Mr. Speaker, I rise today to add my voice to the conversation we are having around the government's breach of privilege and scandal, which is just the latest in a long line of scandals under the Liberal government.
I have a number of points to make in this debate, but I will first say it is unfortunate that we are having to have this debate. It is an important one because the government needs to be held accountable, but it is unfortunate that it is necessary when there are many things the House could and should be dealing with. We have a government that refuses to be accountable, and without accountability, accountability first to this House but, more importantly, as an extension, to Canadians, we do not have a democracy.
Right now, the government refuses to be held accountable. There are a number of examples, and I will raise a few of them in the course of my speech today. This is just the latest in a long line of them and it is incredibly unfortunate that we are having to be here today to try to hold a government accountable on something so basic, without the need for a debate like this one to highlight such a situation.
What we are talking about today relates to what has become known as the green slush fund. The Auditor General of Canada has found that the Liberal government turned what was known as Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. The board that was set up to hand out these grants gave itself almost 400 million dollars' worth of contracts inappropriately. That was $400 million of Canadian taxpayers' money.
I will pause for just a second. That is a lot of money, $400 million from Canadians who have worked hard. They have packed their lunch, put on their work boots, gone to work and worked hard. Some people back home in my province of Alberta work really long hours. It is back-breaking work, in some cases. These people go to work, in many cases, away from their families because they have to travel up north or to other places to work. They do that because they need to feed and put a roof over the heads of their families. They need to ensure their children have opportunities to be involved in sports or to succeed as they grow, mature and become adults themselves. This $400 million has not gone to feed Canadians' families, to put a roof over their heads, to make sure their kids go to summer camp, play a sport, take dance lessons or art lessons or any of that. The $400 million has gone, in this one case, to make Liberal insiders rich.
I do not think anyone who gets out of bed early in the morning and leaves their family to go to work would say they would not mind a bit of that, or in fact, a whole lot of it in this case, going to Liberal insiders because the Liberal Party wants to buy favour with people and hopefully keep itself in power. I do not think anybody in this country would say they get out of bed in the morning to send their tax dollars to Ottawa so this kind of thing can go on.
That is the kind of accountability we are talking about right now. We are talking about holding a government accountable for the $400 million of hard-earned Canadian taxpayer dollars that are sent to Ottawa so that those guys over there, the Liberal government, can send them out to their friends and make them rich. That is what we are talking about today, and that is pretty sad. We would never even be needing to have a conversation like this if that government had just a bit of basic accountability, but this is not something people have come to expect from the Liberal government. It is why it is time for the government to go. It is why it is time for it to be replaced.