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In an interview on Thursday, Kook declined to comment on what he described as “the politics” of the situation and would not say if he was prepared to appear before the committee.

Kook praised the mandate of the fund, which was established by the NDP under Premier Lorne Calvert. It was intended to close a “gap in risk capital” that the private sector did not appear willing to address, he noted.

Westcap and an independent board of directors did due diligence on all of the proposals it received from Indigenous-owned economic development corporations that needed capital to form partnerships and joint ventures with other businesses, he said.

That due diligence was the reason some of the investment funds ended up passing from Indigenous economic development corporations to non-Indigenous-owned businesses, including a publicly traded potash company and an Estevan-based welding firm, Kook said.

“It had a lot of those, I would say, economic and social mandates layered in, never forgetting of course we’re trying to mitigate the risk of the transaction. There is … risk in any investing,” Kook said, adding that the aim was to invest in “priority” areas such as oil and mining.

“I think they are good investments. The mandate of the program was well-designed, the governance was well-designed,” he said, adding that “no one could have predicted” the collapse of oil and potash prices in 2014 and 2015.

Kook said Westcap was approached by the then-NDP government to administer the fund.