Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that.
The last point I want to make is about some of the hypocrisy we see with the Liberal government. It just goes on and on. In this House of Commons, I have listened many times to the Liberals saying we have to do something about fossil fuels, oil, gas, etc. I read an article this morning in The Globe and Mail. It was an update on the results of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which was an overspending debacle of $30 billion.
The point was, who is the king of oil in the House of Commons? It is the environment minister. Canada is now producing five million barrels a day and it is increasing every year under the Liberals. Why is that? Basically, the Liberals need the money to pay for everything else, so they are quite pleased to let the oil come out of the ground. I agree, it should come out of the ground and it should be shipped by pipeline. However, I find it ironic that the Liberals go on at length about fossil fuels, oil, etc., and the environment minister is the king of oil, for now.
The broader issue at play here is the government's integrity. The allegations of conflicts of interest within SDTC are particularly troubling because they suggest public funds may have been misused to benefit individuals with close ties to the government. This kind of behaviour undermines public trust in government institutions and erodes confidence in the government's ability to manage public resources in a fair and transparent way.
The audit found board members were voting on projects that directly benefited companies with which they had personal affiliations, which is a clear violation of conflict of interest laws. These laws are in place to ensure that public officials do not use their position for personal gain and that government decisions are made in the best interest of the public, not private individuals. When these laws are violated, it casts doubt on the integrity of the entire decision-making process. I am sure many people have heard of some of the carryings-on that went on, through the minutes of those meetings. It is pretty startling, really.
It is important to note for Canadians that this kind of self-enriching goes directly against the Governor in Council appointment process, which states that a person appointed by the government, entrusted to oversee taxpayer money, will not personally profit from their work on a committee as a Governor in Council appointee, and neither will any of their family members. However, this is exactly what happened.
In a five-year period where 405 transactions were approved by the board, the Auditor General sampled 226, only half of them, and found 186 of those 226 transactions had some sort of a conflict. It is too much. It is egregious. If the Auditor General looked at all 400 transactions, statistically, they would probably find the rest of them were conflicted as well. It is a lot of money and Canadians have a right to know. Parliamentarians have a right to make sure justice is carried out on behalf of all those hard-working people I mentioned at the beginning of my speech.
Canadians pay their taxes on each and every paycheque. They pay their CPP. They pay their OAS. They trust that the people they mark down on their ballots will do the right thing when they are in Ottawa and that these dollars will be respected. Far too many people in our country have worked so hard, paid so much in taxes and created so much economic activity only to have been disappointed time and time again over the nine years the Liberals have been in office.
To be honest, in the last few years, the NDP has been in on it, too, because it has been propping up the government. There needs to be something done. I am sure some of the members of Parliament on the other side feel the same way. Nobody comes to Ottawa to see what is happening with this scandal: people enriching themselves with millions and millions of dollars. A lot of the projects likely never went anywhere.
Then the people back in our ridings who have contracting, construction and landscaping firms, who are carpenters, electricians, plumbers and health care professionals, go to work each and every day and see this on the news. Hope and excitement in the country are not there as they used to be. People want to be hopeful, but when they see this time and time again, and the list is unbelievable now after nine and a half years, they are truly disappointed.
One director was particularly aggressive at this. Andrée-Lise Méthot was appointed in 2016 by the Prime Minister. She runs a venture capital firm called Cycle Capital. Her companies, before and during her time on the board, apparently received $250 million in grants, and $114 million went to green companies she had invested in.
I think it is safe to say, when we look at these programs, whether it is Cycle Capital or others, no company needs that much money from the federal government. Really, no company needs that much money. From a government standpoint, the dollars are there to deliver government services, not to enrich insiders who create little value.
