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The Ontario Legislature will consider issuing a “Speaker’s Warrant” to Laurentian University tomorrow (Dec. 9) to compel the university to provide the province with privileged documents it has been refusing to provide.
The province’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts passed a motion Dec. 8, recommending that the speaker of the house issue a warrant.
The warrant, directed at Laurentian president Robert Haché and board of governors president Claude Lacroix, would require the documents in question be produced no later than Feb. 1, 2022.
The Public Accounts committee is at its “wit’s end” over the situation, said the committee’s chair, Essex MPP Taras Natyshak.
On April 28, the Office of the Auditor General was asked by the province’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts to conduct a value-for-money audit on Laurentian’s operations for the period of 2010-2020.
However, Laurentian University, which is insolvent and is undergoing restructuring under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), has refused to provide Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk with privileged (or confidential) documents.
In a recent report, Lysyk said that in October her office communicated the restrictions Laurentian was placing on its work to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
The committee then formally requested information from Laurentian University.
The auditor’s report said the Legislative Assembly Act, Standing Orders and Parliamentary Privilege provide the committee the authority to command the production of papers or things that the committee considers necessary for its work.
After sending three letters, the committee began to receive material from Laurentian on Nov. 17. However, Laurentian still has not provided all of the information the committee has requested, with LU’s counsel at one point stating that it does not necessarily accept that the committee has the right to compel the production of such documents.
Public Accounts committee member Michael Parsa said he found some of Laurentian’s responses to the committee “deeply concerning,” adding they “can only be characterized as a direct challenge to this committee and this parliament’s authority.”
Laurentian University president Robert Haché and board of governors president Claude Lacroix also appeared in camera before the Public Accounts committee Dec. 1.
“The committee was wholly unsatisfied with the presentation made by Laurentian, and it became clear that Laurentian does not have any intention to fully or substantially comply with the committee's orders,” Parsa said.
He said on Nov. 30, Laurentian wrote to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, proposing a resolution.
However, that resolution involved delivering materials, even those subject to solicitor-client privilege, up to March 2020, as well as certain materials after March 2020, but nothing subject to the CCAA process.
Laurentian would also require that this be a “full and final resolution of the committee’s request” and would require “that the committee not continue to seek further disclosure.”
Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas, who is also a member of the Public Accounts committee, was the person who originally brought forward the motion for the value-for-money audit of Laurentian.
She said she thought the audit would bring some “closure” about what led to Laurentian University’s insolvency.
Gélinas said the situation with Laurentian has been going on for nine months now, and “the level of anger and hatred toward the university is everywhere in my community. They don’t trust them, and now they don’t like them.”
She said trust needs to be rebuilt with Laurentian, and that is what the auditor general’s report would do, telling the community the story of what exactly happened.
“We need this independent third party to shed the light,” Gélinas said. “I don't know why they're giving the auditor such a hard time to let her do her work. But it has to be done.”
