Debates of Oct. 21st, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I will go back to the response that the member for Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner gave to the member for Scarborough—Guildwood. He raised a question that was for the arguments to be made on the original motion that the House has already pronounced on. The ship has sailed as to whether Parliament should receive the documents. The question is now around contempt and the government's refusal to comply with an order of Parliament, not whether it should.

Could the member get us back to the actual debate around the fact that the government has refused an order of Parliament, not whether the government should comply with it?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I particularly enjoyed the hon. member's intervention earlier today, and it is along those same lines. Canadians are wondering about the contempt of the government in taking this position. The Speaker has already ruled, as my colleague indicated, that the unredacted documents need to be produced. If the government does not do that, what message is being sent to the Canadian public? Contempt of Parliament leads Canadians to believe that the Liberals are complicit in this wrongdoing and corruption, that they have something to hide and that they are not acting in a responsible manner to the Canadian taxpayer. This is something we have seen in their spending for the last nine years.

All the cover-ups and contempt really sour the Canadian public to the current condition of the government, even more than they are already, and show the fact that Liberals cannot be trusted.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite implied in his comments that it was the Prime Minister's office that wrote the letter, and I think he owes the RCMP an apology for making that assertion. Would the member apologize for his comment about the chief commissioner in the letter he provided?

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

No, Mr. Speaker, I will not apologize. I said it appeared as if it were that way. There is a party line to be held, and it appears as if the commissioner has something to say. I am sure this is under the direction of the PMO. There is no evidence to support what the member said, because that is not what we are asking for.

Business of the House

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

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussion among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing Order, special order, or usual practice of the House, during the debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 later this day, no quorum calls, dilatory motions, or requests for unanimous consent shall be received by the Chair.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

All those opposed to the hon. member's moving the motion will please say nay.

It is agreed.

The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

(Motion agreed to)

The House resumed consideration of the motion, of the amendment and of the amendment to the amendment.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today to represent the good people of Peace River—Westlock in the House of Commons and to bring my voice and their voices to the privilege debate.

The term “privilege” is common parlance these days, and folks here like to talk about their privilege. Sitting in this seat is a privilege. Being a member of Parliament is a privilege and it comes with privileges. One of those privileges is that we get to asked pointed questions of the government. That essentially sums up what the privilege debate we are having today is about: the House of Commons and members of Parliament. The people sent here, elected by their constituents, come to this place to hold the government to account, to ask the government tough questions and to demand a rationale for why things happen or do not happen. That is what we are after today. This debate comes down to the fundamental role of what Parliament is. Parliament is the check and balance on the government.

It is a bit confusing. A lot of times folks say that I am part of the government, and I always correct them and say that I hope to be soon, but at this point I am a member of the opposition. It is a bit confusing because the government lives in the legislative body in our parliamentary system, and the government is captured by the cabinet and the Prime Minister and the apparatuses of government outside of this place. It is our job as members of Parliament to hold the government to account, to make sure the government is doing the things it ought to be doing.

Being in government comes with great privileges, and one of those privileges is holding the debit card of the nation. The government knows the PIN for the debit card of the nation. However, the Liberal government seems to have written this PIN on the backside of the card and then handed the card out all over the place, with no real concern as to who gets access to it and where money is being spent. That is what we are after.

In this place and in government, we run across acronyms of all sorts. The acronym SDTC has come up a lot in this debate. For folks back home watching this, SDTC is Sustainable Development Technology Canada, an organization that was tasked with providing money to organizations that are doing research on sustainability. It has been redubbed the green slush fund because it seems to have been left unchecked by the government.

Some might say that this was not the government; it was an outside organization with a board set up by the government. However, I would point out that most of the people appointed to this board who were making decisions had strong Liberal ties. In many cases, being appointed to this board seemed to have been a reward for past loyalties. That has been pointed out a lot.

The other very interesting thing to note, for those trying to make the case that this was outside the government and the government did not necessarily know about it, is that the deputy minister, who reports directly back to the minister, the person right next to the minister, attended these meetings and would have taken notes, and his or her opinion on these things would have been taken into consideration. The deputy minister represents the minister, so they would have reported back to the minister what took place at these meetings and would have been there to advise the board as to the directions of the minister. The minister can say that he took a hands-off approach, and that is fine, but he still knew what was going on.

