Debates of Oct. 2nd, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will draw my hon. colleague to the original order of the House from back on June 10, which would have provided enough time, 30 days, for documents to be produced. However, we still have not seen them.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleague knows, the NDP is supporting the motion. We believe in getting to the bottom of the SDTC scandal. The reality is that the misspending needs to be explored, and we absolutely believe in transparency, whether it is a Liberal scandal or a Conservative scandal. We also thank the Auditor General's department for having exposed the possible misspending.

Members will recall that under the Harper regime, Conservatives slashed funding to the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Budget Officer, in other words constraining the ability of those independent officers of Parliament to do their jobs. We saw the results. We lived through a number of Conservative scandals under the Harper regime that Conservatives blocked investigations on, such as the anti-terrorism funding of $3.1 billion, with absolutely no paper trail, and the Phoenix pay system, at $2.2 billion. We continue to pay for that today. There was also the F-35 procurement scandal, the G8 misspending of $1 billion and the ETS scandal of $400 million. That is not even including the Senate scandals and all the other scandals that we saw over this period, with Conservative members of Parliament, at least in one case, going to jail.

Why did Conservatives block all of that transparency, refuse the investigations and refuse to have Canadians know the truth about Conservative scandals?

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would remind my hon. colleague from the NDP that this is not only the current government's record. The NDP has supported and propped up the government for the last five and a half to six years, so this is also its record of scandal and corruption.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, am very glad to rise for the motion of privilege in front of the House today. I want to thank my colleagues, the member for Cariboo—Prince George and the member for Brantford—Brant, for their speeches today.

I have been working with my colleague from Brantford—Brant on the ethics committee, and this issue came before it almost a year ago. That is when we started looking into the SDTC scandal. However, even then, we were just scratching the surface of what was to come and what has led us to this point today.

I want to go back to August 12, 2020, just over four years ago. Of course, the world was dealing with the uncertainty of COVID at that time. The House was operating as a committee of the whole, and I remember that I gave a speech. We were just starting to really understand the extent and scope of some of the sole-source contracting that was going on. In particular, there was an issue with CMHC and Frank Baylis's ventilators. We were seeing insider cronyism start to take root within the Liberal Party, and sole-source contracts related to COVID matters, COVID equipment and so on were being given to Liberal-connected insiders.

I want to go back to what I said on August 12, 2020. I said, sitting right over where the hon. member for Edmonton Manning is right now:

The sponsorship scandal will look like a speck of sand in a desert when this is all over. When this is all over, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance [Bill Morneau] will be just fine.

I have a question to ask on behalf of every Canadian before more stories surface, because they will. How many more Liberal-connected friends, families and insiders have had their palms greased and have personally financially gained from this pandemic at the expense of Canadians who have suffered so much during this crisis? Will the Liberals be honest for once or do we have to wait for the Auditor General to tell us?

Well, the Auditor General has been telling us. Several investigations later, we have landed on the SDTC scandal, and what a scandal it has become, with Liberal-connected insiders and cronies greasing their palms to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars without any thought of conflict of interest and somehow without any thought to putting measures in place that would stop the fleecing of taxpayer dollars by the board of directors running SDTC.

It is important that we remember what got us to this point. It was the Auditor General who found that the Prime Minister had turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. I remember being at the meeting where she presented her report and how she talked about the malfeasance that was going on within SDTC and the fact that there was very little oversight and a whole lot of conflict of interest going on.

I have heard some of the questioning today from the Liberal side about criminality. It was not the Auditor General's task or role at the time to look into criminality. What she was looking for was how taxpayer dollars were landing in the hands of Liberal insiders without any regard for conflict of interest rules. That is what she was looking for, that is what she was reporting on and that is what shed light on the extent and scope of the scandal that the ethics committee was looking into almost a year earlier.

The other thing the Auditor General found was a recording of a senior civil servant who slammed the outright incompetence of the government, which gave out 390 million dollars' worth of contracts inappropriately. The whistle-blower was speaking about the very things that were going on. I recall that we had Doug McConnachie at the ethics committee. He had been recorded by the whistle-blower. They were talking about this scandal, and even Doug McConnachie was saying that this was a sponsorship-level scandal. The sponsorship scandal was $40 million, which is enough money, and we all know what happened there. It led to the Chrétien government being brought down. This is upward of $400 million of taxpayer dollars being funnelled to Liberal-connected insiders and cronies without any oversight.

The Auditor General found that SDTC gave $58 million to 10 ineligible projects and that it, on occasion, could not demonstrate an environmental benefit, not one environmental benefit, or the development of green technologies. Over 186 cases, $334 million went to projects for which board members held a conflict of interest. It is unbelievable that $58 million went to projects without ensuring that the contribution agreement terms were met.

