Good morning. Debate over a cleantech agency’s spending scandal has brought the House of Commons to a standstill – more on that below, along with sharp new cuts to immigration targets and Beyoncé's rally for Kamala Harris. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Ottawa offered India options to address allegations of violent activities in Canada before expelling its diplomats
- Immigration is top of mind for U.S. voters, even in places where there is practically none
- A mystery CAMH mega-donor reveals his identity with his latest $100-million gift to hospital
Not a lot going on at the moment.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Ottawa
A month-long stalemate
Amid all the speculation swirling in Ottawa about whether Justin Trudeau will get pushed out as head of his party (not yet) or if Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre will apply for security clearance (nope) or when the minority government might actually fall (any time), you might have lost sight of a practical matter: Nothing is getting done on Parliament Hill right now. Like: nothing.
For the past month, a debate in the House of Commons has ground work there to a halt. It centres on a spending scandal at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, a now-defunct green-tech agency that mismanaged public funds. The opposition parties want the government to hand over documents about SDTC to the RCMP; the government would prefer not to. If this whole standoff comes as news to you, you’re not alone – more than half of Canadians haven’t heard of it. But given that we’re stuck in gridlock for the foreseeable future, there’s time to catch up on how we got here.
The backstory
Here are the broad strokes: Since its launch in 2001, SDTC doled out more than $1.5-billion to early-stage cleantech startups. But two years ago, whistleblowers alleged that some of those funds had gone to organizations with close ties to the agency’s management and board, including its chair, Annette Verschuren. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) ordered an investigation, which confirmed conflicts of interest. In October of 2023, the minister in charge, François-Phillipe Champagne, suspended SDTC’s ability to grant money. Verschuren was allowed to keep her job – much to the whistleblowers’ frustration – though she soon resigned.
François-Philippe Champagne before a cabinet meeting last year.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Then the Auditor-General got involved. In November, 2023, she launched her own investigation into the affair, concluding this past June that there were “significant lapses” in how SDTC managed public funds. Additionally, the federal ethics chair found that Verschuren broke the rules by voting to approve $38-million in pandemic relief for SDTC companies – including one of her own. Champagne announced that SDTC would no longer be a stand-alone agency and would instead be folded into the National Research Council to improve oversight.
The end! Well, no. Just before MPs took off on their summer break, the opposition parties passed a motion ordering the government to hand over STDC-related documents to the RCMP for a potential criminal investigation. The Liberals held back some of those documents. That led the Conservatives to claim that their parliamentary privilege had been violated, because the government failed to comply with a clear directive from MPs, which in turn led to a motion to send the matter to a procedure committee for review. And it’s this motion that they’ve been debating – to the exclusion of pretty much everything else – for the past month, since privilege motions take precedence over virtually all other House business.
The fallout
Let’s start with the consequences for the green-tech community: The Canada Cleantech Alliance estimates that SDTC’s eight-month funding freeze cost its members roughly $400-million in lost investment and opportunity. “The way funding works is that companies also have to line up other sources of capital as part of a syndicate,” Jeffrey Jones, The Globe’s sustainable finance reporter, told me. “When the government money stopped, those deals fell through and all those startups were left in limbo. Many have said they had to cut jobs to stay afloat.”
Meanwhile, up on Parliament Hill, the government hasn’t been able to introduce spending measures or push through legislation, including its online harms bill and capital-gains tax changes. Everyone is just stuck on this motion.
“The debate continues to ping-pong along in the same way, every day,” The Globe’s senior Ottawa reporter Stephanie Levitz told me. “The Conservatives run through a litany of what they consider the government’s sins of corruption, with SDTC at the centre. The Bloc and NDP MPs do much the same, though they’ll sometimes attack the Conservatives on other issues.” The Liberals retort that the MPs’ right to documents doesn’t extend to giving those documents to the RCMP (which has expressed reservations about its ability to use them in a criminal investigation). Then the Liberals take some partisan shots of their own. On Tuesday, one Bloc MP resorted to quoting Schopenhauer: “Life swings like a pendulum between pain and boredom.”
So how does the House get out of this logjam? The Liberals could do what they’ve been told and hand over all the documents, unredacted. The Conservatives could allow debate on the motion to collapse. The NDP or the Bloc could join a Liberal motion to shut down this ordeal, though neither party leader seems inclined to do so. But Levitz points out that another privilege motion – concerning cabinet minister Randy Boissonnault’s business dealings – is waiting in the wings as soon as this one ends. “If the Liberals find another party willing to support a vote to end the SDTC debate, they might also want to get that partner to sign on to end the next one,” she told me. Until then, Schopenhauer’s pendulum continues to swing.
The Shot
‘Children, women and the elderly are the silent victims of this war.’
A family shelters at an open-air market in southern Lebanon.Siegfried Modola/The Globe and Mail
Photographer Siegfried Modola spent the past two weeks in Lebanon, where as many as 1.2 million people – a fifth of the country’s population – have been displaced internally by the war between Hezbollah and Israel. See more of his photographs from Beirut and beyond here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Justin Trudeau announced a major cut to Canada’s immigration targets, saying Ottawa “didn’t get the balance quite right” when it boosted population growth to address labour shortages.
Abroad: Despite many, many rumours, Beyoncé did not show up at the Democratic National Convention. She’ll remedy that with a rally for Kamala Harris tonight in her hometown of Houston.
On the field: Today, the Los Angeles Dodgers (likeable) and the New York Yankees (hateable) kick off the World Series that baseball has always wanted, Cathal Kelly writes.
In the field: Scientists say they’ve developed an AI that can reveal what makes a pig happy, although I’m pretty sure humans have already developed an idiom for that.