Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Briefly, we have an existing motion with regard to continuing studies, and I know there are a number of witnesses that the clerk has been trying to get before the committee, but in light of the testimony today and some of the earlier testimony, perhaps I could briefly explain the addition of these folks.
John Knubley, the former deputy minister, was there. As most know, I think, Simon Kennedy has been the deputy minister there for only about a year, but most of what has happened under SDTC's term, including the appointment of some of these directors who were brought out in the Auditor General's report, was under Mr. Knubley's tenure as deputy. He was involved very much in the discussions of what was called “managed conflict” between the former president of SDTC—Leah Lawrence—and the government in seeking out a chair replacement.
I think we've had a lot of testimony today already about the clarification that the witnesses have given us about their current roles and responsibilities versus those of the acting board that the minister appointed. Our current motion in the existing study has the current acting chair on the list, but it does not have Cassie Doyle or Marta Morgan, the other two whom the minister appointed, so I believe they should also appear.
Stephen Guilbeault, the Minister of Environment, in his public disclosure, continues to hold shares in one of the largest recipients of funds from the Liberal green slush fund. Cycle Capital received over $200 million. Stephen Guilbeault not only worked there before being elected but also still owns shares—in his public disclosure—and is benefiting from the investment by SDTC in Cycle Capital's businesses. Andrée-Lise Méthot was his boss at Cycle Capital and is the founder there. Again, as I said, her company has received, since its inception, over $200 million of green slush fund money.
Stephen Kukucha and Guy Ouimet, both of whom were directors of SDTC, also had conflicts of interest pointed out by the Auditor General in terms of funds that went to companies they had interests in. In fact, the Ethics Commissioner's report mentions Guy Ouimet but doesn't actually proclaim anything about him, even though it's clear from the evidence that he voted in favour of $4 million for his own company.
Annette Verschuren, who we all know was the chair of SDTC, was appointed knowing that she had been doing business with SDTC, and that set a culture of conflict. That culture of conflict, as we know, is that 196 of the over 226 projects that the Auditor General looked at were actually projects that had some sort of conflict of interest declaration, so she set the tone when she joined on the issue of it being okay to just leave the room when 82% of the transactions being approved by the board were with regard to conflicts. That clearly goes way beyond just bad legal advice.
With regard to part (b) of the motion, because the Auditor General only did a selection of the projects and did not look at the full $836 million that was given out in that audit period of the $2.1 billion that the green slush fund has given out since its inception, we are asking the Auditor General to do a full audit of everything, because we believe that we've only scratched the surface with this random sampling of projects.