Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses again for being present.
I want to thank my colleagues for their good questions and to reiterate the comment made by my colleague Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné in calling for some order and decency in our work.
It has troubled me, Chair, in the last while that it seems as though truth and decency are oftentimes taking a back seat to partisanship. I think it's important, as we prepare to come back to session, that we try our best to unite on what is true. It's clear that there are problems in the government. It's clear that there are issues with procurement. It's clear that there should never have been or should not be conflicts of interest that misalign or damage our institutions.
I just wanted to make the point very clear that I do certainly agree. I call my colleagues' attention to what I perceive to be an issue that is impacting our work here in a negative way. I hope we can continue to co-operate in finding truth and recommending real solutions to ending the systemic issues that are present.
I do want to turn, Commissioner, to the report of the OAG in relation to the SDTC. One of the issues we investigated when we received this report was roles. There was no clear definition of roles or terms of reference that would define roles, particularly when it came to an issue of the assistant deputy minister attending meetings of the board.
You may be familiar with this. It's section 6.74, as follows:
An assistant deputy minister of the department regularly attended meetings of the foundation’s board and received all board materials. But neither the department nor the foundation documented what they expected from this role. We found that the directors’ understanding of the assistant deputy minister’s role did not align with his own. This ambiguity led the board to believe that the assistant deputy minister’s presence at meetings provided an implicit agreement by the department for any decisions that the board made.
It's deeply disturbing.
Can you comment on how that could affect the perception of or even the very real conflict of interest that could be present when there isn't a clear definition of those board members' responsibilities—particularly when it came to even having a department member present, especially when the department member who was present had a different or conflicting understanding of their role there? The board perceived it as consent when in fact the ADM did not.