Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be able to address the House today, as always, on behalf of the people I respect in Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, and to do my best to advance the common good for Canada.
We are here in the House of Commons, which is appropriately named because we are here to represent the common people and advance the common good, which is the history and the mission of this place; and to represent the common people possessed of common sense, which is the wisdom that is accrued through normal life, and the common good, which is the good of the common people; as well as policies that are for the common benefit of all citizens.
I want to observe at the outset of my speech that in the course of the history of democracies, there has often been a tension between the interests and concerns of the common people and those of governing elites. These tensions are actually deeply embedded in the rituals of this very place. When a Speaker is first elected, he or she is dragged from their place. The history of that is that early on, Speakers were reluctant to take their place because there was significant risk of their being beheaded by the monarch.
Now there may be other reasons why the Speaker is reluctant to take his or her place, but they are different than they were in the past. The earlier reason is based on the fact that the Speaker, as the servant of the House, represented the efforts of the chamber of the common people to challenge the monarchy in its efforts to exercise what it saw as its own privileges.
In all democracies, and this continues today, particularly in large representative democracies, the existence of some kind of governing elite is always inevitable. If we look back at history, we can see how monarchs, aristocrats, parliamentarians, public servants, public intellectuals, recognized media commentators, corporate managers, identified experts and so on have fulfilled some kind of elite function. Whether they have been praised or criticized, depending on the circumstances, every society has had something like elites.
This is because most people, normal people, have busy lives and by necessity focus on taking care of their families and contributing to the work of the productive economy. A society would not work very well if it were not the case that most people are focused on the work of production in an economy and on taking care of their own family and the well-being of their own immediate community.
While most people focus on their own life and well-being, the day-to-day operations of governing institutions, even in a democracy, fall to a group of representatives and experts whose lives, paradoxically, are not representative of the lived experience of most people. This is the reality of the relations that exist in a representative democracy and to some extent that exist in all societies. There are challenges built into this very reality that will be largely unavoidable in any place and time.
However, a good society is one in which governing elites understand their function as being that of serving the common good. In properly ordered societies, the common sense that has accrued through normal common life, the common sense that is the natural wisdom of the common people, provides the North Star that governing elites pursue. Elites in a democracy should always recognize, as the end of their activities, the advancement of the common good, noting, of course, that if they fail to advance and serve the common good, representative democracy provides the tools for removing governing elites from their positions.
With that in mind, I would observe that, sadly, over the last nine years, the relationship that should exist between governing elites and the people has gone way out of balance. The current Liberal government, along with its circle of managerial elite insiders and friends, has sought to use its power to advance its own elite interests and to protect its own elite privileges rather than to advance the common good.
Liberals have sought to control the various parts of our social and political elite. They have sought to reduce the corporate sector to a high degree of dependence on government. They have sought to bankroll like-minded civil society organizations while punishing civil society organizations with different opinions.
They have sought to buy off traditional media through subsidies, undermining its independence. They have sought to elevate their corporate capitalist cronies in exchange for the willingness of those cronies to use their corporate power to push leftist causes. Liberals have sought to capture the elite and use the elite to advance their own ideological interests and causes, and to do it at the expense of the common people and with no regard for common sense.
Liberals have sought to insulate themselves from the realities of life in Canada under their watch. Taxes are up, costs are up, homes are becoming increasingly unaffordable and crime is out of control, yet Liberal elites remain removed from these realities, protected by the walls of their gated communities, protected by their public subsidies and protected from the realities of the cost and pain that have resulted for most people from the government's policies. This is why we feel the urgent need to bring common sense and the voice of the common people speaking for the common good to this House.
Liberals have the audacity to complain when we critique the failures of governing elites. They complain because they do not like it when we give voice to those who have lost trust in their decisions. Paradoxically, the Liberals even try to suggest that the criticism of insider elites is an attack on democracy. However, the ability to critique and replace a governing elite is the very essence of representative democracy. It is what it means to be a representative democracy. The common people should have the capacity to insist through elections that the governing elite is representative and responsive. The need to remove the current Liberal government from office is why so many Canadians want a carbon tax election now.
This breakdown in the relationship between governing elites and the common people, in particular the betrayal of trust by the Liberal elites, is causing the corruption of our government. I want to therefore reflect on the word corruption. It is obviously a sensitive term, but one that we must attach to the activities of the NDP-Liberal government over the last nine years.
Corruption has two distinct meanings. One way of understanding corruption is as the transgression of some established rule or the breaking of a defined rule of conduct. This is, in practice, how we most commonly use the word corruption to describe instances where the rules that are supposed to prescribe the conduct of those in power are broken for some personal advantage. That is one meaning or understanding of corruption. Another meaning of corruption, though, and also an important one, is a process of degeneration, when something becomes corrupted and the rules that are supposed to hold an institution or an entity together themselves no longer uphold any kind of rational purpose. We can therefore think of corruption as describing both the transgression of established rules and the process of degeneration whereby the actions of those in power, even when they conform formally to established rules, nonetheless are clearly contrary to any rational purpose and in particular are contrary to the pursuit of the common good.
When I reflect on corruption under the current government, we should notice that we are talking about corruption in both senses of the term. We have clear cases where rules have been broken, and they start at the very top with the Prime Minister and flow throughout government. There are various scandals where we can see that particular kind of corruption. We also see more broadly a tendency within the government to define the objective as being the advancement of its own elite interests and those of its friends.
Before I talk about the specifics of SDTC, I want to highlight one other contemporaneous example, and that is the situation of carbon tax conflict of interest Mark Carney.