I think of the coordinated effort that it takes among those boards of directors and the people involved to distribute that amount of money to what we now know, in many cases, were companies that they had a financial interest in. If that does not border on criminal, there is nothing that does, quite frankly.

The Auditor General also made it clear that the blame for this scandal falls on the Prime Minister's industry minister, who did not sufficiently monitor the contracts that were given to Liberal insiders, so it was common-sense Conservatives who really started the process of trying to get to the bottom of this. We had the industry minister in at the ethics committee, and we had an audit report that was done on this that we had asked for. We got it back, and it had been redacted. Then, the ethics committee had asked that we get the report unredacted and that the report actually come to us, and it did, finally, after a lot of push and pull.

However, I think it is important to really talk about why these oversight committees are so important to Parliament. The standing committees on ethics, public accounts and government operations, or “the mighty OGGO”, as we like to say, are important because they are chaired by opposition members. I have been the chair of the ethics committee now for two years, and that is why I am glad to speak to this. In my role as chair, there is a level of neutrality that is required, and we have to make sure that we are operating in a neutral way, in a neutral function, and giving a fair chance for all members.

However, these committees are run by the majority opposition members, and their intent is to hold the government to account. In the case of the ethics committee, we deal with ethics issues, and we have been dealing with a lot of ethics issues. I refer to it as the “shooting fish in a barrel” committee because of the amount of ethics scandals that we have been dealing with, and I will touch on those a bit later.

The mighty OGGO deals with government operations and contracts. Through OGGO, we found the arrive scam scandal and how that played itself out. Of course, there is public accounts. Quite frankly, this issue has been touching many committees, not just the oversight committees that are led by the opposition. We have been trying to do our job, our constitutional responsibility as His Majesty's loyal opposition, to get to the bottom of the many scandals that have been occurring, and we have been doing a very good job at that, sometimes with some opposition from the opposition.

We have not always had team players within other parties. We certainly saw that when the coalition agreement was on between the NDP and the Liberals. The NDP would provide cover in many cases for motions that we were trying to pass to shed light on many of these scandals.

We have seen, what I would call hopeful, signs that they have backed away from that, and we are getting to the bottom of many of these scandals, not the least of which is the “who is Randy” scandal that the ethics committee, and now Parliament, is currently seized with. When we look back on SDTC and we look at what its mandate was, it was, and still is, a federally funded non-profit that approves, and was supposed to disperse, $100 million in funds annually to clean technology companies. The key problem, of course, as I mentioned earlier, is that SDTC executives awarded projects, for which they held conflicts, amounting to over 330 million dollars' worth of taxpayer funds.

In 2019, when there were not any scandals in relation to the fund, former Liberal industry minister Navdeep Bains began removing Conservative executives from SDTC and started replacing them with Liberal-appointed executives. The Prime Minister's newly appointed board began voting in companies for which the executives of held active conflicts of interest in SDTC funding. Governing standards at the fund deteriorated rapidly under the leadership of the new chair Annette Verschuren, who was appointed by the Liberals, and who we had at the ethics committee.

In July, the Auditor General and the Ethics Commissioner initiated separate investigations after those whistle-blowers came forward with allegations of financial mismanagement at the fund. The Auditor General's investigation, as I said, found severe lapses in governance standards and it uncovered almost $400 million in funding that was awarded to projects that either should have been ineligible to receive funding or were awarded to projects in which board members were conflicted during that five-year audit period. This is just incredible stuff.

I wanted to talk a little about history. It is not just the SDTC scandal that we or Canadians should be focused on. It is a myriad of other scandals as well. As I said, as chair of the ethics committee, I have had a front-row seat over these last two years to many of these scandals. I also had a front-row seat when I was opposition House leader under our interim leader, Candice Bergen. At that time, we were really dealing with the Winnipeg lab document scandal. The government had not provided documents that were asked for by Parliament. In fact, it dug its heels in so much that the government took the Speaker to court to prevent these documents from being released.

We are seeing a very similar situation here. There was nothing in the order by Parliament, and Parliament is supreme. When committees ask for documents, there is an obligation on behalf of the government to provide those documents, and if documents are asked for in an unredacted manner, there is an obligation, because of the supremacy of Parliament, to provide those documents unredacted. That was not the case here with the SDTC scandal.

When I go back to the Winnipeg lab scandal, almost the exact same thing had happened. The documents were not provided. What did they have to hide? Who was connected? Who is further connected to the SDTC scandal that the government does not want us to understand or know about? Why would the Liberals not want the potential criminality to be exposed in this scandal? These are questions that the government and its members are going to have to answer when, and if, we get to an election.

