As I was saying, Mr. Speaker, Saturday marked my ninth year as a member of Parliament, which is bittersweet because the Conservatives lost the government that year. What is interesting is that Sustainable Development Technology Canada was a pretty good organization. It was started in 2001. It did a lot of good work in energy, agriculture, transportation and cutting greenhouse emissions. Jim Balsillie was once the chair of SDTC. It was run pretty well until the Liberals took over and filled the board with their cronies. In 2017, all of a sudden, Sustainable Development Technology Canada changed.
As I mark my ninth anniversary, I look at the scandals of the government. Almost immediately, that Christmas, we had the Aga Khan, with the Prime Minister taking that paid vacation. Later, there was SNC-Lavalin, one of the biggest controversies we have had in the last nine years in the House. There was the Winnipeg lab; the WE Charity, which cost the former finance minister his job; and the arrive scam, when $60 million was paid for an app that should have cost maybe $80,000 to produce.
Now we have another one, the green slush fund. In nine years, we cannot count how many scandals the Liberal government has been involved in. We are on day 12 of this debate. The Liberals, of course, are refusing to obey an order of the House, which would permit the distribution of the documents regarding a $400-million scandal. Canadians have seen countless scandals in the last nine years, and I have mentioned a number of them already. However, this one reaches new heights that we have never seen in the House of Commons. The Liberals have gone to tremendous lengths to make sure the public, the RCMP and even the House do not obtain access to these documents that would expose the injustice done at SDTC.
Sustainable Development Technology Canada turned into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. The program was made to give away taxpayer dollars to green technology initiatives, some even in my province of Saskatchewan. It is important to note that the government was directly in charge of appointing the board members of this fund. This means the Prime Minister would have personally appointed some of those board members.
What happened to those Liberal insiders who directed funds meant for green technology toward, unfortunately, their own companies, totalling $400 million and 186 conflicts of interest? Those were 186 incidents where money from taxpayers, like us, could have gone to help many families in this country, a good portion of whom, in fact, are dealing with the cost of living. We could have helped small businesses in this country stay afloat. Instead, the money was funnelled to companies with ties to senior Liberal officials.
Furthermore, the Auditor General found that, on top of those staggering numbers, $58 million was given to companies that were not eligible for the fund. There were 10 ineligible projects, and I have them right here, totalling $58,784,613. That means not only that taxpayer money was given to people who should not have received a single nickel, but that $58 million plus was given to those who should never have been considered for the fund. It is ridiculous.
The current Prime Minister's Canada is where so many are now forced to line up at food banks, including in my city, with over 20,000 a month in a city and a province that feeds the world. What has happened in this country in the last nine years is disgusting. Let us think about that. I met with SARM, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, this morning. My province feeds the world, yet when we look at Saskatchewan these nine years out, from 2015 to 2024, there are lineups in every community for food because of the cost of living.
We wonder about the contracts that were given out to Liberal insiders. It is important to note some of those 186 conflicts of interest just to give Canadians an idea of the Liberal corruption we are seeing today.
There was a board member appointed to the green slush fund way back in 2016. Interestingly, that was a year after the election. The board member runs a venture capital firm called Cycle Capital. Her company received a total of $250 million from the green slush fund. Some of that came before she was even a member, but $118 million came to companies that she had invested in while she was on the board. The value of her company, amazingly, tripled when she was there. The Minister of Environment was a strategic adviser for Cycle Capital from 2009 right up to 2018 before joining the cabinet. In fact, he also owned shares in that company, which is interesting since the company got so much money from the green slush fund.
The green slush fund director Stephen Kukucha previously worked for a Liberal environment minister and as an organizer for the Liberal Party on behalf of the Prime Minister in B.C. That is how someone gets a job on the board of the green slush fund. Unsurprisingly, companies in which he had financial interests received $5 million from the fund. Even worse, when questioned in a committee hearing, he downplayed the issue by stating that it was just a small amount of money, no big deal at all. It was $5 million, but it was no big deal to the Liberal insiders. That is the attitude of the government and of the board of SDTC.
A lot of us have been on boards. We have taken governance training. I was part of Johnson Shoyama, a group out of Regina. I cannot believe they were not scolded long before this. These are board members who, when they were put onto a board, went through governance training. They should not be in the room at all when there are votes on certain issues dealing with companies they are associated with.
Why are we surprised? The finance minister stood in the House and said the budget would not exceed $40 billion this year. We are into mid-October and we are at $47 billion. Nothing surprises us. We are already 17% over budget in the middle of October. Liberals know how to spend. They know how to spend to keep their friends happy. This is ridiculous.
I think Sustainable Development Technology Canada, 20 years ago, was put in place when we needed it. It was for innovation. I look at my province of Saskatchewan with regard to agriculture. Saskatchewan companies are the most innovative in the world when it comes to agriculture, and the SDTC fund certainly helped them. They continue to be among the best in the world. They do not need government money to be innovative. Our companies are doing it on their own.