I want to thank my colleague, the member for South Shore—St. Margarets, who has done incredible work on bringing this to light. It should be recognized that to some degree, bringing this scandal to light, in light of all the other scandals, has been a challenge. I commend him for his work, because it seems like every other week there is another major Liberal scandal breaking. People have become tired of the scandals that have rocked the government.

We do not need to go too far back to remember the SNC-Lavalin scandal, over which an indigenous woman lost her cabinet position. She is no longer a member of Parliament because of that. The government was trying to manipulate the justice system. We can look back at the WE Charity scandal as well, where the government tried to give away the debit card with the PIN written on the back for $1 billion, again with no accountability. Then we have the Baylis medical scandal. For those who do not know about it, a former member of Parliament, Mr. Frank Baylis, owned a company that got a contract to supply the government with ventilators during the COVID pandemic. Rumour has it that the ventilators were never used. The ventilators were not approved by Health Canada either, yet the government bought 237 million dollars' worth of them, and they appear to have never been useful in Canada. This is the level of corruption we are dealing with, so I again take my hat off to the member for South Shore—St. Margarets for finding out this newest scandal.

I should also mention the ArriveCAN app scandal, where an app that should have cost no more than $200,000 ended up costing the government $60 million. As I pointed out at the beginning of my speech, the government, the Prime Minister and cabinet are responsible for the debit card of the nation, and they appear to have written the PIN on the back of it and handed it out wherever they went. Then when the scandals ensued, they said they did not know about them or that well-meaning Canadians abused the Canadian debit card.

This goes right back to the very beginning, though, to the level of Liberal scandal we saw already right after 2015. When the Prime Minister became the Prime Minister, we can recall his notorious Aga Khan trip, for which the Prime Minister was found in violation of the ethics code and was fined. We have never-ending layer upon layer of Liberal scandals.

The one on SDTC is most closely related to the Winnipeg lab scandal. This scandal is very hard to explain to people because we do not know much about it, although we know there is something there.

What happened is that members of Parliament voted and demanded that the government release documents related to suspicious activities: the arrest of individuals who worked at the lab, a number of trips made back and forth between that lab and China, and Chinese nationals who had access to the virology lab in Winnipeg. We knew that something seemed fishy there, so the House of Commons demanded the documents to get to the bottom of what was going on with that.

[An hon. member]

Did we get the documents?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

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.

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

Mr. Speaker, the opposition Conservatives continually want to play the game, at a great cost to Canadians but to the benefit, I suspect, of the Conservative Party.

My question is related to a previous member standing in his place clearly calling into question the letter written by the RCMP commissioner. This is the far right of the Conservative Party coming out. Its members are talking about how the RCMP is discredited now, which is part of this ongoing game they are playing. This all goes to the leadership of the Conservative Party.

Can the member explain to Canadians why the leader of the Conservative Party feels no obligation to get a security clearance in order to find out what is happening in foreign affairs as opposed to discrediting the RCMP?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I know that after the carbon tax election, the leader of the Conservative Party will get his security clearance, as he will be the Prime Minister of the country. At that point, we will be able to look into many of these things that have gone on. I imagine the shredding has already begun. When the Conservatives are in power, we will bring accountability to the Department of Finance. We look forward to ensuring accountability, and rooting out corruption is something the Conservatives will take very seriously.

The Liberals love to decry the lack of trust in institutions in this country while they have caused that very destruction of the institutions by using them for their political ends. We have to look no further than the horrific tragedy in Nova Scotia, when the Prime Minister was pressuring the commissioner of the RCMP to release the models of firearms that were used, in order for him to get a political win. We have evidence that the Prime Minister is not above pressuring the RCMP, and I hope the Liberals have come to their senses on this, but I doubt it.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member said the leader of the Conservative Party will get his security clearance when he becomes Prime Minister. There is foreign interference happening right now. His party's members may be implicated, but he refuses to get his security clearance now to protect the integrity of his party and to protect our democracy. Richard Fadden, the former director of CSIS, publicly said the Leader of the Opposition will not be gagged. Even if he was concerned about that, he could ask for just specific briefings on his party.

Why will the Leader of the Opposition not get his security clearance?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the debate we are having today is about documents the government has failed to produce. We have called for the release of the names that the member is concerned about. I do not know why the NDP member continues to prop up, defend and use the same talking points as the Liberal government. I thought the supply and confidence agreement was over. It appears it is not.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am still trying to understand how much $400 million really is and what it represents. I think Canadians at home would also like something more relatable so they can put this into context.