However, it was not just Winnipeg labs or SDTC, it was also the arrive scam scandal. Over $60 million was given to Liberal-connected insiders for the arrive scam application. There were no answers, and the government pushed back. We had to call Mr. Firth to the bar, proving the supremacy of Parliament and the fact that we are the arbiters of what we need to determine and what we need to get to the bottom of. There is also the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, which we have been dealing with at ethics committee, and foreign interference.

Oversight committees are intended to hold the government to account. Whether the government likes it or not, that is our constitutional role, and it is our constitutional role as His Majesty's loyal opposition to push and fight to make sure that government is on the up and up and that we are the stewards of taxpayer dollars. We will continue to do that.

Now, we are dealing with another situation, as I said earlier, which Parliament is now seized with, and that is the ruling of the Speaker on the question of privilege that was brought up by the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, whom I sit with on the ethics committee.

However, we are dealing with another question of privilege, which I am sure the House will be seized with over the next few days, and that is with respect to the “who is Randy” scandal and the fact that the minister was seemingly operating his business while he was a minister. The conflict of interest in that is palpable. The illegality of that is real, and we need answers to that.

Back in July, the ethics committee had a meeting. We had requested documents from a witness, Mr. Anderson, who failed to provide those documents to the committee. We gave him a timeline for when we needed them, and he failed to provide the information that was requested. Again, asserting ourselves and the supremacy of not just the committee but Parliament, I reported to the House what had happened, as was the committee's wish. The member then rose on a question of privilege and the fact that the privileges of the committee and the privileges of its members were not adhered to by Mr. Anderson. The Speaker ruled that the question of privilege is now before the House and the motion has been duly moved. It is a motion that we will be debating, likely over the next couple of days and perhaps even into next week.

Part of that motion is to have Mr. Anderson come before the bar of the House to not only be admonished by the Speaker, but also, more important, to answer the questions that parliamentarians have been asking for him to answer. That is our job, not just on ethics, but on the mighty OGGO and, of course, on public accounts as well.

As I know members have heard a couple of times, it all goes back to 2015, when the Prime Minister stood up before Canadians and said that the government will be transparent and open by default. In fact, it was in the throne speech of 2015. All of the examples that I have been citing over the last few minutes prove that it is a government that has not been transparent, accountable and open by default. In fact, it has been anything but.

Part of our responsibility on the ethics committee is to deal with access to information. We issued a report on access to information a few months back after studying it and having experts come in, including members of the media who have been involved in the access to information system, and it is broken. Often, the wait times for access to information documents are months, if not years. Information comes that is redacted. That is not open, transparent and accountable by default. That is anything but.

Therefore, as I conclude, it is not just the system that is broken in this country in many ways, such as the affordability system, housing and the fact that young people have lost hope and are despondent now of a prosperous future for themselves. The division that the Prime Minister has sown in this country along regional lines, race lines and faith lines, pitting neighbour against neighbour, are all things that are broken. The worst part about what is going on right now is that we have a decline in democracy as a result of the government's not being open, transparent and accountable by default. It really speaks to the diminishment of our institutions and the ability of Parliament to ask for the information that it requires to protect the people of this country and to protect their money.

I will conclude by saying this: I am extremely disappointed that we are on this path once again. The only thing that is going to change it is a change of government to a common-sense Conservative government. I hope that happens soon.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Brantford—Brant said that what we are doing is assisting the RCMP.

The question I have for the member opposite is this: How many times did the Conservative Party assist the RCMP when it came to the Conservative corruption in dealing with anti-terrorism, as was pointed out, as well as the Phoenix scandal, the G8 spending scandal, the ETS scandal, the F-35 scandal and the Senate scandal? These were all Conservative scandals, and I know I am probably missing another 30 or 40.

Let us talk about today. The member referred to foreign interference. What about the foreign interference in the Conservative leadership that enabled the current leader of the Conservative Party? Should we get the RCMP some documents or, as the member for Brantford—Brant said, should we be assisting it in dealing with that corruption in the Conservative leadership?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think if there had been any evidence of that, we certainly would see it playing itself out.

What we have seen evidence of is foreign interference on the part of the Liberal government. We see a Prime Minister who was informed many times, in fact, and the foreign interference inquiry is just shedding light on that this week. He was told about the foreign interference situation that was going on and how many of his members were involved in it. Therefore, if the member wants to shed light on foreign interference, I would suggest to him that we name the 11 members in this place who were involved in foreign interference. That would be a terrific start.

