Nickel Belt MPP Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas said the Standing Committee on Public Accounts received a “whole lot” of documents from Laurentian University Feb. 1, and is in the process of reviewing them.
The documents were those requested in December through rare Speaker’s warrants issued by the Ontario legislature.
The Speaker’s warrants required Laurentian president Robert Haché and former board chair Claude Lacroix to ensure the delivery of the documents to the clerk of the Ontario legislature’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts by 5 p.m. Feb. 1.
If they failed to comply with the Speaker’s warrants, they could have been subject to punishment, including imprisonment.
Last week, a judge ruled that Laurentian was to hand over the requested documents, with the exception of those related to certain court orders pertaining to Laurentian's Companies Creditors’ Arrangement Act (CCAA) insolvency restructuring, pending another court hearing.
The university is still working on reviewing some documents to ensure they’re not among the material covered by the aforementioned court orders, Sudbury.com has learned.
Laurentian University issued a written statement Feb. 2 pertaining to the production of documents related to the Speaker’s warrants.
“In accordance with the decision of the court and the requests of the Standing Committee (on Public Accounts), it has now delivered all documents responsive to the Committee’s requests, except for the narrow categories of documents that contain information protected by the sealing order or mediation confidentiality order in the CCAA proceeding,” said Laurentian, in the written statement.
“In accordance with the guidance of the Standing Committee, Laurentian is working to review those categories of documents and will continue to produce all remaining documents that it is not prohibited by court order from disclosing."
The university said it has actually been providing documents to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts since mid-November.
Jennifer Pain, a spokesperson for the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, said she can confirm that the committee did receive documents from Laurentian on Feb. 1.
She said the committee will assess whether the disclosure complies with the terms of the Speaker’s warrants. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts is scheduled to meet on Feb. 23.
Gélinas, a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, said included in the documents received from LU this week is a hard drive with encrypted information, which Laurentian said is related to the court orders mentioned above.
“So we're just going through them right now, to see if we got everything that the court said we were allowed to get,” said Gélinas on Wednesday afternoon.
She said that Laurentian was given almost two months - from Dec. 9 to Feb. 1 - to provide the requested documents to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
“So to say they haven’t had time to go through (the documents), you know, we’ll be as understanding toward them as we can,” Gélinas said. “But at the same time, you’ve had two months to go through the documents.”
