Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in strong support of a motion put forward by the official opposition to establish a special committee to look into questionable COVID spending on the part of the Liberal government.
In a lot of ways, this should be a routine matter. This is hardly unprecedented in terms of establishing a special committee. There was, after all, the Accountability Act committee. In this Parliament, there is the Canada-China committee. In the last Parliament, I served as the vice-chair of the Special Joint Committee on Physician-Assisted Dying. These are all committees that were established to look specifically at certain issues.
Here we have questions about the misuse and abuse of taxpayers' dollars on the part of the government. We have multiple questions on conflicts of interest. We have questions of corruption going to the highest levels in the government, all the way to the PMO.
One would think that, in the interest of transparency and accountability, the government would be eager for such a committee to get to work. As my colleague, the member for Carleton stated, if the government has nothing to hide, then let us proceed. We have a Prime Minister who has famously said that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Why would the Prime Minister not want to let the sun shine in?
Let me just say that at the top of the list is the WE scandal. It started back in late June when it was discovered that an organization called the WE organization had received a half a billion dollar, sole-source contribution agreement. It was known at that time that there were links between the Prime Minister and his wife, and the Kielburger brothers.
The Prime Minister, however, said there was nothing to see. He said he had not benefited from the WE organization. His wife had a podcast, but that was all. It turns out that was not true.
About two weeks later it was revealed that the Prime Minister's brother, mother and spouse had received more than half a million dollars in fees and expenses from none other than the WE organization. The Prime Minister said that he had no choice, that it was the civil service that recommended the WE organization receive this half-a-billion-dollar, sole-source contribution agreement. That turned out not to be true.
Indeed, the more we learn, the more questions arise. For a Prime Minister who said there was no political interference and no political direction, we learned that in addition to the Kielburgers just by coincidence enriching the Prime Minister's family, there had been multiple communications between the Kielburgers and the former minister of finance in the way of three emails and a telephone conversation.
We learned that there were multiple communications between the Kielburgers and officials in former finance minister Bill Morneau's office. Indeed, Michelle Kovacevic, a senior finance official, noted that the PMO was weighing in and that the Kielburgers and the finance minister were besties. However, the Prime Minister said that there was no political interference and he knew nothing. However, as the evidence mounted, the more and more it became clear that the Prime Minister's words were not worth the paper they were written on. The fact is that there was political direction. We know that.
Then we ask why there would be political direction to an organization that had never administered such a program before, that did not have the capacity to administer such a program before, that was in chaos at the time in terms of firing staff and the chair of its board and being in breach of its banking covenants. For an organization that was seemingly the only organization that could possibly administer this program, it is rather interesting that an organization with that kind of a record, which should have been at the bottom of the list, went to the top of the list.
The simple explanation is that there was a quid pro quo. The WE organization benefited the Prime Minister's family and in return it received sole-sourced contracts with the federal government. There were at least five such sole-sourced contracts prior to the big enchilada of the half-a-billion-dollar contribution agreement. That alarmed Canadians, and rightfully so. It raised a lot of questions.
I happened to serve on the finance committee with my colleague, the member for Carleton, who ably led the committee for the official opposition as we sought answers. In the course of those hearings, the government agreed to produce relevant documents. Then what happened? On the very day that 5,000 pages of documents were produced, the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament. The day that the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament was none other than the day prior to which all of these speaking fee documents were to be provided to the ethics committee.
For a government that talks so much about caring for Canadians, about being so preoccupied with addressing the pandemic, the record of the government has been to obstruct, filibuster, shut down Parliament and now even to threaten an election to cover up its own corruption and it is prepared to do so even at the expense of the health, safety and economic vitality of Canadians during this unprecedented crisis. It is an absolute disgrace.
Canadians deserve answers. We need to follow the evidence and that begins by passing this motion.