The other day, I met with one of the commissioners of the European Union. We agreed that the only way to deal with foreign interference is to shed light on it so that we are not looking at one another and casting suspicion on one another. If we name the 11 MPs who were complicit in foreign interference, as a result, this country will be in a better position to deal with it.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague from Barrie—Innisfil, who blames the government for not being transparent or open.

I would like to remind my colleague of Quebec's motto, “je me souviens”, or “I remember”. I would also like to remind my colleague of the following facts. In 2010, during the G8 summit, former Conservative minister Tony Clement diverted $50 million to pay for infrastructure projects in his riding.

The 2011 report by the Office of the Auditor General reads, “the government did not clearly or transparently identify the nature of the request for funding”. A public servant with the Office of the Auditor General, John Wiersema, wrote, “I personally in my career in auditing have not encountered a situation like that where there is absolutely no paper trail behind this.”

My question for my colleague is quite simple. How can a party like the Conservative Party, which aspires to form the next government, ensure that Quebeckers and Canadians can fully trust it given its lacklustre record when it comes to transparency and the management of public funds?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I also remember all the Liberal Party scandals in 2015.

We saw it come up almost immediately with the Aga Khan scandal. We can look at history all we want, but the reality is that we have had nine years of a government that said it was going to be different. It said it was going to be open, transparent and accountable by default. It talked about sunny ways and how sunshine is the best disinfectant. I remember the Prime Minister saying it all with his hand over his heart. What did we get? We saw scandal after scandal and a divided country along all the lines I talked about earlier. We have debt and deficit. We have a young generation of people who have lost hope in this country.

We need to restore the promise of Canada. That is precisely what Canada's common-sense Conservatives are going to do, including upholding ethical standards. If the member wants any evidence of that, he can look at the bill the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes has proposed and support that as a start. It is a signal of what our intention is going to be in the next government.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I note that the motion under debate has to do with the failure of government to produce documents, and I share my colleague's commitment to accountability and the doctrine that Parliament is supreme.

I was in the House in 2011 when Speaker Milliken found the Conservative government in contempt of Parliament for refusing to hand over documents, just as this motion is calling for. The documents would have revealed to Parliament the costs of corporate tax cuts, criminal justice measures and the F-35 program.

The last Conservative government refused to produce documents when Parliament, through a majority vote, demanded them. On the principle that the best indication of future performance is past behaviour, would a future Conservative government commit to being different from the last Conservative government?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, from some of the debate I am hearing today, I think hon. members need to get back into a DeLorean, try to be like Marty McFly and go back to the future.

We are talking about scandals that are seizing Parliament right now involving the Liberal government, not the least of which is a $400-million scandal. If the NDP would stop propping up the government, we might just get to the bottom of this. Better yet, let us have an election so that Conservatives can prove to Canadians that we are going to be a much better common-sense government than the Liberal government has been over the last nine years. We will not cause the despair and the misery that is facing our nation right now.

Let Conservatives prove to Canadians what good government is all about.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to crawl into the DeLorean for a moment. There have been a number of references to the sponsorship scandal as a marker or a comparator. If I recall that era, a former Liberal cabinet minister, David Dingwall, stated, “I'm entitled to my entitlements.” Is that what is going on here? Has this now been extended to government appointees, not just to cabinet ministers and prime ministers?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a loaded softball question that we need to hit out of the park. I know we are in the major league playoffs here, but I do not know what it is with these guys. It has to be in their DNA. We have seen scandal after scandal come up, where Liberal-connected insiders and cronies have benefited as a result of the relationships they have with the Liberal government.

I mentioned a few of them off the top. Probably one of the most absurd ones was former MP Frank Baylis getting a sole-sourced contract for hundreds of millions of dollars for ventilators that were not even used. It was a sole-sourced contract, which means that the Liberals did not put it out for other bids. They gave it to Liberal-connected insiders.

We have seen these palms being greased since the beginning of the Liberal government. We saw it with the Prime Minister setting the example with his trip, the ethical violation, to the Aga Khan's island. I think it is in the Liberals' DNA. I do not think they can help themselves when it comes to breaching ethics laws and code of conduct laws in this country. That is why we are seeing it.

When that example is set at the top, it disseminates throughout the entire organization. In this case, it has disseminated throughout the entire part of government. This is why we are dealing with these scandals. It is having an impact, effecting a decline in our democracy and trust in our institutions by Canadians. We have to restore that trust, and the only way we can do it is to replace the tired, corrupt government with a common-sense Conservative government.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, let us stick with that theme. If we travelled with the DeLorean from 1867 to today, we would see all kinds of scandals. There would be only two guilty parties: the Liberals and the Conservatives. Since 1867, we have become used to it.

