A whistleblower secretly recorded Liberal party official Doug McConnachie saying the government has a “green fund” to give “free money” to well-connected party officials. The CBC acquired the several hours of recordings, which revealed conflicts of interest and mismanagement of funds, from a whistleblower, who filed a complaint against Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC). The audio files depict a gross mismanagement of funds allocated to Canada’s clean energy/tech sector following a fact-finding report he had just reviewed. McConnachie spoke on the issue August 25, unaware he was being recorded.McConnachie, who is the assistant deputy minister at Innovation, commented on the senior leadership at SDTC, which is currently under a five-year, $1 billion deal with the Liberal government. “There's a lot of sloppiness and laziness,” he said in the recording. “There is some outright incompetence and, you know, the situation is just kind of untenable at this point.”McConnachie said Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada François-Philippe Champagne “is going to flip out when he hears the stuff.”“He's going to want an extreme reaction, like shut it all down," McConnachie said. "It's unlikely that certain members of the board, or the entire board, and executives are going to be able to continue to serve,” he said. “Like they've kind of lost the confidence. So really, the discussion will be the mechanisms for getting them out.”“There's a lot of sloppiness and laziness.”McConnachie noted $40 million was allocated to companies that already have agreements with the SDTC during the COVID-19 era. “It was free money," he said. “That is almost a sponsorship-scandal level kind of giveaway."Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre commented on the whistleblower recordings Wednesday.“Secret recordings from a top bureaucrat in the Liberal government admit that a green fund was giving out free money,” Poilievre said. “It was free money,” Poilievre emphasized. “So when they say green fund, they mean putting money in the pockets of well-connected Liberals.”
