Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be splitting my time today with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.
I am happy to speak in this debate today. I am happy to speak period, because we do not know when the Liberal government is going to prorogue Parliament, suspend Parliament or call an election to stop parliamentarians from having a voice.
I am saddened, however, to be debating this specific motion, a motion to create a committee to examine the ongoing corruption of the Liberal government. Canada is in its second wave of COVID it seems, but we appear to be in our sixth or seventh wave of Liberal corruption. Let us review some of the items at hand.
The company of the husband of the Prime Minister's chief of staff was awarded a huge contract to administer the failed rent subsidy program. Let that sink in: $84 million was given to a company for which the husband of the Prime Minister's chief of staff was a senior executive. The Liberals will say that Katie Telford recused herself from the discussions, but anyone who has worked in the private sector, or even within government, knows that this is a false claim. She can recuse herself on paper, but the reality is that people working for her, people working in the government and people working below her will know she is in power, and their jobs and livelihoods depend on her. They are not going to step in the way. They are going to be influenced by her position.
Furthermore, her husband repeatedly lobbied the office of former finance minister Morneau to make tax changes to the wage subsidy program, changes that would have benefited his company and a few other companies. He was not a registered lobbyist, but he used the power of being married to the Prime Minister's chief of staff, who is basically the most powerful, unelected person in this country. Her husband used that power to lobby the finance minister's office.
Staff of the finance minister's office said they were very uncomfortable when dealing with them because they knew he was Telford's husband. This goes back to my comment that she recused herself. People in a position of power like this cannot just wash their hands by simply saying they recuse themselves, as very clearly shown by comments made by the former finance minister's staff.
We asked in the House, because we heard rumours, whether the husband of the Prime Minister's chief of staff personally lobbied the PMO. Did we get an answer? Of course not. It was a simple yes-or-no question. The very fact that the Liberals would not answer it leads us to conclude that he was involved and did do that.
Another issue at hand is ventilators. Former Liberal MP Frank Baylis received a contract for about a quarter of a billion dollars to build ventilators that, by the way, are not approved by any jurisdiction in Canada. Ventilators that normally cost $1,000 to $5,000 now somehow cost up to $24,000 each when being made by a Liberal. Again, they were not approved by any jurisdiction in Canada.
No doubt the Liberals would stand up and tell us not to worry, that this has since been approved. I find it remarkable that they can grant a contract worth a quarter of a billion dollars to buy unapproved ventilators, but at the same time have been repeatedly refusing to approve rapid testing kits for Canada. There is a special deal for a Liberal, but for rapid testing kits to get employees working and to protect seniors, no, let us not jump the gun; we cannot approve those. Perhaps if Frank Baylis's company would make rapid testing kits, we could get them into Canadians' hands.
It does not stop there with him. When he was on the industry committee, his company bid on a contract for a $400,000 grant. His company received that contract about a month and a half after the last election. The Liberals will say not to worry; he was not a member of Parliament at the time. However, when the contract was made available or posted for tender, Frank Baylis's company bid on the grant while he was on the industry committee.
Guess who had posted the grant and was deciding the grant. It was Industry Canada. We had a Liberal MP on the industry committee bidding on business being decided on by Industry Canada. This is the same Liberal MP who would have sat on that committee and voted yea or nay on the estimates for that department and whether it received funding. It is also the exact same Liberal MP who berated government employees about not making enough federal money available for research grants, the same grant his company eventually got, further lining the pockets of Liberals, the $400,000 for Frank Baylis.
There are other items.
There is the famous WE scandal; $900 million given to friends of the Liberal Party, sole-sourced of course. We all know WE was in financial trouble. Who comes in like the cavalry? It is the Prime Minister and the Liberals with $900 million of taxpayer money. This is the same WE that paid for that very cringeworthy election-style video for the Prime Minister a few years back; the same WE that paid the Prime Minister's mother tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees and expenses; the same WE that paid the Prime Minister's brother tens of thousands of dollars to appear; the same WE that paid well over $100,000 to the Prime Minister's wife. Over a half a million of fees was paid out to the Prime Minister's family.
It is the same WE that gave a free vacation worth $40,000, violating ethics rules, for the former finance minister. Of course, Bill Morneau said that he forgot, that he did not see the invoice. Maybe it was sitting at his French villa and he got around to it later. It is the same WE that employed the finance minister's daughter, keeping in mind that the former finance minister and the Prime Minister were at the cabinet table when this money was approved. It is the same WE that gave non-stop promotional appearances to the Prime Minister.
Since then, we also now have the Liberals spending over 20 hours in various committees. blocking the release of various documents regarding the WE scandal. What it is about the Prime Minister and his government that leads to such non-stop corruption?
We had the Vice-Admiral Norman affair, where the former Treasury Board president, Scott Brison, interfered with a contract on behalf of the Irving family in order to scuttle a deal between National Defence and the Davie shipyard. It was not enough for Brison and the Liberals just to interfere with that contract; they went out and destroyed Vice-Admiral Norman's life. Imagine giving 38 years of his life to the defence of his country, just to have the Liberal government destroy his life merely for granting a contract.
We had the clam scam, where the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada directly interfered to give a lucrative clam deal to a paper company owned by a family member. Just to spread the corruption around, the company was also partly owned by a former Liberal MP and the brother of the current MP for Sackville—Preston—Chezzetcook.
We had the famous billionaire island visit, where the Prime Minister received a quarter-million dollar gift, basically from a lobbyist.
We had Liberal Raj Grewal using his role on the finance committee to lobby for rules to change investigations into legal gambling activities.
We had Lav scam, where the government interfered in a judicial process to grant special favours to a company being investigated for corruption.
It saddens me that we need a committee such as this to investigate corruption, but it is necessary for Canadians to have confidence in the government, confidence in the political process and confidence that elected officials will do what is best for Canadians, not just for well-placed Liberal hacks.