Let us come back to October 2, 2024, because I am being magnanimous with my esteemed colleague on the Conservative side. My question is very simple. What does he think is the primary reason behind the government not producing the documents being requested today?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think this goes much deeper than what is on the surface. I think there are many more people implicated who are connected to the government, and they are guilty of being complicit in what went on. I think the government is afraid of the information being released and the impact that this is going to have, not just politically but criminally as well.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege to rise in this chamber. Interestingly, my great friend from South Shore—St. Margarets, whose office is directly across from mine in the Confederation Building, has been talking about this scandal now for the better part of a year. When we begin to look at the sordid details that exist in this particular case, it is very disheartening for me, as a Canadian.

I would also suggest that it is disheartening because there have been so many scandals from the NDP-Liberal government that Canadians have tuned them out. It is $50 million, $100 million or $300 million; sadly, Canadians have said, “Well, whatever.” Another thing I wonder is how the Prime Minister continues to get a free pass on these scandals. It is absolutely shocking to me.

I realize I have only been in this place for three years, so I am not going to get in the DeLorean that my wonderful friend from Barrie—Innisfil was in. That is not the road I want to go down. However, that being said, I would suggest that we need to prosecute the issues that are in front of us at this time. Certainly, the SDTC scandal is front and centre, and it involves hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps almost a billion dollars.

If I might, I would like to go back a bit to look at the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund. It was established in 2001, and when we look at the mandate of the actual fund, it seems to make sense. It is a federally funded non-profit that approves and disburses over $100 million in funds every year to clean technology companies. We are in an era when we understand that there are certain things we need to do to help protect the climate. A theme that has resonated on this side of the House forever is that we need to use technologies and not taxes. This is a fund that would actually seem to make sense.

The ISED website states, “through the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology Act, [SDTC is used] to fund the development and demonstration of new technologies that promote sustainable development.” As we look at the set-up of this fund, it makes sense: “It is an arm's length, not-for-profit...organization that was created to support projects that develop and demonstrate new technologies that address issues related to climate change, air quality, clean water and clean soil.” In my estimation, these are all good things.

The website also says, “SDTC is responsible for the administration of the SD Tech Fund in accordance with the...guidelines per the Funding Agreement with ISED.” As we look at those things, on the surface, we would say that this makes sense. I was a family physician before I came here, so politics was not top of mind, and one always wonders about these things. We hear about people being appointed to boards, and we wonder what they do and whether they make money doing this. People really have a difficult time understanding this.

From my perspective, this brings forward a significant underbelly of what everyday Canadians hear about someone serving on a board. People wonder what they do. What did the people who have served on this board do, including the chair? I am not entirely sure, but as I read the documents, it would appear that they used their influence, sadly, to award at least 330 million dollars' worth of taxpayer funds to corporations they control. This created significant conflicts of interest.

As we look at that, we wonder how board members make money if they do not get paid to be on a board. Apparently, this is one way they do it: They prop up a company that they have a significant financial interest in and award it taxpayer dollars.

What else happened here? We know, as I said, that this fund has been ongoing since 2001. Indeed, the Auditor General did an audit on SDTC in 2016 and praised it for its great work and how well it was run. It had 15 years of being run very well. Things changed thereafter.

Many people here would know who Jim Balsillie is. He was the chair of this committee and he began speaking out against certain legislation that the Liberal government at that time was bringing forward. It would have caused a scandal to get rid of him. That being said, when his contract came to an end, the Liberals decided not to renew his contract. Of course, that left them in a bit of a quandary to appoint someone else.

In 2019, former Liberal industry minister Navdeep Bains began appointing conflicted executives to be in charge of SDTC. He was warned against this. He was warned that Annette Verschuren would have significant conflicts because the companies she historically had some dealings with had already received funds from SDTC and continued to receive them on an ongoing basis. As we look at this, we begin to understand the troubles that existed from the very beginning of the appointment of the new chair.

What happened then? The Auditor General and Ethics Commissioner initiated separate investigations because whistle-blowers came forward. If we have time, we have some testimony from whistle-blowers that is actually shocking and needs to be read into the record. They had allegations of financial mismanagement and that is why those investigations were initiated. I will have more to say about the Ethics Commissioner as we go forward. I took an opportunity to sit on committee and hear the testimony of the Ethics Commissioner, which, in my mind, was quite shocking.

The Auditor General's investigation found a severe lapse in governance standards and uncovered that $390 million in funding was awarded to projects that either should have been ineligible to receive funding or was awarded to projects in which board members were conflicted, and that was only during a five-year audit period. As we begin to look at those numbers, we are talking hundreds of millions of dollars.

