He's just like Sergeant Schultz in Hogan's Heroes. He's just like, apparently, most of the Liberal caucus. They don't know anything about this. They don't know anything about it. They've sat through hours of testimony, and yet their ears are closed. I know why they're closed. We'll come to that.
Minister Champagne says he acted. Well, let's see how he acted. We were about to have a witness here who met for three months, in 30 hours of taped conversations, with the whistle-blower, and we're expected to believe that at no time did anyone in the deputy minister's office or the minister's office know that was going on.
Of course, that's what they're going to claim, that they didn't know anything, just like Mr. Noseworthy, just like Mr. Knubley, just like Minister Bains, who can't remember whether he got on a private jet or not. He has to actually have somebody hold up a sign at the Ottawa airport with his name on it just in case he forgets he has a corporate limo picking him up from Rogers.
Minister Champagne says he acted; 30 hours of meetings taped and he does nothing. After six months of frustration for whistle-blower number one—he waited six months, thinking, “Oh, I'm sure they're earnest like me over at industry, and I'm sure the minister is just as concerned as I am about the loss of $400 million,”—there was nothing. There was dead air. There was absolutely nothing. He goes to The Globe and Mail. All of a sudden, the minister goes, “Oh, look, I just discovered this; I'd better hire somebody to come in and look at it.”
This was going on for six, seven and eight months. The department was being briefed. He had ADMs in every bloody meeting, where 82% of the things that happened in the meeting were conflicted. There were so many SDTC directors leaving the room and recusing themselves that Noseworthy was getting windburn because they were leaving. They were having trouble holding quorum in the board meetings there were so few directors who could actually vote on anything.
Apparently, as MP Cooper said, Mr. Noseworthy was busy eating chicken fingers as all of these folks were going in and out of the room. But he didn't see anything. He didn't see anything. It's deniability, right? It's covering your you-know-what. We have another word for it in Atlantic Canada. It's the “A” word. For some reason, he wants to be the fall guy, because everybody points to Noseworthy. He was in the room. It must be his fault. Let's point at this guy.
What is all this that happened that people sat there? You had nine directors named. Now, the government claims that they did this. Well, no, the actual first letter raising this went from our incredibly diligent ethics critic. It's funny, but they don't have an ethics minister over there, for any reason, in the government. But we have an ethics critic, and I have to tell you, he's a pretty busy fellow.
MP Barrett wrote a letter early on in this to the Ethics Commissioner and wrote to the Auditor General. This is how this stuff came about. It wasn't because Minister Champagne actually said to call in the Auditor General. No. He said to call in an accounting firm, and not to do a forensic audit: Let's see if there's some governance issues there and let's have a report. We'll get a draft. Then we'll alter it. Then we'll bury it and hope nobody asks for it.
Then he'd stand up and talk about it in the House: I'll take no lessons from anyone, including the whistle-blower who was telling me for six months that there was a problem. I'll take no lessons from him on the fact that I'm not in charge of my department. I'll take no lessons from him that I'm not on top of the game. I'll take no lessons from him. The fact is that I never read a contract I ever signed, even though I'm a corporate lawyer. I signed contracts to give us all these battery contracts, a whole 26 pages.
He then admitted in committee that he never read it. Boy oh boy, I'm sure he advised all his clients, when he was a corporate lawyer, that they should sign contracts without reading them, especially when they're spending $15 billion of taxpayer money.
That's the care this minister gives to the taxpayer dollar as he flies around the world in first class, hobnobbing with people, handing out big cheques, and then running around with the next one all at your expense. Let's not forget the big cheque he handed out to Northvolt, which has just declared bankruptcy. That's the diligence this minister puts on things. He's a failure. He's a failure because he doesn't care about the taxpayer dollars under him. He's shown that not only with this but also with other things.
These are directors Navdeep Bains put in. Do you know what Navdeep Bains claimed? He said, “I never called anybody who wasn't on a list from the Privy Council Office.” Everybody here knows who the Privy Council Office works for.