What could that money actually buy? It can buy 80 million cheeseburger Happy Meals, which is about two for every Canadian; 161 million double-doubles, which is a week's worth for every adult Canadian; or, for the good people of Toronto—St. Paul's, 170,000 months of rent, or about five months for every renter in St. Paul's.

If the government used taxpayer money to give away the equivalent of 80 million cheeseburgers, how can we trust it with any of our funds?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the member for Toronto—St. Paul's on his recent election. I know the people of Toronto—St. Paul's are well represented. He has hit the ground running and has been doing yeoman's work in this place.

The member's cheeseburger analogy is one I had not thought of, but I have used a Big Mac conversion as a way to see the value of money over time. We have seen the McDonald's menu items go up in price dramatically because of inflation. I also use the McDonald's analogy to see what its value is in relation to other countries. We have an official exchange rate, but it is always interesting to see the McDonald's menu around the world and how it compares from one country to another.

The member brought up McDonald's and how many cheeseburgers $400 million would have bought, and I really appreciate that analogy.

[Frank Caputo, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

We have been hearing a lot from the NDP. I value the contributions from everybody in this House. One thing they have not addressed is that many of them served under Thomas Mulcair. Now, Tom Mulcair has said on many occasions that he absolutely would not do what the Liberals are asking of the member for Carleton, the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition. In fact, Mr. Mulcair would in no way do what the NDP members are right now asking the member for Carleton to do.

How do we regard someone from the NDP who is saying, “Don't take the bait; prosecute this government. Name them and let's get on with it”? We should not have people in our midst who are wittingly helping foreign states.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with my colleague, who always has a way of summing these things up.

It is concerning to me that the NDP continuously seems to be propping up the Liberal Party, not only in terms of policy initiatives but particularly around this corruption issue. It is fascinating that the NDP continues to prop up the flailing government.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have held back from making comments for some time. After what I just heard, however, I have a question. South of the border, a presidential candidate has just aired an ad on social media featuring his appearance at a McDonald's restaurant. Here, the Conservatives are talking about cheeseburgers and the same restaurant chain.

Do we have to take our lead from what happens south of the border? The Conservatives have reached a point where they are trying to copy what is going on in a US election campaign. All of this is almost surreal. I think a more serious approach would be appropriate.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I just had to check the Google machine to see which presidential candidate was at McDonald's. I was not aware of that, so I guess I am pleasantly surprised. I am happy to continue to use McDonald's references in the House of Commons.

I look forward to some more spirited debate with the hon. member.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, every time I get a chance to speak in the House, I never want to forget the fact that all of us who are here were elected because of the people in our ridings, so I never want to take that for granted. For the opportunity I have to serve them to the best of my ability, I just want to say thanks again to the residents of Niagara West.

My thought process really is on what is going on with the Liberal Party and whether its members are competent managers. We are talking about a question of privilege right now, but my biggest concern in the next election is who is the most competent to run this country. I can assure the House that the least competent government in the history of this country is the present Liberal government under its current leader, who loves his photo-ops and loves making promises he has no intention of delivering on whatsoever. The two billion trees was a great one. How many trees have we actually planted? We cannot get the information because the Liberals are not very transparent. Another promise, in 2015, was to be the most transparent government. We missed that one pretty quickly; it fell off the bandwagon almost right away.

When I listen to what the Liberals are talking about, one of the challenges is that I do not believe a word that is coming out of their mouths. They are not competent. They are not great managers. At the end of the day, they will say anything to get elected, and for the most part they have a lack of follow-through and are not prepared to actually do the hard work or get things done.

I just want to work through a couple things as we talk about that, and I heard my colleague from Provencher talk about a few things that I was going to add. The member for Kingston and the Islands said we had people in the basement writing speeches. I can assure him that is not the case, and they are certainly not PMO talking points. I will give him that as well, but there are so many scandals that when the member for Provencher started talking about them, I thought, “Oh my goodness; I forgot about all those scandals.” There are just so many to remember.

I wrote down a number of them that I want to talk about. We are talking about transparency. We are talking about trying to get information. When we request information, it comes back redacted. For those people who may not have been listening to the debate, “redacted” means that big black sharpie or magic marker that goes over all the answers and gives probably less information than what we were trying to get.

