Mr. Speaker, I was sharing some of travesties the Prime Minister has wreaked upon great institutions and great people, like David Johnston, the former governor general of this country, a man with a huge reputation until the Prime Minister appointed him as special rapporteur on foreign interference in our elections, our democratic institutions. That appointment was made despite the close ties Mr. Johnston had with the Trudeau family and Trudeau Foundation, a foundation that had received funds from a foreign nation, which was going to be the subject of the investigation.
Maybe this obvious conflict of interest was not immediately obvious to our high school drama teacher Prime Minister, but it certainly should have been obvious to highly educated David Johnston. Unfortunately, he did not get it, he did not understand it or he turned a blind eye to it. In the end, he resigned, another fatality of the Prime Minister's golden touch.
I could go on with other examples. I could mention the Winnipeg lab affair, the ArriveCAN scam or the billionaire island scandal. Some of my colleagues have raised those already. I am not going to belabour the point other than to relate this back to the question of the day: What happened to Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, better known now by its new nickname, the Liberal Party green slush fund?
I will provide a little history. SDTC was created by an act of Parliament back in former Liberal prime minister John Chrétien's days to promote investment in green technology, a laudable objective. It continued its work under former prime minister Stephen Harper and would likely be thriving today if the current Prime Minister had left it alone, but he could not resist the temptation of firing the people who were there and putting his own friends in place instead. That is what went wrong. The Prime Minister's friends sat on the board and, despite conflicts of interest, distributed money among themselves, insiders helping other insiders, Liberal friends helping each other.
We know all of this from the independent Auditor General's report 6, which was tabled in Parliament on June 4, a couple of weeks before the House rose for the summer break. It is highly critical of what was happening at SDTC. I am not going to get into the details because the report is public information, but I will discuss some examples. There was $390 million in misallocated taxpayer funds that was granted to insiders or non-qualifying projects. These are insiders on the board of directors supporting each other in their grant applications. There were 186 examples of conflicts of interest, with board members voting for each other's applications.
The Auditor General learned about this from a whistle-blower. This is what one of those whistle-blowers told the standing parliamentary committee now looking into it: “Just as I was always confident that the Auditor General would confirm the financial mismanagement at SDTC, I remain equally confident that the RCMP will substantiate the criminal activities that occurred within the organization.” There we have it. It is not just mismanagement but criminality.
Therefore, we, the official opposition Conservative Party, did what we were elected to do, which is holding the government to account and uncovering corruption. Where there is smoke, there is fire. We are doing our job.
We put forward a motion shortly after the Auditor General's report was tabled. I am going to read a small portion of it: “That the House order the government, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and the Auditor General of Canada each to deposit with the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, within 30 days of the adoption of this order, the following documents, created or dated since January 1, 2017”. The order goes on to describe what some of those documents are, the different types and categories.
This Conservative motion passed a little while later, on June 10, with the support of the other opposition parties, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois. Only Liberal members of Parliament voted against it.
I know the Liberals are not happy with the order, but this is the reality of a minority House. This is the way it works. They do not have a majority. They need to play nice with, and get support from, one of the opposition parties. They failed to do that. They are now stuck with this order they say they do not like. Well, that is too bad. Parliament is supreme, Parliament made the order and the Liberal Party must now comply with it. The governing party does not have a choice not to comply with it.
That is what happened. Nothing happened during the summer. Some of the documents were delivered, but not all. Clearly, the order was not complied with. We got back here in September after the summer break and things started to get very ugly. The first day back in the House, our House leader, the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, rose on a question of privilege “concerning the failure of the government to comply with the order that the House adopted on Monday, June 10”.
I do not have to repeat anything in the House leader's speech. It is in Hansard for anybody who is interested in reading it. It is well researched, it is well written, and it is convincing. As a matter of fact, it convinced the Speaker, and a couple of days later, the Speaker made his ruling. The ruling confirms the earlier order. The Prime Minister's Office and all relevant government departments must comply with the original document production order as demanded, unredacted.
The Liberal House leader has been leading a valiant but ultimately failing charge against this document production order and the Speaker's ruling. She raises several interesting but specious constitutional arguments, which I would summarize as follows: number one, the document production order trespasses on the charter right of freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, section 8 of the charter; number two, the document production order exceeds the authority of the House by attempting to secure documents for a third party, namely the RCMP; and number three, the document production order is an unconstitutional attempt by the House of Commons to appropriate the role of another branch of government, namely the judiciary.
