Madam Speaker, today I will speak about the production of documents ordered by the House regarding the latest Liberal scandal, the billion-dollar green slush fund.
I have the honour and privilege of being a member of the public accounts committee. We received a damning report from the Auditor General last June when she found that the Liberal government had turned the once-legitimate Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. The Auditor General found that the Liberal-appointed SDTC board gave $330 million of taxpayer money to companies where the board members who voted to give out that money had a conflict of interest.
In addition, the Auditor General found that the same Liberal-appointed board approved another $59 million in projects that were not eligible for funding because they were outside the SDTC foundation's mandate. The Auditor General said that at least 10 of those projects did not even produce green technology or contribute anything whatsoever to emissions reduction. What a mess that was, and what a joke too, but what a farce and what a sad day it was for Canadians.
At the public accounts committee, we have been diligently trying to get to the bottom of the $400-million Liberal scandal since the Auditor General submitted her disturbing report, but we are being stonewalled by every single witness. Just yesterday, a senior official from the Privy Council Office, the Prime Minister's own department, testified as we were trying to seek clarity on Annette Verschuren's appointment as SDTC chairperson in 2019. The lack of consistency in witness testimony certainly looks like a cover-up at the highest levels of the Liberal government.
Ms. Verschuren has testified that she did not apply for the chairperson role but had been called two or three times by former industry minister Navdeep Bains, asking her to take the job. This was after a year-long selection process that had already produced a short list of names for former minister Bains, but then suddenly Ms. Verschuren's name was suspiciously added.
Everyone whom we have had the luxury of talking to has given a different account. Some would say that the opposition is skeptical. Well, of course we are. Everybody is telling a different story. We have not been able to find out why there was a last-minute addition. It certainly was the beginning of the culture of corruption at the Liberals' green slush fund.
At the public accounts committee, we received the following information this week. Ms. Verschuren submitted an application to the selection process for the role of chairperson of SDTC on April 30, 2019. She was then interviewed by the selection committee as part of the selection process on May 14, 2019. Her application, interview and references were assessed by the selection committee. She was found to have met the selection criteria for the position. She was then identified as a qualified candidate for the role in an advice letter to then minister Bains dated May 21, 2019. She was appointed chairperson of SDTC on June 19, 2019.
My question for PCO officials was regarding their belief that Ms. Verschuren had applied for the position of chair of Sustainable Development Technology Canada through the Privy Council portal. However, as I said earlier, she testified at the industry committee on September 16 that she had not applied for the chair position. She said that the former Liberal industry minister Bains approached her two or three times to take the position of the chair of the Liberals' green slush fund.
In his testimony to the public accounts committee on October 9, the former Liberal industry minister Navdeep Bains stated that he could not recall asking her to take the position. Perhaps he had amnesia. Perhaps he misremembered. In the end, we know the truth. If it walks like a duck and looks like a duck, it must be a duck. I mean, this is our job; this is what we have to do.
Something smells awfully fishy here, and I know the smell of fish because I represent lobster fishermen and I am a salmon fisherman.
Yesterday, we tried to understand how there could be such a discrepancy between Ms. Verschuren's testimony and Mr. Bains' recollection. The PCO officials had testified before that a formal letter of advice would have been provided to the former industry minister containing a list of names of qualified candidates. At that point, it would have been up to the minister working with his office to determine the choice of candidate for chair he would recommend for cabinet's approval. PCO officials also testified that they would have undertaken a full assessment process for suitable candidates who would have been eligible for the position. We can see the trend, and it is very alarming.
Considering both the Auditor General's June report and the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner's Verschuren report in July 2024, we are perplexed and find it strange as to why, and I am repeating what a member of the bureaucracy we met this week said, such a merit-based process would not have uncovered the serious conflicts of interest Ms. Verschuren brought to the job as SDTC chair.
Also, the former CEO of SDTC had also raised serious concerns with the minister's office and elsewhere about the new chair's conflict of interest. The former CEO of SDTC told the industry committee that:
My employee in the government relations lead told the minister's office.
Yes, I expressed concern, and I did it at multiple levels. That's my duty, and that's what I did.
When the minister then decides to not accept that advice, I have to accept that too.