Realistically, the change began in late 2018-19 when former Liberal industry minister Navdeep Bains decided that SDTC needed a new CEO and chair, even though he was warned that there were significant conflicts. The Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office, who were warned about appointing a conflicted chair, decided to move forward with that regardless. There was not just one warning, but there were repeated warnings to say this was going to cause chaos and conflict.

The new chair went on to create an environment where conflicts of interest were tolerated and “managed by board members”. What happened then? Of course, SDTC went on to award funds to companies in which board members held stock or positions. That is allowing the person who has the keys to the cabinet to go ahead and disburse the funds for their own benefit. I am not sure there are many things that are worse than that.

As my esteemed colleague from Barrie—Innisfil said repeatedly, we are charged with several things here in this place, and one of them is to be good stewards of taxpayer money. It became very clear here that did not happen.

As this conflict of interest environment went on, Minister Bains appointed two other controversial board members who engaged in unethical behaviour in breach of the Conflict of Interest Act by approving funds to companies in which they held ownership stakes. Not only do we begin to see that the chair of the board allowed this environment to cultivate, but we see other members of the board who saw that this was done and benefited from it themselves. As an elected official, I find that this is very unsavoury behaviour.

Officials from ISED were also there watching what was going on. They observed these 186 conflicts of interest and also, sadly, did nothing. In November 2022, whistle-blowers started raising concerns with the Auditor General about these unethical practices, and the Privy Council was also briefed by whistle-blowers about these allegations.

As I said, I have been hearing about this from my friend from South Shore—St. Margarets for more than a year now. In September 2023, the whistle-blowers took the allegations public, and the minister agreed to suspend the SDTC funding. Is that a good thing? It is, until we come to the rest of the story, which we will in a few minutes.

In November of last year, the Auditor General announced an audit, and then in June of this year, the Auditor General's report was released, finding severe governance failures at SDTC. Of course, in June, there was the motion adopted in this place for the production of various documents, to be turned over to the RCMP for review. In response to the motion, and this is actually shocking, departments either outright refused the House order or redacted documents turned over, citing provisions of the Privacy Act or Access to Information Act.

Certainly, here in this place, we did not contemplate that there were going to be redactions. We would also argue on this side of the House that the House itself enjoys the absolute and unfettered power to order the production of documents that is not limited by statute. These powers, of course, are rooted in the Constitution Act of 1867 and the Parliament of Canada Act.

In response to this failure to produce documents, the Conservative House leader raised a question of privilege, arguing that House privilege had been breached due to the failure to comply with the House order, and subsequently, of course, here we are arguing the point over and over again. Realistically, in terms of a charge of corruption and a lack of transparency, certainly on this side of the House we believe there is ample evidence to prove that charge.

I might just cite some examples that are a matter of public record but I think are very important. I will talk briefly about the environment that was cultivated at the top by the chair of the committee, Annette Verschuren. There were two other people who were appointed by Minister Bains and by the Prime Minister. They were both directors.

One was particularly aggressive, appointed in 2016 by the Prime Minister: Andrée-Lise Méthot. She runs a venture capital firm that is called Cycle Capital, and this story gets to be very interesting. Cycle Capital, of course, invests in green technologies, and when we begin to look at this, her company, before her appointment, had received $250 million in grants from SDTC. This is already, obviously, a conflict when someone says, “my company has already benefited from being here, so I think I will get on this gravy train”. When she became part of the board, what did she do? She allowed $114 million more to go to green companies that she had invested in.

During Ms. Méthot's time on the board, the value of her company, Cycle Capital, tripled, because it was getting money on a regular basis from SDTC, stamped by the Government of Canada, and that allowed that company to profit. It could raise other funds, and, as I said, the value of her own company tripled in that time.

The other strange part of it is that, sadly, her in-house paid lobbyist for 10 years before he was elected to this place was the current radical Minister of Environment. While he was a lobbyist for this company, Cycle Capital, he received, shockingly, and I know that everybody in this place will gasp when I say it, $111 million.

Yes, it is incredible. The minister, according to the registration of lobbyists portion of the Lobbying Act, lobbied the Prime Minister's Office before he came to this place. As for the industry department, he lobbied all of these folks 25 times in the year before he was elected. All of this is shocking. We cannot even believe it. Of course, for all of this hard work, he also owns shares in Cycle Capital, and, not surprisingly, he still owns the shares in Cycle Capital.

When the question is put to the minister as to the value of these shares, as we all know that, of course, they have likely gone up in value because they were granted before the company was given the incredibly generous support of SDTC, the minister refuses to provide the value of those shares. It is shocking.

