There were 186 projects where there was a conflict of interest by one of the board members.
Mr. Speaker, another $58 million went to projects where the board did not ensure the contribution agreement terms were met. Let me put it this way. This is either the most egregious case of incompetence we have ever seen or it is the complete theft of taxpayer money. It might be both, in fact. However, it is staggering to imagine the magnitude of this and the number of instances where there are conflicts of interest or outright complete ignorance of the rules. It is staggering. The amount of money is also staggering.
The Auditor General has made it very clear that the blame lies with the Liberal government, particularly with the industry minister, because they did not monitor this. Either they did not monitor it, or maybe they were okay with what was happening. I do not know. I suppose that is part of what we need to determine.
At the end of the day, this money, this nearly $400 million of Canadian taxpayer money, was given to Liberal insiders. In order to try to get to the bottom of all of this, there is a need for the information being requested to be provided to the RCMP. For some reason, and I think we can all imagine what that reason might be, the Liberal government does not want to provide that information.
I can imagine the Liberal government does not like being held accountable, and we have many examples of that. I will get into a few of those examples, because this is a pattern, and I want to show and establish that pattern. This is a government that tends to do these kinds of things. It interferes or allows things like this to occur, and its friends get rich. This is a pattern. Then when there is any effort at trying to hold it accountable for what has gone on, it does everything it can to prevent being held accountable.
Let me speak to a couple of examples where we can see this pattern, and this is the latest example in that pattern. The most well-known of those examples was the SNC-Lavalin affair. Everyone in Canada is aware of that one. They are all aware of what happened with Jody Wilson-Raybould, when the Prime Minister tried to pressure her to be inappropriately involved in her role as the attorney general.
She stood on her principle and refused to do that, despite immense pressure from the Prime Minister . What did he do? He fired her because she refused to interfere inappropriately in an investigation. She knew it was wrong and the Prime Minister did not care. He wanted her to do it anyway. Essentially that is what happened. She refused, despite all the pressure she received from the Prime Minister of our country. For that, she lost her job.
To give a little more context, a Liberal-connected firm faced charges of fraud and corruption related to payments made to Libyan officials. In this situation, again, the Prime Minister interfered to help out his friends. It was found, in this case, that he violated the Conflict of Interest Act, which is not the only time this happened. Where this becomes really germane, is that we discovered later on, I believe it was last year, that the reason the RCMP was unable to pursue a criminal investigation was because the Prime Minister refused to provide the information that was necessary.
We see this pattern of a government that refuses, when it is caught red-handed, to provide the accountability, the documents, in this case, that are needed to properly investigate it.
I can give another example of that type of scenario, and there are many of them. In fact, almost every week there seems to be a new one. There is the scandal around the Winnipeg national microbiology lab. The situation was so bad that the government was ordered to provide documents and a former Speaker was sued by his own government because it was trying to find a way to not provide that information.
It sounds so ridiculous that it is almost hard to believe it is true, but that is the kind of thing we are seeing. That is one of those examples. The government wanted so badly to hide this information that it sued the Speaker of the House of Commons, one of its own members of Parliament. It is astounding.
I want to focus a little more on one, with respect to these examples, because it is one of the files I am tasked with shadowing the government on, and that is Veterans Affairs. There are many examples like this one, but it is one I am very intimately familiar with because of how much effort I and other Conservative members of the Veterans Affairs committee have put into trying to see addressed. It is the controversy and scandal around the national monument to the mission in Afghanistan.
Let me give a bit of context on this. This was obviously a monument to a mission that ended more than a decade ago. The previous Conservative government announced that it would be built. In the nine years since the Liberal government has been in power, it has somehow found a way to ensure that this has not been built.
In my opinion, and, I think, in the opinion of many Canadians, it is an incredible slap in the face to those who served in that mission, those who gave their lives serving our country in that mission and the families of those fallen. It is another extreme example of the government: first, showing complete incompetence; and, second, trying to avoid accountability. Essentially, what happened was it set up a jury to determine what the monument design should be. This was after taking years to get to that point. I do not know how something so important could not be a priority for a government, for any government, frankly, but it was not, for whatever reason, and the government will have to answer to veterans for that.
The government did set up this jury process. This is an internationally recognized process. The jury selected the monument that it believed best fit the criteria. In about a year-and-a-half period after that, we had enough information that the Prime Minister and his office interfered in the process to try to change the result. Eventually, it culminated in an announcement of a different design than what was agreed to by the jury. This is the first time that anyone can recall in the history of these types of processes across the world, that the selection has been disregarded by a government.
No real explanation was given. To this day, we still do not know why the Prime Minister interfered in this. The reason why this is so relevant is because it is another example where, over the course of months, the veterans affairs committee has been trying to get the release of documentation that would indicate what exactly occurred in that year and a half when the Prime Minister was interfering. Why did he interfere? The fact that the government will not tell us that there was a good reason probably indicates that it is not something good and that it is trying its best to cover that up. That is the only thing we can conclude from all of that.
It is another example of a government that is doing everything it possibly can to avoid releasing some documents that would allow it to be held accountable for its actions; in this case, actions that dishonour the memory of Canadians who gave their lives in service to our country. It is bad enough that $400 million of hard-earned taxpayer money was given away to Liberal insiders, but it is far worse that the Liberal government has dishonoured the memory of Canadians who gave their lives in service to our country. Imagine how their families must feel, knowing that it has done that. That is just insult to injury. To then try to be not held accountable for that kind of action is really disgraceful.
This is a pattern, and I could go on and on because there are so many other examples of a government that just does not want to be held accountable. When we have a government that refuses to be accountable, we know the situation. We know that this is a government that has reached a point where it is almost corruption, and I think that all Canadians would agree. It is not “almost”; it is corruption, frankly. Canadians want to see it held accountable and they want to see an election so they can do just that.