Public Accounts committee  I can't comment on how board members were appointed. I didn't look at that during our audit.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned, the sustainable development technology act has an inherent conflict of interest baked into it. I would have expected that to be factored into an appointment process and that if conflicts of interest existed, whether real or perceived, they would have been better managed than what we found.

Public Accounts committee  It's my understanding that the individual in question left the board earlier, in 2020 or 2021. I'm not a hundred per cent sure.

Public Accounts committee  When we approached this, we weren't looking at targeting individuals. We went in to see the process that the foundation had in place, and we found significant lapses in how they managed conflicts of interest.

Public Accounts committee  The organizations agreed with my recommendation. I think I've been clear in the past that if any funding has been given to an individual or organization that is ineligible, I would expect the government to take action to recover it. If they do not plan to do so, I would expect them to be clear and transparent with Canadians about why.

Public Accounts committee  Well, I haven't seen them take any action yet. They have agreed with my recommendation. Time will tell how they implement the recommendation.

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. In some cases, there has been funding overlap. You have to take that into account. In this case, it was projects from the Seed component, which did not follow the contribution agreement. In addition, there were also cases related to the additional funding resulting from COVID‑19.

Public Accounts committee  I'll ask Mr. Lequain to give you an example.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure I have thoughts on what to tell all the small organizations in the clean-tech industry. What I was looking at was how the foundation was managing those conflicts of interest. I truly believe that in the SDTC act was an inherent conflict. Ensuring that the board members have the expertise in such a small niche market was bringing in inherent conflicts.

Public Accounts committee  I can talk about my experience over four years. Typically, we very much prefer to be here with the parties involved in our audit, yes.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned before, we don't look at the individual actions of a person. We went to the organization, but I believe the honourable member is talking about a reference in paragraph 6.42, where we did highlight that there was an external expert who had a conflict and wasn't removed.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, what I can tell you about the ecosystem is what we wrote in paragraph 6.63 in our report, which was that we found that Innovation, Science and Economic Development had raised concerns with management that the ecosystem's projects did not meet the terms of the contribution agreement.

Public Accounts committee  I don't believe that organization received funding. There were two organizations that received ecosystem funding.

Public Accounts committee  There were many questions in there. I'll try to answer them all. A foundation is another arm's length away from the federal government than a Crown corporation is. That, in and of itself, usually would make it ineligible for my office to audit. We are not the auditors of the foundation.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'm not sure I can respond at that granular level. I'll see if the team can do some research. I think it's important to know that we didn't target board members or their companies. We looked at the process the foundation had in place. At times there were conflicts of interest that were well managed, and we highlighted the 90 that were not.