Western Standard - December 12, 2023


Whistleblower Trudeau's $1 Billion Green Slush Fund

Mentioned
VP Zoe Kolbach Leah Lawrence
Alberta's $31M Funding For Nine New Emission Reducing Projects Freeland accuses Poilievre of not standing with Ukraine

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

140.24

Word count

771

Sentence count

29

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the fall of 2018, a comprehensive 345-page presentation was submitted to the Privy Council Office at the request of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. This package contained documents that outlined gross mismanagement across every aspect of SDTC's operations and governance. It highlighted noncompliance with the SDTC Act and contribution agreement across all of the organization's funding streams, and serious breaches of the conflict of interest policies by the executives and board. The package also included evidence of the toxic workplace culture that was created by CEO Leah Lawrence and her friend and still current VP Zoe Kolbach, who've been allowed to continue abusing and harassing employees.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The SDTC board, executives, and senior management must be held accountable for their gross mismanagement of taxpayer money
00:00:07.040 and the gross misconduct that's been perpetrated by the toxic senior management team that has victimized countless employees.
00:00:15.760 And the federal government must also be held accountable for its embarrassing lack of oversight
00:00:21.180 that's allowed these problems to persist and its egregious cover-up of the truth that occurred this fall.
00:00:27.520 At the beginning of this year, a comprehensive 345-page presentation was created and submitted to the Privy Council Office
00:00:36.260 at the request of the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, who we originally went to.
00:00:41.800 This package contained documents that outlined gross mismanagement across every aspect of SDTC's operations and governance.
00:00:49.240 It highlighted noncompliance with the SDTC Act and contribution agreement across all of the organization's funding streams
00:00:56.020 and serious breaches of the conflict of interest policies by the executives and board.
00:01:01.460 The package also included evidence of the toxic workplace culture that was created by CEO Leah Lawrence
00:01:08.700 and her friend and still current VP Zoe Kolbach, who've been allowed to continue abusing and harassing employees 1.00
00:01:16.020 by a passive senior management team and board that protects and hides the abuse.
00:01:20.400 All of this information underwent review by PCO and was then forwarded to ISED,
00:01:26.120 who subsequently engaged RCGT to conduct an independent fact-finding exercise to validate this information.
00:01:33.060 Here are the findings for everyone.
00:01:35.620 The seed fund, ecosystem fund, and scale-up fund were all found to be ineligible
00:01:40.720 due to multiple violations of the contribution agreement, significant deviations from the due diligence process,
00:01:47.320 and conflict of interest breaches by board members and executives.
00:01:51.920 This finding encompasses nearly 200 companies that all received over $80 million,
00:01:58.480 all of which was improperly funded using taxpayer money.
00:02:02.540 The two COVID payments in 2020 and 2021 were also given to the full portfolio of companies
00:02:09.980 and totaled almost $40 million and were also deemed to be ineligible
00:02:14.080 as the use of these funds was not effectively tracked.
00:02:17.600 And several board members in that instance also violated conflict of interest
00:02:21.940 by approving almost $4 million to themselves to over a dozen companies
00:02:27.220 where they all hold significant ownership or executive positions.
00:02:30.900 The report also revealed that SDTC lacked HR processes or policies
00:02:36.120 and issues were never even reported to the board.
00:02:39.860 And conveniently, the RCGT investigators couldn't even find a single record
00:02:44.920 of any complaint ever being made in the history of the organization.
00:02:49.700 This is a staggering level of incompetence, woeful ignorance, and corruption
00:02:55.740 that has resulted in SDTC improperly distributing almost $150 million in taxpayer dollars
00:03:03.120 just in the past few years and abusing dozens of people
00:03:07.300 that have only tried to talk about the truth.
00:03:11.160 The organization deserved to be suspended.
00:03:14.800 The organization also deserved a new board, executive, and senior management team,
00:03:19.520 but that never happened.
00:03:21.000 Not a single one of the individuals responsible for these issues has faced a single consequence.
00:03:28.060 No executive or board member was terminated or even given the slightest handcuffs.
00:03:35.240 And every single person that was directly implicated even had their names redacted
00:03:41.060 and protected by ISAD in the RCGT report.
00:03:43.820 Even more shocking is the fact that despite these findings, ISAD continues to allow these individuals
00:03:51.060 to manage taxpayer dollars and allows them to continue perpetuating the abuse against employees
00:03:57.440 who've been desperately seeking protection from their own government for over a year.
00:04:04.980 That cannot stand.
00:04:06.700 SDTC's board and executive continues to insist that the issues are just minor inconsistencies
00:04:13.420 while ISAD and the Minister continue to claim that no findings warrant serious action.
00:04:19.820 These are false narratives and I'm here to provide documented proof of all of the lies
00:04:24.660 that continue to be perpetuated by both SDTC and ISAD.
00:04:28.480 I believe that my testimony can provide an in-depth overview of the key issues at SDTC
00:04:34.940 because I worked on the financial due diligence and compliance of projects at SDTC
00:04:39.600 for the key two-year period that coincides with the most serious findings in the RCGT report.
00:04:47.080 I'm also intimately aware of exactly how ISAD understood the issues
00:04:52.280 and the clear direction that the total bureaucracy had laid out.
00:04:56.600 The Minister and PCO have been aware of this file for more than they are telling to the public
00:05:04.620 and there are even documented evidence that they even engaged with everyone at ISAD
00:05:13.300 to make sure there were edits to the briefings before they were officially sent to them.
00:05:18.860 All of this is backed up by documents, transcripts and recordings,
00:05:23.140 some of which we've already submitted to this committee.
00:05:26.600 Thank you and I welcome all your questions.