As we begin to look at the depth of what is happening here, it is way beyond what anybody would actually expect. The amoeba of this culture of entitlement and thievery from the government came forward and said that the director, Ms. Méthot, went on to the Canada Infrastructure Bank board. The first thing that she did there was award $170 million of Infrastructure Bank money to a company owned by the chair of the green slush fund. Talk about not just patting ourselves on the back but patting our friends on the back, and, for the friends who sent us someplace, giving them a gift as well. There are gifts for everybody.

Annette Verschuren sought $6 million for the creation of the Verschuren Centre at Cape Breton University, because it was failing. Not only do we raise the money for it but we name it after ourselves. It is all incredibly strange. Maybe this is a little tiny shining match of a light: SDTC said no when they went through the process because there was a conflict. However, there is more to the story. In emails, it said that SDTC would help her find the money from other government departments. Soon after that, the Verschuren Centre received $12 million from ACOA and ISET, sadly enough.

Her other companies received $50 million from Natural Resources Canada, and then, of course, there was the Infrastructure Bank money as well. If at first we do not succeed, as the old saying goes, try, try again. As I said, these stories are actually beyond belief and there are many other things that we could talk about here.

A gentleman named Guy Ouimet admitted in the committee that $17 million of green slush fund money went to companies that he has a financial interest in. He said it was a small amount of money. I do not think $17 million is a small amount of money. Interestingly enough, his actual shares in those companies, and this is an investment that anybody would love to have, went up 1,000% since that investment was made in 2019. It is gobsmacking. It takes our breath away when we hear these actual numbers.

In this place, I would suggest that we are charged to look at these things. I would say that one of the saddest days was when I went to watch the committee in action for a very short period of time. The Ethics Commissioner was there and was giving witness testimony and was questioned by my friend from South Shore—St. Margarets. My friend from South Shore—St. Margarets asked the Ethics Commissioner why he had not investigated the other eight Governor in Council appointments put out in the Auditor General's report as having conflicts of interest, where money flowed to companies they had an interest in.

Shockingly, the Ethics Commissioner asked what the point would be of investigating these Governor in Council appointments of people who are no longer on the board because he could not influence what happened to them. We now have an Ethics Commissioner who says that because they are gone now, he does not think we should investigate them, even though we know that 186 conflicts of interest happened, and now at least almost $400 million worth of taxpayers' money is gone and we need to shine a light on this.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to SDTC in itself, I think it is important to recognize that when the allegations were made and the department was made aware of them, significant actions were taken, like the freezing of new funding to the separate independent inquiries, not one but two of them. The government has already been clear on the position of supporting what the Auditor General has said.

There have been numerous meetings at standing committees about it, yet what we find ourselves in is something that is causing the Auditor General and the RCMP to feel uncomfortable, because the Conservative Party wants to be the data collection agency for the RCMP and have the information gathered and just handed over to the RCMP. The whole issue of the independence of our judiciary system is being called into question.

Does the member not have any concern whatsoever with that fact?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Mr. Speaker, when we begin to look at the actual problem, I think it is very simple. For my friend who owns a company, if there is wrongdoing inside the company, I would say that it would be in his best interest to gather all the documentation and hand it over to the RCMP to allow it to make the appropriate decision to say whether wrongdoing actually happened.

When we hear some of the testimony of whistle-blowers, whistle-blowers have said to bring in the RCMP, and if it does an investigation, it finds something or it does not. The public would be happy with that. The public needs to understand what happens. It behooves us here in this place to allow the folks who are able to do it.

Here is some other whistle-blower testimony:

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.

As we begin to hear the statements over and over again, what we are asked to do, in my estimation, is to shine the light, the best disinfectant in the world, on the happenings, which clearly have a flavour of mismanagement and perhaps criminal wrongdoing. Then the public gets to hear the entire story and not be left wondering where the $500 million of taxpayer money, at least, has gone. Perhaps, as we look at the numbers, it is all the way up to 800 million dollars' worth of taxpayer money. I personally think that is a lot of money, and we have the opportunity to understand where the money has gone.

Another whistle-blower says:

The true failure of the situation stands at the feet of our current government, whose decision to protect wrongdoers and cover up their findings over the last 12 months is a serious indictment of how our democratic systems and institutions are being corrupted by political interference. It should never have taken two years for the issues to reach this point. What should have been a straightforward process turned into a bureaucratic nightmare that allowed SDTC to continue wasting millions of dollars and abusing countless employees over the last year.

I will certainly take more questions related to this terrible situation.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate working with the member on the health committee, and the motion is something that the NDP is supporting. We believe in getting to the bottom of the SDTC spending scandal. It is important to have transparency. It is important to know how taxpayers' money was spent.

