necessary for the development of many technological innovations. I want to remind her that that is why the Liberals should not have scrapped the foundation by allowing wrongdoing and putting up with it for so long. The government cannot dissociate itself from what happened at SDTC for a very simple reason. Under the law, Minister Bains had the power at the time to request specific audits every year to verify whether the funding agreements and the rules were being followed. During all those years, that Liberal minister never once got up in the morning and decided to request an audit and check for himself. How is it that this Liberal minister of innovation, science and industry at the time did nothing when he could have done something? How is it that with this government it always takes a report by the Auditor General for it to finally rise in the House and say that something was mismanaged?

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