I'll wave at the interpreters and apologize to them for that.
Mr. Chair, it is so frustrating for me. How many beds for recovery could that money have built? For three weeks, four weeks, we've been pushing to do something about the opioid epidemic in this country. The hundreds of millions of dollars that this government has wastefully spent.... How many vaccines were created? Not one, and where is this company now? It closed the doors...sunnier climes.
It's crazy that you'd give $173 million or more to a company that you get squat out of. What else did they get out of this? They must have gotten something. Was that a payoff or something? Again, it's close enough to be listed in the Liberal Party's 2021 platform—page 8, for those who are looking.
This government is just not worth the cost. This Prime Minister is not worth the cost. Canadians have to wake up to this. It's not their money. I bet that, if you do a quick search, this was in some Liberal minister's riding. Well, I did the search. It was in the former health minister's riding, Minister Duclos's riding.
It's $173 million that we know of—probably more—to a business that is no longer.... The doors are shuttered—doors, windows. Everybody's gone. They're off to sunnier climes, to billionaire island, probably. It's $173 million.
Billions of dollars.... The former health minister gets it. He is the former minister of treasury, too—Mr. Treasury, the guy who controls the purse strings. This is crazy. You can't write this stuff. You couldn't make this stuff up. It's like a Hollywood movie. It's unbelievable.
I campaigned in 2015, probably one of the most divisive things I've ever gone through—that and the nomination, of course. However, in 2015, I remember that this young guy who had great hair rolled up his sleeves and went all around our country saying that he promised to do government differently. I believe his term was the “sunny way”. He said that he was going to let the sun shine in because sunshine is the best form of disinfectant. He promised not to use dilatory motions, omnibus bills, closure—well, we know how that is. He promised to do things a lot differently. He was going to be.... They were going to be different.
They absolutely have been different. Our colleagues across the way.... I say this all the time: I know there are good people across the way. This has to be tough. I see the look in their eyes when they sit in the backbenches, and they just shake their heads when another scandal comes out—WE Charity, SNC-Lavalin, Jody Wilson-Raybould, “elbowgate”, billionaire island, dividing Canadians, asking Canadians whether we should even tolerate these people. I look at my colleagues across the way and I ask, “Is this leadership?” When the going gets tough and it's time to stand up and be counted, where is he?
As you can see, I'm deeply frustrated, Mr. Chair. I'm going to go over the list again: “elbowgate”, cash for access, Aga Khan, cultural appropriation, SNC-Lavalin, SNC-Lavalin election donations, blackface, WE Charity, interfering in RCMP investigations, the ArriveCAN app and Chinese interference. I'll bring you back to one that I worked on, the “clam scam”. Another minister took millions upon millions of dollars and redirected it to his own family, his wife's cousin and former Liberal colleagues. It's absolutely shameful.
I hope my colleagues will see it fit to vote in favour of this motion, so that we can once and for all get to the bottom of this wasteful spending. The scandals are unbelievable, Mr. Chair.
With that, I'll cede the floor.