I want to flag, and the member has flagged as well, the important work of the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Budgetary Officer, independent officers of Parliament. They get the straight goods to Canadians. This is vitally important. We can never forget this, but it was forgotten during almost a dismal decade during the Harper regime, where the Harper Conservatives basically slashed funding to the Auditor General, funding to the PBO and funding to independent officers of Parliament.

We know why. It is because the Harper Conservatives, unlike now when we are getting to the bottom of things, did not want the Canadian public to actually know about their spending scandal. My colleague talked about the money involved here with the SDTC as being a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to what the Harper regime misspent. I will flag just a certain number of figures: the anti-terrorism funding, no paper trail, $3.1 billion; Phoenix pay system, $2.2 billion; the F-35 procurement scandal, billions; the G8 misspending, a billion; the ETS scandal, $400 million. I could go on.

Why do Conservatives say, “Do as we say, not as we do”?

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, as the member said, we do have the opportunity to serve on the health committee together, and I would say that probably more often than not we disagree, which often creates interesting times at the health committee.

That being said, we are all here today to talk about SDTC. That does not in any way limit the great work of the Auditor General, who of course came forward. The Auditor General said that SDTC gave $58 million to 10 ineligible projects that on occasion could not demonstrate an environmental benefit or the development of green technology. It also gave $334 million in over 186 cases to projects in which board members held a conflict of interest. It also gave $58 million to projects without ensuring that contribution agreement terms were met.

We are beginning to look at the size of the scandal. As I have said, I have been here only three years, but my friend, the member for Barrie—Innisfil, warned us against taking the DeLorean back in time to try to litigate the terrible ghost of Mr. Harper, which seems to plague my friends on the Liberal side; he is the bogeyman under their bed all the time.

We know clearly that the scandals that the current government has been involved in start at the top with the Liberal Prime Minister, who has been convicted twice of ethics violations. Again, in the case of SDTC, when there is a chair who created an environment, a culture, of breaking the rules, then that filters down to everybody who is involved in the decision-making efforts. This is what we want to shine a light on and say, “Bring forward those documents and let's make the right decisions for Canadians so they know where their taxpayer dollars went.”

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, we are talking about the alleged failure to produce documents pertaining to the Sustainable Development Technology Canada project that the government has brought forward with the people it appointed to the board. I listened intently to my colleague for Cumberland—Colchester, and I also want to thank my colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets for his work on this. It has been about a year or a year and a half in the making to get it to this point.

It is a travesty that the witnesses who came forward were not able to provide the documents and requirements that were asked of them. I wonder whether my colleague could expand on the proportion of the scandals compared to the many other scandals that the government has had since 2015.

[Stephen Ellis, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Madam Speaker, knowing that the scandals continue on and on. I will say right out loud, and many may find this shocking, that I did read Jody Wilson-Raybould's book. It of course began with the SNC-Lavalin scandal and the pressure that the Prime Minister put on the first indigenous woman minister of justice and attorney general here in Canada, who, it certainly appeared from her book, was poised to do very good work on behalf of Canadians. I am not entirely sure why this set the Prime Minister off and made her very unwelcome in his cabinet.

As we look more closely at some of the things related to SDTC, there is one more comment from another whistle-blower in committee that I think is always quite fascinating. It reads:

I think the current government is more interested in protecting themselves and protecting the situation from being a public nightmare. They would rather protect wrongdoers and financial mismanagement than have to deal with a situation like SDTC in the public sphere.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

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—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Alexandra Mendes]

With questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader has the floor.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I want to pick up on the member's comments about corruption in a different sense, and he was talking about Mark Carney. I want to do a bit of a shift here and talk about Jenni Byrne.

There is a foreign interference allegation against the leader of the Conservative Party . Did Jenni Byrne not co-manage or manage his leadership campaign? Did Jenni Byrne not lobby with Loblaw? When did Loblaw acquire Shoppers Drug Mart?

I am wondering if there is something that might be there, and if we should follow the Conservative lead, ignore the Constitution, just ask for all the information we can get, advance it to the RCMP and say we want it to take this information because there are a lot of concerns about foreign interference and we believe the leader of the Conservative Party is corrupt.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, just parenthetically, I would say to the member, if he is going to make things up, to at least get the names of the people he is making things up about correct.

To his ridiculous allegations, I would simply say this: The member understands that the exercise of executive power by the government requires certain particular conflict of interest protections because, in the exercise of executive power, we have access to information and we have access to decision-making authority that is very particular. This is why there has to be those kinds of conflict of interest protections.

These kinds of protections have to be in place. The government has completely failed to put those protections in place, and this is what we are rightly critiquing in carbon tax conflict of interest Mark Carney.