All are interesting and creative arguments but, in my submission, ineffective, and a little late in the day, as far as the Speaker was concerned. In his ruling, he said, “The Chair would suggest, respectfully, that these concerns ought to have been raised prior to the motion's adoption.” The first thing we learn in law school is that if a person is going to present in court, they better get all the evidence in, all the facts and all their arguments before the judge makes his ruling, not afterwards. It is too late.
The Speaker came to the reasonable conclusion that the document production order of a couple of months earlier stood, that it was not followed, and that the Liberals are wrong. The Prime Minister's Office must comply with the document production order.
The ruling reads:
The House has the undoubted right to order the production of any and all documents from any entity or individual it deems necessary to carry out its duties. ...these powers are a settled matter, at least as far as the House is concerned. They have been confirmed and reconfirmed by my immediate predecessors, as well as those more distantly removed.
...The Chair cannot come to any other conclusion but to find that a prima facie question of privilege has been established.
That is the ruling. That means the government must comply, and the Prime Minister's Office, the PMO, must make it clear to the departments that the House order ought to be complied with fully. I know the Liberals are not happy with this, with the original motion or with the ruling. They say it is unusual, that this is not normal course of business. Well, maybe so, but it is the ruling of the House and the House is supreme, and it can make this order, as the Speaker has ruled.
It is important to highlight that the other two opposition parties, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, have both noted that while the order might be unusual, that does not excuse non-compliance, and I would underline that. There is no excuse for non-compliance.
Experts agree with that position. I am going to quote from Bosc and Gagnon, who are experts in this field. House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, 2017, at page 985, talks about Parliament's right to order the production of documents. It reads, “No statute or practice diminishes the fullness of that power rooted in House privileges unless there is an explicit legal provision to that effect, or unless the House adopts a specific resolution limiting the power.”
The House has never set a limit on its power to order the production of papers and records; therefore, the production order stands. Ancient history says that Parliament can do this, and the Prime Minister refuses to comply. That is why we are at an impasse. That is why things have ground to a halt, and until this is resolved, nothing will be debated but this issue.
The Liberals blame it on us, and I am saying they need to comply with the orders. Canadians want to know what is in those documents. What are they hiding? I think that is the fundamental question. What are they worried about?
The Speaker was trying to be helpful and suggested that all the parties could send this off to the committee and have members look at it there, but he noted, correctly in my submission, that “it is ultimately for the House to decide how it wishes to proceed”. The House has decided and the House has ordered the production of the documents. The Prime Minister and the Liberal Party must comply.
The way I see it, the Liberals have three choices. They can comply with the order, which is what we have been saying all along for the last nine days. Number two, they can sue the Speaker, who I know will not take that personally. They have done that before. They can challenge the Speaker's ruling based on all the specious arguments they have put forward already. Number three, they can ask the Governor General to dissolve the 44th Parliament and call an election. This is what we have been calling for all along. It is my preference.
Number one is obviously the simplest and the cleanest, which is to comply with the order and we get on with business. We can then send it to committee. Number two is the most interesting. It would be to sue the Speaker. The Liberals have done this in the past, and then they changed their mind, dissolved Parliament and called an election. As a student of constitutional law and Canadian history, I think that would be the most interesting. Let us go ahead and do it and see if the Supreme Court will even take the case on. If it does, it would make great Canadian history. Number three would be the best for Canada, and that is simply to dissolve this Parliament and call an election.
I spoke to a lot of people in my riding during the summer months, and this is what they are calling for. They say to call an election, call it now, as soon as possible. This is what people want. They deserve a government that will stop the corruption, fix what the Liberals have broken and offer common-sense solutions to the problems facing ordinary Canadians today.
Canadians deserve a government that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Canadians deserve a government that does not play favourites with insiders and allows non-insiders can work hard and get ahead. Canadians deserve a Canada that delivers on its promise to all who call it home: that hard work earns powerful paycheques and pensions that buy affordable homes on safe streets in a country where anyone from anywhere can accomplish anything. All of this is possible, but first the Prime Minister has to call an election. He needs to do it now.