I look at what has gone on, and it would seem this is not the first time the government has not offered up a number of things. The member for Provencher talked about the Winnipeg labs. That is something that troubles me greatly when I look at what went on there. We asked for documentation, and we absolutely got stonewalled to the point where we actually brought someone to the bar, but not a member of Parliament. That is something that had not been done in over a century, and they still refused to give us the information.

Then we found out that the scientists were working for the Communist Party of China. Give me a break, in terms of being able to vet people. I am sure that it has never happened before. The current government is always good at vetting people. I feel as if, at the end of the day, not only were they not vetted but they were also actually taking the information out of the lab and sending it back to China. They were probably sending it via Canada Post, as a matter of fact, trying to make sure it got there. This is unbelievable.

I hear all the time about the fact that we are looking at things that are going on and that we are the party of big business. I do remember, from not so long ago, the $12 million the government gave to Loblaw for freezers. Not long after, Loblaw got charged in a half-a-billion-dollar price-fixing case over bread.

Not only did a company like Loblaw not need the money, because it is doing very well, but after the government gave it money, this large, Canadian corporation agreed to pay a fine of $500 million. Think about that. How much bread was it price-fixing if it was prepared to pay a fine like that?

Someone mentioned Jasper, and I think we do need to raise Jasper as an issue. It is absolutely tragic. As more information comes out as to what was going on there and the fact that the government neglected any type of advice from experts, or neglected anything, it is absolutely devastating. I feel for the people of Jasper. Many times it had been said that we needed to do something around fire management and what was going on with all the dry brush. We also read stories about how volunteer firefighters showed up and were turned away.

I wonder to myself whether the government is one we actually want to trust as it continues to lead. Is nine years not enough for the Liberals, in terms of moving forward?

Frank Baylis was also mentioned. I cannot help but re-emphasize that one. There were $237 million in contracts he got two months after he left office. Talk about hitting the payday. At the end of the day, I do not know whether one could have worked here for 10 or 20 years and be able to get the kind of contract to the tune of what he got. We know what happened with all the ventilators; they were scrapped and never used.

We are talking about some of the inside connections, and that is what this is about. We are talking about almost $400 million in contracts from SDTC, Sustainable Development Technology Canada. We are talking about that and about the insiders who got money.

We see this happening over and over again, and that is the challenge that I see. The government loves taking care of itself and its buddies, and quite frankly I am not sure whether we can trust it. Let us go back to some of the promises it has made in terms of what it was prepared to do. The two billion trees was a good one, but I also love the fact that it wants to build almost four million homes, in about the same period of time.

If we look at the math, we realize that we probably need to build almost half a million homes a year. Currently we are building fewer than 250,000. It is pretty easy to make commitments just so people will be happy to hear what someone has to say, when they actually have no idea how they are going to fulfill the contracts, how they are actually going to get the houses built, and how they are actually going to get some of the obligations met. That is one of the things that are absolutely troubling.

Small businesses got crushed during Covid. They got absolutely destroyed. The government also promised it would be looking at a carbon tax rebate. I have not talked to one owner of a small business yet that has received a carbon tax rebate, and I would certainly love to hear from the government about when that is going to be, because a number of businesses have gone under and have struggled in such a way that the carbon tax rebate is probably not even going to help them at this point. However, it would be something that would be nice if we could move forward on it.

I also want to look at some of the other things we have been talking about in the House. I find it interesting that the committee continues to look at which Randy got government contracts. Why are we asking the government all these questions and we continue to get zero response whatsoever in terms of being able to find out the kind of information we want? The Liberals give us a hard time, saying we should not be asking for all that information because they are not prepared to give it up at this point in time.

It has been said lots, and I will only touch on it, but one of the reasons we are here is the conflicts of interest when it came to the green slush fund. We have talked about over 186 conflicts. That is obviously very concerning. I am always amazed, when we start going through all these things, that there are actually so many different challenges, misappropriating of funds, things that could have been done better or things that could have been more efficient, that it goes back to my original premise: The government is incompetent. The government does not have the ability to get things done in a timely and efficient way.

I think of the ArriveCAN app that cost just under $60 million and could have been done for a little over $80,000. I think of the testimony we have heard. Documentation from the Auditor General includes government officials' lying in an attempt to silence whistle-blowers. In this culture of openness and transparency, government is suppressing whistle-blowers and trying to suspend people without pay for telling the truth at committee. Consultants were making millions and millions of dollars while not adding any value to work, and while there were inappropriate relationships and friendships between government officials in charge of awarding multi-million-dollar contracts and the people receiving some of those contracts.

