Without further interventions from the Liberals, Mr. Chair, I'm sure I can finish my remarks in a minute to two minutes.
To get to my point, I hear constantly about the government misusing taxpayer money. The comments I receive on social media daily are, “Great. You've exposed the scandal, as you continue to do, but when are we going to get our money back?”
The Liberals have already passed a timeline in which to report to the House as to how they were going to recoup the monies with the arrive scam scandal. That deadline has long passed. It was in the month of June. It's close to $60 million. We have close to a half a billion dollars of wasted money that went to the preferred interests of a chair hand-picked by Justin Trudeau, who should have known better and should not have relied upon the advice of a lawyer who was also conflicted. She should have obtained advice from an independent legal counsel. She did not. Given her business acumen, she should have taken the appropriate steps. She wilfully and deliberately chose to break the code of ethics as set out under that particular act. She was found guilty not once but twice. Now, this will be another debate for another time and perhaps in a different committee, but the penalty is $500 per infraction, so $1,000 for essentially stealing close to half a billion dollars.
This is what happens when you are closely connected to the Liberal Party of Canada, and more particularly when you're closely connected to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. You get rewarded with zero consequence.
On the issue of consequence, I hope the RCMP are following this meeting very carefully. I hope they have reviewed the Ethics Commissioner's report very carefully. I hope they review the Auditor General's report very carefully, because there's criminality involved here.
When Ms. Verschuren appeared before the ethics committee several months ago, I warned her point-blank at that point, without even getting into all the details that had been uncovered but just the stories that had come out in the national news about the breaches of the ethics rules and the conflicts of interest that were overlooked, that she should lawyer up. I advised her about the potential criminal charges involved in the actions she has taken—the breach of trust, the fraud, the potential forgery. All of these issues are live issues that need to be explored. We need to find out how deep the rot really is at SDTC and what that number really is in terms of governmental waste.
That is why we will support the motion brought by my colleague Mr. Perkins. We believe two meetings are appropriate, two hours each, for those two witnesses. There is a high degree of urgency here. It cannot wait until Parliament resumes in the middle of September. The public needs to know exactly what the true value is and what steps we will take as a committee to ensure accountability.
Mr. Chair, accountability and good governance do not and should not take a vacation.