Thank you, Chair.
Why on earth is this government giving away billions of dollars without having any idea how many emissions are being reduced, if any. To make matters worse, the government hasn't released the funding agreements to the public, so we don't even know who this money went to or why. This is absurd.
That's why I move this motion to obtain this information. If the Liberals are spending $8 billion in tax dollars, Canadians rightfully deserve to know what their money is being spent on. There is no reason why these funding agreements cannot be handed over to the committee.
The Prime Minister promised that his government would be the most transparent government in Canadian history, but we have continuously witnessed this government blocking the committee from obtaining information. Not only must we uncover the funding agreements for this $8-billion slush fund. We also need to obtain the progress report of the net-zero accelerator.
According to the environment commissioner's report, the government is also hiding the net-zero accelerator's emissions report from Canadians. He said, “The tracker is a tool that was designed to measure the Net Zero Accelerator’s progress toward an internal target set by the department itself and is not public.”
Canadians deserve to know the truth behind this slush fund. In the environment commissioner's 2023 report, he stated, “The federal government is not on track to meet the 2030 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions....”
It's very clear why the Liberals are refusing to release this information to Canadians. Their environmental record is a failure. In fact, Canada dropped four rankings in climate change performance last year despite this $8-billion slush fund and another carbon tax increase.
Chair, I will remind this committee that just last year another Liberal slush fund was exposed, so I think it's imperative that we get to the bottom of this. Last year, we learned that the Prime Minister hand-picked a chair to run another billion-dollar green fund. Canadians eventually found that the chair of the green tech slush fund siphoned $217,000 of taxpayer dollars to her own company. That green slush fund was exposed for gross mismanagement and multiple conflicts of interest. In fact, the government official confirmed that no action was taken after these conflicts of interest were exposed.
Chair, my point is that there is a glaring history of corruption and cover-ups with this Liberal government. It is essential that we get to the bottom of this, given the environment commissioner's damning report.