Mr. Speaker, we did not get the documents. In fact, the Prime Minister sued the Speaker of this place. It was unprecedented in Canadian history for the Prime Minister to sue the Speaker of the House of Commons to prevent those documents from being released. Then, as that carried on, the Prime Minister called an election to prevent the documents from becoming open.
Now we are in a similar situation. The House of Commons has demanded documents to be handed over to the RCMP. We are not asking for the documents for ourselves. We are saying to hand these documents over to the RCMP.
This is much the same as a person discovering that an employee of their business is embezzling. When the accounting department starts to put the pieces together, it might say, “We have a body of evidence that we think so and so is embezzling.” They might then confront the individual, but they would also most likely call the police. The first thing they would do is call the police and say they suspect that a crime has taken place, and they would hand over all of the documentation to prove the case. Then we would expect the RCMP or the police of jurisdiction to do its own investigation, which is an important part of police individuality. They do not just take accusations on their face; they do their own investigations. What we are saying here is that something stinks to high heaven. We can see what is going on. We can see how folks have abused the national debit card when they were entrusted with the PIN, and we are saying this is illegal; this is a crime.
The Liberals have pointed out that there have been Ethics Commissioner and Commissioner of Lobbying reports on this and that the Auditor General has had a report, which is great, but all of those people are not judging the criminal element of this particular thing. We suspect there was a crime, and we want the RCMP to do an investigation and to have the documents that it needs, which we are entitled to ask for. We feel that the RCMP should have those documents in order to build the case we want it to build. This is entirely within the purview of Canadian Parliament. It is one of the privileges of members of Parliament to ask for these documents.
However, it begs the question: Much as in the case of the Winnipeg lab, what are the Liberals hiding? We still do not know what they were hiding in the Winnipeg lab case, but what are they hiding in this case?
Quite honestly, the Liberals have been all over the place. At first they said it was an arm's-length organization and they did know anything about it. Then they said we were violating people's charter rights. Now they are saying this is grinding the House to a halt. We agree that this is grinding the House to a halt, but the privileges of members of Parliament are an important thing to debate. An easy solution for the impasse we see today would be for the government to release the documents so we can hand them off to the RCMP.
What is the crux of the matter? A board of directors was responsible for $1 billion of grant money being handed out, and these board members appeared to have made proposals to the board they were associated with for companies to get grant money. The Auditor General said that in 10 of these cases, there were no grounds whatsoever for these companies to get money, and in 180 other cases, the Auditor General said there was a conflict of interest in the companies getting the money.
We have studied the minutes of these meetings, and what appears to have happened is that folks affiliated with particular companies would make a pitch that the company they were affiliated with should get some money from this fund. Then, in most cases, they would recuse themselves from the decision. They would leave the room; the decision would be made, “Yes, we should give the company some money”; and then they would come back. Then it would be the next person's turn, and they would propose that their company should get some money, and they would say, “Due to a conflict of interest, I will not vote on it.”
The point of putting a board in place is to ensure accountability and oversight. Members of that board were colluding among themselves to hand money to each other, and the quid pro quo was, “we will vote for your company to get money with the understanding that you will vote for our company to get money.” That is what happened. We see over $330 million, a lot of taxpayer money, voted on by a board to be given to its members' own companies, when boards are generally there to provide oversight.
To go back to the beginning, this board seems to have been appointed to reward loyalty to the Liberal Party. If that is not enough of a connection to the Liberal Party, I do not know what is. There is also ministerial oversight: The deputy minister was in those meetings ensuring that things were going along as the minister would like them to and were also being reported back to the minister. This goes right back to the Liberal corruption we have seen over and over again with all of the other scandals along the way.
Another element to this scandal has not been highlighted as maybe it should have been. Several of the folks on the board not only secured funds for organizations they were affiliated with, but in many cases they also owned shares in those companies. We have one case of a company that one of the board members was affiliated with that saw a dramatic growth in its stock price because it had secured funds from the SDTC board. He admitted in committee there had been a thousand-fold increase in value for himself. Not only did he secure taxpayer funds for a company he was affiliated with; he personally became extremely wealthy from it because he owned stock in that particular company.
The conflicts of interest, the corruption and the abuse of the taxpayer debit card know no limits with the Liberals. When we see the amount of waste and the lack of concern around financial controls, it is no wonder that this country is suffering an inflation crisis. We see that food, gas and housing prices are up dramatically, and we are calling for the government to axe the tax. When the government taxes the farmer who grows the food and taxes the truck driver who transports the food, Canadians cannot afford food.
We think it is time for a carbon tax election so Canadians can see hope on the horizon, a return to normalcy and a government that understands that the privileges of governing and controlling the country's debit card, and the PIN that comes with it, are important. We need to ensure that our finances are respected and that we are not allowing entities to enrich themselves off the taxpayer dollar with no benefit to the public good.
I look forward to the carbon tax election. I know it will be coming soon. All of my colleagues and I have heard from our constituents over the last week, those who are struggling under the carbon tax, going to the food bank and things like that. They are calling for an election and they hope it can happen sooner rather than later. After the election I am certain we will axe the tax.