Part of being a government is being accountable for what it does, and not only being accountable but also making sure taxpayers receive value for the money. One of the challenges people tell me about all the time is that they are struggling right now with the cost of living, with the carbon tax and with the fact that everything costs more. It costs more to heat their homes, to buy food, to pay rent and to pay for a number of other things.

When Canadians see that their money is not being spent appropriately by the government, in a way that makes some sense, is transparent and makes sure that people get value for money, they ask why we are not taking better care of their taxpayer dollars. Those are the things Conservatives continue to question and should be allowed to question. It was mentioned earlier that it is the opposition's job to question what is going on in government and to hold it to account.

We have been talking about SDTC and a number of other things, but I think we almost forgot about all the consulting contracts that went to McKinsey. Do members remember that? It received over $209 million in contracts, and 90% of the contracts the Liberal government awarded to McKinsey were given without proper guidelines. At the end of the day, money was being handed out without following any type of process.

In many cases it was a little unclear what the purpose of the contracts was; the government did not know what they were for or the outcome that was supposed to be achieved. In one case, the Canada Border Services Agency saw that McKinsey did not qualify for contracts, so it revised the statement of work so it could qualify. Let us think about that for a second: The CBSA put out a contract for work that was not defined, so it reworked the contract so McKinsey could get the work.

If we look at the sole-source contracts, we see that there was never any type of justification for them. Over 70% of all contracts awarded to McKinsey were non-competitive, and in 13 out of 17 contracts given to McKinsey, security clearances should have been necessary but the Liberal government allowed McKinsey to operate without them. It is not a surprise that the Prime Minister gave McKinsey hundreds of millions of dollars, because at that time, McKinsey was led by Dominic Barton, a close friend of the Prime Minister and the finance minister. We talk about Liberal-connected friends getting contracts and money as a result of that.

We know that Dominic Barton was a key figure in the Liberals' advisory council on economic growth and on their Indo-Pacific advisory committee. It was Barton's idea to create the failed scandal-plagued Canada Infrastructure Bank, and it was Barton and McKinsey who had to pay nearly $600 million in damages in the opioid crisis.

Looking at a number of these things, we realize that when it comes to competence or the ability to get things done, there needs to be accountability. That is why we, members of the opposition, are asking questions. That is why we are demanding that we get a chance to see the documents unredacted and that they can move on to the appropriate authorities.

The appropriate authorities will do what they need to do. We are not indicating what should happen. We are saying that in order for the RCMP to do its work, it needs to see the documents. We asked for these things and did not receive anything at all. That is why we are here debating. This could all be over right away; if the Liberals would provide the documentation, we would move on to something else.

That is obviously an issue. Part of the challenge that we have had is we realized that, through the contracting system, the RCMP revealed earlier this year that it had charged a scamster who received $250,000 through the Prime Minister's broken contracting system. The Liberal-NDP coalition blocked questions to the officials responsible for the government.

We saw the RCMP previously testify that it had multiple investigations of federal contracting, in addition to its active investigation in the Prime Minister's $60-million arrivescam app, which was supposed to cost the taxpayers $80,000.

We go over a number of these things, and we realize, at the end of the day, that the people who are doing well are Liberal insiders and those who are connected. We look at what happened with our trade minister, dealing with public relations, pomp and circumstance, conflict of interest and contracts awarded for communication services. In 2019-20, the Ethics Commissioner said there was no excuse for contracting with a friend's company. The commissioner went on to say that the minister twice failed to recognize the potential conflict of interest involving a friend, an oversight of her obligations under the Conflict of Interest Act.

This sounds familiar because, as I just mentioned, of the terms of the contracts with the two Randys that we are trying to get to the bottom of and how some of these contracts were awarded during COVID.

Then, of course, as has been raised before and it does not hurt to mention it again, there is the whole issue of the Prime Minister's ethics convictions, dealing with the Aga Khan and the Paradise Island vacation. He was charged with an ethics violation after spending time on the Bahamas island. The investigators believed that there was reasonable grounds to think fraud may have been committed.

Ultimately, the RCMP did not lay charges because of the lack of clarity in the federal rules that applied to accepting gifts. However, the Ethics Commissioner found that the Prime Minister was guilty of breaking laws that violated section 5, 11, 12 and 21 of the Conflict of Interest Act.

