Mr. Speaker, I would first like to say that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Saint-Jean.
I think that the government is scraping the bottom of the barrel today. The Liberals told us that it is too bad if we, the men and women of the opposition, do our job because they will not allow that to happen. They will trigger an election and say that it is our fault. I think that is rather shocking. Investigating is the opposition's job, and we are going to do it. We did our job all summer and we will continue to do it.
According to the Liberals, we are going to paralyze Parliament if we form a special committee to study WE Charity. The opposite is true. We are proposing this solution to avoid paralyzing Parliament. My colleagues across the way may not have noticed, but Parliament was paralyzed all summer. All summer, four of the House's standing committees had quite a lot on their plate. They had to drop all their other work to investigate WE Charity. There was the Standing Committee on Finance, the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, and the Standing Committee on Official Languages. Four committees were working on nothing but the WE scandal to try to get more clarity.
We started up again in September. The Prime Minister had prorogued the House in August, and we started working again. To us, it made no sense. These committees have work to do. Nearly $343 billion has been spent on COVID-19 since the spring. The Standing Committee on Finance and the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates are going to have to look at that at some point. We felt there needed to be an efficient, logical approach. We are not paralyzing the work of the House. We are creating a separate special committee. That way, the other committees will be able to continue doing their work. That is what we are proposing. We are not proposing to paralyze the House. We want it to work better.
Their other argument is that we are in a pandemic. Since everyone is sick and losing their job, it makes no sense to study the WE scandal. That is like saying we have to let them rifle through the pockets of sick people lying in hospital beds and take their wallets without telling them, and they will take care of those wallets. Enough already.
Quebeckers who are sick and losing their jobs still pay income tax. The money this government is spending is their money. These people may be entitled to a doctor, but they are also entitled to MPs who take care of business and make sure that this money is managed properly.
That is our job. It is not only our right, but our duty, to investigate WE Charity. It would be irresponsible to let these scandals go on without taking action. We will do our job. We must be all the more vigilant now that people are so vulnerable. Many people have COVID-19 or have family members with COVID-19. People have lost their jobs or businesses. Bars and restaurants are closing down. People do not know where to turn. People are sick and need money. Most of all, they need MPs to do their job.
The government will not weasel out of the WE Charity scandal. God only knows what a fix we would be in had we not taken action, but the government will not get away with this. What is the government trying to avoid? Is it trying to avoid a thorough analysis and examination of WE Charity, or is it trying to prevent the opposition from taking a close look at everything else?
The $343 billion that has been spent is not peanuts. By refusing to strike the special committee, is the government trying to force us to examine WE Charity in the four standing committees, to prevent us from looking into these matters? Make no mistake, we are going to study this, but by forcing us to spend committee time studying WE Charity, is the government trying to distract us from something else, like what happened with the husband of the Prime Minister's chief of staff, or what happened with the purchase of ventilators? The Liberal motion mentions a few scandals, but that list is nowhere near exhaustive. There are many more. Is that what they are trying to avoid?
If we had not done our work and looked into the WE Charity scandal this summer, the folks at that organization would still have millions of dollars in their pockets, either paid out or reimbursed.
I think it was roughly $30 million. They had a $43-million contract to manage about $900 million in student grants. The $43 million would now be in the pockets of WE Charity. God knows whose pockets the $900 million would be in, because God knows how it would have been managed. The $40,000 that finance minister Morneau repaid to WE Charity the morning that he testified would still be in the pockets of the Morneau family.
The Prime Minister still would not be aware that he was in a conflict of interest. He would still believe that the ethics rules apply to everyone except him. The work we did this summer made the Prime Minister realize this. I was watching him today during question period, and I think that he gets a little more embarrassed every day.
As I said at the start, the government is scraping the bottom of the barrel. All it can say is that it is too bad, but that if we keep hounding it, if we keep tabs on what it does, if we keep making sure it does not reach into everyone's pockets and hand out the money as it sees fit, it will call an election and then say that it is our fault.
Our Prime Minister is starting to look a little worn out.
Not so long ago, my leader wondered if the Prime Minister still had the focus to run the government. I do not think he did then, and today, I am sad to say that I do not think this government is run by a Prime Minister who is prepared to lead properly. The scandals keep piling up. It is never-ending. First there was the Aga Khan, then SNC-Lavalin, and now the WE scandal, not to mention the husband of the Prime Minister's chief of staff. Gerald Butts, principal secretary to the Prime Minister, was forced to resign. Everyone is being forced out.
I must reiterate that the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament in August. When he was being held accountable and being forced to hand over the information and documents we requested, he decided to drown us in boxes of documents. He sent us 5,000 redacted documents, which is a whole other story, and prorogued Parliament the same day. A few days before that, the then minister of finance resigned. This all happened at the same time, practically the same week. A finance minister being forced to resign is a big deal.
The government prorogued Parliament and sent over 5,000 pages of redacted documents. I looked at those documents. They were as clear as mud. They were not dated or signed. Any old thing was put down any old way. It is a lot of work to try to understand them.
I saw that a few times in my career as a lawyer. Judges imposed penalties for that sort of thing. When one side was required to produce documents, it had to be done properly. They could not just produce any old thing, any old way, in an attempt to overwhelm the other side. That is what happened this summer. As I was saying, the government is scraping the bottom of the barrel today. It is threatening us. As though prorogation were not bad enough, now the government is saying that it will force an election and say that it is our fault. That is irresponsible. We will not let the government get away with that. We will do our job. We will stand up. Regardless of what the Liberals decide to do, we will vote in favour of a special committee to study the WE Charity scandal and any other scandal related to the management of the COVID-19 crisis.