Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's always a pleasure to speak, both in the House of Commons and at committee. Before I came to Parliament, I didn't realize how important these committee meetings can be, so it is appreciated.
I want to pick up on what Mr. Cooper had to say.
So much of this is intertwined relationships. There are Liberals who have relationships with other Liberals. There's one common denominator. Do you know what that is? It's people getting rich off the government. It's true.
Mr. Chair, when we think about this, you have somebody who is already insanely wealthy. I'm not sure if anybody here knows Mark Carney's net worth. I certainly don't, but I can guarantee it's probably a lot higher than mine and probably higher than that of every single person in this room combined.
Here he is, advising the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party, which is a party entitled to its entitlements and really defining the hubris that goes along with that.
People just don't have enough. People are lining up at food banks in my riding. They're having trouble paying their bills, yet we have Liberals getting richer and richer. I know it's not in the motion, so I won't speak to it for long, but I will be heading to the House of Commons shortly today on the green slush fund. What is that about? It's about Liberals helping Liberals get richer.
We need to get to the bottom of the conflicts of interest. It's bad enough that it's got this far.
Frankly, I would love to hear from Mr. Carney about what he's thinking, just from an interest point of view. This is somebody who wants to be the Prime Minister—he's made no secret of that—yet here he is, advising the government. He not only has a material interest....
Typically, the appearance of an interest is enough. I think most people would know that. Especially as lawyers, we have it drilled into us. I think every parliamentarian is taught, or should be taught, that where there is an appearance of a conflict, you have a de facto conflict. By that, I mean you proceed as though there's a conflict even if there isn't one, but there could be one. Just the appearance is enough to say, “Okay. That's too much. That's enough.”
As Mr. Barrett and Mr. Cooper so eloquently laid out, you have not only the appearance of a conflict but also what appears to be fairly tangible evidence of a conflict, in that somebody is advising the government at the same time they're negotiating contracts that would personally benefit them. That is the very definition of a conflict of interest. It's somebody who could benefit based on their relationships. That in itself is inherently problematic.
This is Canada. Our leader, Pierre Poilievre, often talks about the have-nots versus the have-yachts. I know where the have-yachts are. They seem to be at the Liberal convention. They seem to be at the green slush fund, where they're talking about, “How do we get more? Who's going to get more? Do you want more? How much more? A million? Two million? Five million?”
People are lined up at food banks. People can't afford their rent and there aren't enough houses for people to buy, yet we have Liberals lining up to line their own pockets. If there is one place where we are to address it, it should be here at the ethics committee.
That is why I am puzzled about why the Liberals here do not want Mr. Carney in that chair. What are they so afraid of? The conflict of interest is so clear. I'm sure he's very bright. I'm sure he will tell us all about it, if the Liberals agree to have him come, or perhaps if this committee overrules them and decides that it is the right thing.
If I were the Liberals, I would be saying, “I want this. Why do I want it? Because I want to show that there might be smoke, but there's no fire,” even though we know there is, because there are, at the very least, the optics of a conflict.
When we have friends of rich Liberals who are now advising the Prime Minister while negotiating and getting $2.5-billion contracts, this is so obviously a conflict of interest. I don't know what could be more the case. What do we need? We need Mr. Carney there sitting in that seat.
It sure is lonely right now. It's an empty seat. Let's have him there for a couple of hours, and he can tell us about this.
These are the other people that Mr. Barrett mentioned: Mr. Topp, Mr. Guy and Ms. Byrne. None of them wants to be prime minister. None of them are negotiating contracts with the Liberal government. None of their friends, as far as we know, stand to get rich from the government or are in the process of getting rich from the government.
This is a government that promised to be open by default, which is kind of ironic, because right now it is fighting a Speaker's ruling about openness in Parliament. Why would we assume that it is doing anything but that here? This isn't transparency; it's opacity. This government is opaque. Let's shed some light on it. Let's bring Mr. Carney here.
We've agreed that Ms. Byrne should attend. I'm not sure that they're going to hear very much. After all, she doesn't want to be prime minister. She's not advising us as a special adviser to skirt conflict of interest rules with the Liberal Party.
The Liberals could probably avoid this whole thing at the ethics committee just by having Mr. Carney made subject to conflict of interest rules or telling us—because they would not tell us during question period, and this was asked multiple times—if his involvement with the Liberal Party was cleared with the Commissioner of Lobbying. That's pretty simple.
Again, this is the open-by-default government, transparent by default: “Everything you want, we will get for you.” They won't even answer a question about lobbying, a yes-or-no question. “No, we dropped the ball, but we're doing it.” That's what they should say if they haven't cleared it, and if they have, then tell us. If they had, they would say yes, it was cleared by the Commissioner of Lobbying. Sometimes they don't like the answer, so they don't answer the question.
The government certainly didn't like the Speaker's ruling on the SDTC. I don't think that they're going to like the answer that they would get from the Commissioner of Lobbying, but who knows? I'm sure they'd be more than willing to give up all of the information, but there are so many questions to be answered and so many things to be dealt with at this committee, yet here we are struggling to get the transparency that we need by getting Mr. Carney right there in seat 17.
I would welcome him, shake his hand and pour him a glass of water, and then I and my Conservative colleagues would be happy to ask a number of tough questions on behalf of Canadians, not for political gain but because people have the right to know.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.