The Ethics Commissioner questioned the Prime Minister's friendship with the Aga Khan. The Prime Minister used the words “close family friend” to refer to the Aga Khan, but the Ethics Commissioner found that this was not the case. The Prime Minister took the trip to Paradise Island and was brought in on a private helicopter. The Prime Minister thinks he is above the law. Canadians are well aware of that.

What Canadians are finding right now is that they believe there is so much hypocrisy that their tax dollars are not being taken care of in a responsible way.

We have SNC-Lavalin, which was mentioned here. The Ethics Commissioner found that the Prime Minister violated section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act by attempting to influence then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to intervene in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec-based engineering firm.

The ruling stated that the Prime Minister improperly used his position of authority to attempt to further the private interests of SNC-Lavalin by seeking to pressure Wilson-Raybould to offer a deferred prosecution agreement, which would have allowed the company to avoid a criminal charge and corruption charges. The Prime Minister was found guilty of breaking Canada's ethics laws through the efforts to protect a corrupt, politically connected company by firing his first indigenous attorney general, who would not bend to the Prime Minister's orchestrated campaign of political pressure.

The former ethics commissioner's report indicated that witnesses said they had relevant evidence to offer but were constrained by the limitations put in place by the Liberal Prime Minister. The exact same tactics blocked the RCMP from probing the possibility of criminal charges related to the Prime Minister's orchestrated and systematic campaign to pressure then-attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould to overrule the independent Public Prosecution Service and offer SNC-Lavalin a deferred prosecution agreement.

Last year, the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition censored the RCMP by shutting down the commissioner's testimony in committee. They did whatever it took to protect the Prime Minister from potential criminal charges. Common-sense Conservatives would continue to hold the Liberal-NDP government and its Bloc allies accountable. Canadians certainly deserve transparency and the right to know.

I know I only have a minute left, but I need more time if I am going to go through all the scandals. We talked about the WE Charity. These things happened early on, but I think what people fail to understand is that this creates distrust when it comes constituents, taxpayers and voters.

The job of the official opposition is to hold the government to account. That is what we are attempting to do as we move forward with this question of privilege, and we are trying to make sure that the proper documents go to the people who need to have a look at them. We have a responsibility as members of Parliament to do the best job that we can for our constituents and we need to be responsible for taxpayer dollars. That is what this opposition is going to continue to do to the government. We will continue to hold it accountable on issues that are matters of the public purse and affect our constituents. We will continue to pressure the government and its supporters for answers to all these questions.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I and everybody in this House came to this place to get work done on behalf of our constituents. My constituents want me to come up here and talk about things like housing, health care, dental care and other things that they really care about. If I can be perfectly transparent, the number of calls I get in my constituency office with respect to this subject is minuscule.

I appreciate that the role of the opposition is to throw as many blocks as it can, but we are here to get work done on behalf of Canadians. There is a quote that I would like to read, from the Conservative MP for Brantford—Brant, who is the justice critic. He said, “You know what happens if you can't get a document? You go to the court and you ask for search warrants or production orders.”

I wonder if the member opposite could comment on that.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member. We do come here to debate what is going on in the country, the laws of the land and how we can make things better for our constituents. That is why we need to continue to dig.

There is an affordability crisis. There is a cost of living crisis. People are having a hard time paying their rent. People are having a hard time basically surviving. We see the proliferation of tent cities showing up. There are addiction issues. There are mental health issues. When constituents see a misuse of public funds, when constituents see friends of the government of the day, in this case the Liberal Party, getting rich because of the misappropriation of funds, maybe looking at favouring certain companies that the government members are close to, that is when we need to come here and do our job and hold the government to account.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague did a great job outlining the tremendous record of the Liberal Party's failures to report to this place or to provide good documentation as many Canadians need to see transparency for the SDTC file. That is why New Democrats support this motion.

However, this is the troubling part. We often hear the Conservatives speak to financial accountability and then leave out completely the history of the Conservative Party's deep involvement in scandals. I can even list some of the scandals the member missed in his review: the Airbus scandal where we saw kickbacks to Conservative ministers; the in-and-out scandal where the Conservatives got away with election fraud. Mike Duffy literally took a $90,000 bag of cash right from the Prime Minister's Office.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!