It has been very interesting to hear the exchanges about Mark Carney's role in government during question period. Conservatives have critiqued the fact that Liberals have tried to find a way around the rules by making Mark Carney an economic adviser to the Liberal Party without him nominally officially having a role within the executive exercise of power of the Government of Canada. That is their way of trying to get around the rules that require certain kinds of disclosures and protections from conflicts of interest for someone who is entering government formally as a public office holder, a senior staff member, an elected official or a parliamentarian. Certain conflict of interest rules would bind his activity if he were to take on a formal advisory role for the Government of Canada.
The Liberals think they have come up with something very clever to try to skirt the rules. They claim that he is not an adviser within the government; he is an adviser to the Liberal Party of Canada. Most Canadians are aware of the fact, even if they do not like it, that the Liberal Party of Canada is in government. When we have a well-connected member of the elite with specific personal economic interests that involve decisions being made by the Government of Canada who is also able to advise the Prime Minister, cabinet and senior decision-makers throughout the party, it is clearly an effort to skirt the rules to protect the interests of elite insiders. It allows Mark Carney to continue to get the advantages of his business position while having close access to government and being able to use that access to advocate for policies that may benefit his private interests without any kind of proper disclosure or transparency. This may not be corruption in one sense of the word, but I think it demonstrates corruption in another sense of the word, which is a degeneration of respect for the common good in the exercise of public functions by the government.
We are here debating a question of privilege, and the need to raise a question of privilege is in itself a demonstration of a kind of corruption within the relationship between Parliament and the elites. Questions of privilege have to be raised not in every case where something inappropriate has happened, but in cases where Parliament has certain entitlements that it is not able to see fulfilled.
In this case, we are dealing with Parliament having ordered that certain documents be handed over, and the government has refused to hand over those documents. This is not the first time this has happened with the Liberal government. Many of these privilege issues have been raised at various parliamentary committees. I believe this is the second time that a question of privilege specifically relating to the government handing over documents to Parliament has had to come before the House. The last time this happened, the government tried to bring the sitting Speaker to court over it and then called an early election, which had the effect of avoiding that order. Then it made its coalition deal with the NDP, and the NDP covered for it to prevent the further request of those documents. I am talking about the Winnipeg lab documents affair.
There have been multiple instances where the government has refused to hand over documents, where officials have refused to appear or where insiders, be they contractors or other officials, have come to committee and point blank refused to answer questions. This is a demonstration of corruption within a governing elite. There is a lack of respect for basic democratic principles and norms when government officials and well-connected insider friends and contractors feel that they can defy the orders of Parliament and get away with it. It is as if they are not acquainted with the basic principle that the House of Commons, the representative body of the common people, is supposed to be able to direct the actions of elites.
The fact that there have been multiple instances of people called to the bar, with likely a third coming, and many instances of refusal to hand over documents demonstrates the basic problem that our governing elites under the Liberal government increasingly feel that they do not have to follow the direction of the common people's House and the elected representatives of the common people. This is a corruption of the proper relationship that should exist between governing elites and the common people.
The common people's House, the House of Commons, should be recognized as supreme in our system of government, and under the Liberals, it is not. They think they can defy the direction of the House of Commons. We will hear in debates the Liberals offering various reasons why they did not like the motion that ordered the production of these documents, and they are welcome to that opinion. They are welcome to vote against motions of the House or motions at committee to order the production of documents. However, whether they like the motion is a different question from whether they should recognize the supremacy of the House of Commons and the obligation of governing elites to adhere to the wishes of the representatives of the people's House acting in concert.
Of course, we need to talk not just about how we got here with this privilege question or the broader issues of corruption in the government, but the outrageous and salacious details of this particular green slush fund scandal. What happened with the green slush fund, very simply, is that a group of elite insiders, on behalf of the government, were allocating money to various companies and were, outrageously, voting to allocate government money to their own companies. In some cases, the direct beneficiaries stepped out of the room for that vote, and in other cases, they did not. The Auditor General found $58 million went to 10 ineligible projects and $334 million in over 186 cases went to projects in which board members held a conflict of interest.
Imagine a bunch of people sitting around a table deciding which companies get taxpayers' money. Bob says he would love for his company to get $20 million and they should all vote on it, but he will abstain. Next they vote on giving money to Bill's company, but he will abstain, sometimes. We cannot make this up. A group of well-connected, elite insiders had a massive pool of taxpayers' dollars, money worked for and earned by everyday Canadians that was given to the government in taxes, and this group, appointed by the Liberals, was sitting around deciding how to give out that money, in some cases giving it to ineligible projects and in many cases giving it to companies and projects that were directly benefiting those same people sitting around the table. This is outrageous. This is a clear demonstration of a basic corruption in the operations of the government.
Did it violate established rules? Yes, it violated established rules, but moreover, how could anyone think it was acceptable? Regardless of what the specific rules said, is it plausible that anyone could think it was acceptable to cast a vote to grant taxpayers' dollars to their own company? It is utterly insane. However, this is demonstrative of where we are with the corruption that has been sinking into the Government of Canada over the last nine years, whether we are talking about this particular scandal or other scandals that are currently being investigated.
There was the arrive scam scandal, where senior public servants are still blaming each other because a former minister said he wanted someone's head on a plate over it. We are currently investigating the outrageous abuses of the indigenous contracting program. Non-indigenous elite insiders were able to take advantage of this program, in some cases by pretending to be indigenous, taking money that was properly supposed to benefit indigenous people.
We in the common-sense Conservative caucus are here to stand up for the common people, to stand up for the common good against Liberal elite insiders who have corrupted our government. This is why we need a new government that would bring common-sense—