Insider favouritism, at the expense of taxpayers, has become all too common with the Liberal government. One thing is for sure: It really pays to be a Liberal insider. We have seen it with all the violations: the WE Charity, the arrive scam and SNC-Lavalin, along with SDTC. However, this is $400 million. This is not a chunk of change. This is $400 million of taxpayers' money. What could we do with that? We could do a lot in this country.
It is only fair to assume the Liberals do not want to comply with the will of the House in order to cover up this scandal. The Speaker has ruled that this failure to adhere to the will of Parliament constitutes a breach of privilege, which is why all business in the House has been stalled now for 12 days. Canadians from coast to coast to coast have a right to know what is inside the documents and what the Liberals are trying to hide.
Conservatives want to see the documents released not only to give Canadians answers, but also because the RCMP has concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe an offence under the Criminal Code may have been committed. The people of Saskatoon—Grasswood who send their hard-earned tax dollars here want to know where that money went. They want to know where the $400 million is. We have 10 ineligible projects, totalling $58 million. There were 90 cases where conflict of interest policies were not followed; that was $75 million. All totalled here, it is $390 million.
I was looking over the testimony by one of the whistle-blowers, who said:
I know that the federal government, like the minister, has continued saying that there was no criminal intent and nothing was found, but I think the committee would agree that they're not to be trusted on this situation. I would happily agree to whatever the findings are by the RCMP, but I would say that I wouldn't trust that there isn't any criminality unless the RCMP is given full authority to investigate.
To give “full authority” would be to give the papers over. That was part of the whistle-blower's comments, whom we commend for stepping up and helping this country defend $400 million of taxpayers' money given to Liberal insiders. It is unreal that this has taken place in Canada.
I read an interesting article. I know a lot of my friends on the other side probably will not agree with this, but I am going to quote it. Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, stated:
The most outrageous show of contempt has been the government’s months-long refusal to hand Parliament a complete set of documents that they were ordered to produce in a motion passed by the House last June.
The Liberals argue that the production order goes too far....
More importantly,...were the reference to the RCMP not in the order, the Liberals would find other excuses—
They have, Mr. Speaker.
—not to hand over documents about Sustainable Development Technology Canada — or to release only some of them, with heavy redactions, as it has done so far.
That’s because the federal Ethics Commissioner and the Auditor-General both found dozens of cases where SDTC handed out grants totalling tens of millions of dollars without following conflict-of-interest guidelines.
This is an editorial in The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper, not the Conservative Party of Canada. This is a well-respected media outlet in this country. According to The Globe and Mail:
...the government has no choice but to turn them over. The House has the absolute power to order the production of government documents, and only it can decide if the order has been respected – as the Speaker ruled on Sept. 26.
The Globe and Mail editorial states:
The power to order the production of documents is essential to Parliament’s role as a check on the government. Without it, it cannot do the work it was created to do. The Liberal government’s efforts to subvert that power is a direct attack on Parliament and a show of contempt for the institution.
That was from the editorial board for The Globe and Mail, last Thursday.
Canadians know this is far from the first scandal of the current government. I named nine or 10 already that were in the nine years that I have been here. They include SNC-Lavalin, Winnipeg labs and WE Charity. We had a number of ventilators by a former Liberal MP, Frank Baylis, that came through here.
I know my colleagues on the other side of the House like to think this is just incompetence on the government's part and has nothing to do with them. Let me remind them that the government is supposed to be accountable, and every one of the ministers is supposed to be accountable for their departments. Let me make them aware that taxpayers in this country are watching the people involved and making sure taxpayer money is spent correctly without corruption.
The Minister of Innovation, who the Auditor General said was at fault, is clearly not being accountable for his actions in this case. If these actions are criminal, like the RCMP has indicated they could be, would this not be a cover-up of criminality? The whole scandal could end if the Liberals simply hand over the unredacted documents today. If the RCMP finds nothing of value in the documents, then so be it. Then we move on to Randy versus Randy. That is another one that we are going to be talking about in the House very shortly.
Over a span of five years, the board approved 405 transactions. Out of those, the auditor found 186 conflicts of interest, which equals about 82%. That means that in 82% of the examined transactions, individuals gained from their own decisions to sign over the money. This lack of oversight, as highlighted by the Auditor General, has allowed for more conflicts of interest to persist without even being addressed, ultimately contributing to a very serious ethical lapse within the government's handling of these transactions.
Canadians have a right to know where $390 million has gone. They pay their hard-earned taxes, each and every one of them, and it is deplorable how the government has wasted that $390 million. Not one of the Liberals has stood up in the House in the last 12 days to talk about government waste, and this is a form of a violation. We need to have those documents sent to the RCMP, unredacted. It needs to see them, and we can move on to another corruption that I think the House will deal with, and that is Randy versus Randy.
