There has been a “complete change of tone and attitude” on the part of Laurentian University regarding working the disclosure of documents to the Ontario legislature, said Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas.
The local NDP MPP is a member of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, which met Feb. 23 to assess whether the insolvent Sudbury university has fully complied with terms of rare Speaker’s warrants issued by the legislature in December.
Those Speaker’s warrants ordered Laurentian’s leadership to hand over a long list of documents to the legislature’s Public Accounts committee by Feb. 1, under the threat of possible jail time.
“Well, I would say, a huge surprise, a good surprise to all of us, Laurentian has complied with our Speaker’s warrants,” said Gélinas. She said Laurentian has sent the Public Accounts committee about 3.3 million emails and another 500,000 documents.
Laurentian is still going through roughly 280,000 documents to ensure that in disclosing information to the Ontario legislature, it is not violating court orders.
Gélinas said that the new interim chair of Laurentian’s board of governors, Jeff Bangs, appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Feb. 23.
She said she can’t tell Sudbury.com what was said during yesterday’s meetings, as they were held largely in camera. But Gélinas said she can share that there was a tone of optimism, and much of that has to do with changes in Laurentian’s board of governors.
As one of the terms of a provincial financial package for Laurentian, a number of members of the board stepped down late last year, and several new members were appointed, including Bangs.
“We've had discussions with the board of governors of Laurentian before, and to say that it was painful, adversarial, non-constructive is to say it mildly,” Gélinas said.
“When we started the conversations with the new chair, he has a completely different tone, completely different ways. And it gave us all a level of optimism that we haven't had since we started working on this file.”
In April 2021, the Public Accounts committee charged Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk with a value-for-money audit of Laurentian’s finances. However, Laurentian had largely refused to hand over privileged documents to both Lysyk and later to the Public Accounts committee, resulting in a couple of court battles.
A court ruling last month said Laurentian must hand over the documents to the Public Accounts committee, with the exception of certain documents related to LU’s insolvency restructuring that are covered by court orders.
Gélinas said while the auditor general does value-for-money audits, it’s the Public Accounts committee’s job to make recommendations based on her audits.
Given that an election is set to take place in Ontario before June 2, Gélinas said both the auditor general and the Public Accounts committee are currently working “flat out” with the Laurentian documents to get answers to the public.
While she can’t speak for the auditor general, Gélinas said she’s hopeful that within the next month or so “we will give the people of Sudbury the answers they need to understand what went on (with Laurentian) and to make sure it never happens again.”
