Madam Speaker, I am going to move on. I am going to talk about the green fund spending scandal. However, again we ask which one. Only the Liberal government could actually have a scandal with subsets to it. We are looking at three different green spending scandals right now: scandal A, scandal B and scandal C.
There is the environment green grants audit scandal, in which the internal audit audited the grants and contributions of the department of the environment. We found that the government is giving out millions to superprofitable companies that have been cited for massive pollution problems.
In fact, I have the last couple here. Rio Tinto, which is worth billions of dollars, received millions from the Liberal government with very little oversight. Lafarge Canada, another foreign company, received millions from the government, again without oversight.
The government funded, it subsidized, foreign universities in the U.S. that have billions in endowments. Taxpayers, through the Liberals, decided that we were going to subsidize those universities. It also gave money to a foreign country to study fauna. I think that was to New Zealand. What that has to do with the Canadian environment is beyond me. What we found out through the audit is that the government did not provide proper oversight and governance. Of course, there is the green net-zero accelerator fund scandal, as shown by the environment commissioner, who works with the Auditor General, at $8 billion of Canadian taxpayers' money.
At the same time, in my riding there is an association, a not-for-profit charity, called the Veterans Association Food Bank, which serves veterans, RCMP veterans and police veterans. There is actually a food bank in a city as wealthy as Edmonton, in a country as wealthy as Canada, for veterans who cannot feed themselves, but Canada has an $8-billion accelerator fund.
The Auditor General reports that the Liberal government did not track value for money, the ability of any of the companies receiving $8 billion, and whether they were actually using the money to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Think about that: $8 billion to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but we were going to give it to companies that we were not actually going to ask to prove that they were using the money to reduce greenhouse gases.
Twelve of the 17 companies provided zero plans to actually reduce greenhouse gases. This is a comment from the Auditor General's office to the environment commissioner: “Due diligence was not followed by the Liberal government before shovelling Canadian tax dollars out the door.” If we think about that, billions of dollars were given away. We received a list of just eight of the companies that received money through the fund and that had not provided any proof that they were going to use taxpayers' money to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The total market capitalization, which is the value of the companies, exceeds $1 trillion.
Canadians are struggling at home, and 25% of them, I understand, are under the poverty line now. Two million Canadians go to a food bank every month. We cannot provide our soldiers with ammunition or even sleeping bags, and there are veterans going to food banks in Edmonton. However, the government has $8 billion to give to corporations worth over $1 trillion, and it cannot even bother to say, “You know what, for this $8-billion gift, could you like maybe, please, pretty please, prove to us that you're actually going to reduce greenhouse gases with the money?”. Of course not; the current government does not do that.
Of course, now we are on to the third scandal of the green spending money, the one we are debating here tonight: the green slush fund. I will summarize the scandal. The Auditor General found that the Liberals turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada, SDTC, into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. A recording that was leaked, of a senior civil servant, slammed the “outright incompetence” of the Liberal government, which gave 390 million dollars' worth of contracts inappropriately. Where have we heard this before, money given out inappropriately?
The Auditor General found that SDTC gave $58 million to 10 ineligible projects that on occasion could not demonstrate an environmental benefit or development of green technology. Again, where have we heard that? Oh, that is scandal number two. But at least this time, and I give the government credit, it was only $58 million it gave away for no reason, down from the $8 billion it gave away. Mind you, it is from the same department, which is unfortunate.
A third of a billion dollars was given out in over 186 cases to projects in which board members had a conflict of interest. We would think that if the Liberals had a third of a billion dollars to hand out, they would make sure the people receiving the money were not the same people deciding who receives the money. Some $58 million went to projects without ensuring that contribution agreements and terms were met.
This is the same issue we had with the audit of the administration of grants and contributions at Environment Canada, where money was given out without proper oversight. To quote from that report:
The structural and strategic foundations needed to support the program delivery model—such as governance, processes, systems, compliance framework, training, and capacity-building...did not adapt in a manner that effectively supports the scale and complexity of the current number of programs....
It also noted, “inconsistent financial management approaches that do not fully support...efficient program delivery.”
We have had this issue before after a parliamentary committee has demanded documents. Members may remember the McKinsey scandal, which I forgot to cover earlier. Dominic Barton was a friend of the Prime Minister, and his company received 10 times the number of contracts than under the previous government. It is the same McKinsey responsible for “supercharging” the opioid crisis in Canada, probably one of the most vile companies in the entire world. The government operations committee demanded documents from the government and the government refused.
We have various levels of the government stating why, saying that Parliament, much as we are hearing from the Liberals, is apparently not supreme. We heard government officials at the the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's own department, telling us that information and privacy laws supersede the will of Parliament.
Here we are back again. It is the same issue, the same attitude from the government the same cover-up. This time, at least, unlike with McKinsey, we have the Bloc and the NDP supporting us. We will get to the truth of part three of the green slush fund.