So, in this case, we have one individual who simply tried to do their job, and tried to do it ethically, morally, the right way, and we have a cabinet minister who did not take that advice and brought in somebody with serious conflicts of interest. We will continue to try to find the truth about why the former minister, Mr. Bains, thought it so necessary to appoint a chair with such blatant conflicts of interest despite repeated warnings from the organization's CEO not to do it.
The Auditor General's June report found, according to the minutes of the meetings of the board of directors, 90 cases that were connected to approval decisions representing $76 million in funding awarded to projects where the foundation's conflict of interest policies were not even remotely followed. The board of the green slush fund did not ensure that the foundation complied with its enabling legislation. That is alarming. SDTC is entirely funded through public money. The Auditor General stated, “With that comes an expectation that it holds the highest standards for ethical practices.”
Conflicts of interest that are not disclosed or managed call into question the objectivity and impartiality of the foundation and its directors. In light of these damning reports, we have tried to get the former Liberal industry minister, Mr. Bains, to answer questions about Ms. Verschuren's questionable appointment as chair and why he was convinced she was the right person for the position even with all of her conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, he has not been willing to answer our questions so far and has been called back next week.
We have also asked if it is not the role of the Privy Council Office to ensure that all proposed appointments meet all requirements. However, once again, we have been stonewalled at public accounts; normal and typical behaviour. Yesterday, my colleague, the member for Edmonton West, asked the PCO officials a simple question: Who ordered the documents to be redacted before they were submitted to Parliament? He did not get an answer.
It is important to point out that the Privy Council Office is the Prime Minister's personal department. It takes its marching orders directly from the Prime Minister's Office. Some people say that there must be a nefarious reason that the Prime Minister's own department continues to block access to thousands of documents related to the Liberals' green slush fund.
As part of her investigation, the Auditor General conducted a governance audit of SDTC. She did not conduct a criminal investigation. A whistle-blower told the public accounts committee that he is confident criminal intent will be identified if the documents in question are turned over to the RCMP. Could this be the reason the department officials have redacted and refused to turn over the documents, to prevent criminal intent from being identified?
The PCO's telling departments to send in redacted documents has resulted in the Speaker's ruling that they are in breach of members' privilege because the order from the House of Commons did not say “redact”. Because the Speaker has ruled that the NDP-Liberals violated a House order to turn over unredacted documents and did not co-operate with the production order, we continue to talk about the green slush fund scandal today.
It is important to note something. I remember the sponsorship scandal of the 1990s well. I was much younger then, and I followed politics a little, from a distance. I was in junior high or high school; I may be dating myself a bit. If we can imagine it, that was the big scandal of the day in my youth. That is the first one that I remember. I am sure there were many others. I know there were, historically, but this is the one that stands out to me.
I hope people are watching because there is an interesting aspect to this. The sponsorship scandal was only one-eighth the size of the green slush fund scandal. Can we imagine that? We are talking about $400 million in taxpayers' money, given to friends fraught with conflicts of interest.
I know it bothers the member for Winnipeg North. I know it bothers everybody in here from these other parties. They are not getting up today to speak, because they would sooner ask me questions about why I care and why the Conservative Party cares about $400 million that went missing and where it is. The Conservative Party is doing the good work for the people of Canada.
At the public accounts committee, we ask questions to provide oversight of taxpayers' dollars, to check for value for money and whether programs have achieved value. Members have privileges at public accounts. One of those privileges is that, when witnesses come into hearings, they are not there to evade. There are no bonus points for trying not to answer the questions. They are called in as witnesses to public hearings. They are there to answer those very important questions, and it is our job to ask those questions.
The Auditor General found 186 conflicts of interest. In just a sampling of the SDTC board decisions, with a five-year sample period, the Auditor General actually found that 82% of funding transactions that she looked at were conflicted. Eighty-two per cent had conflicts of interest. We can let that sink in.
The sponsorship scandal was one-eighth the size of this, and that dominated headlines every day for years of my childhood. This is $400 million. The taxpayers deserve clarity. They deserve accountability. That is the oversight we try to provide at the public accounts committee and here in the House of Commons.
It is alarming and deeply disappointing to me that the Liberal government members on the public accounts committee do not want to simply find the truth for Canadians. They do not call out witnesses who evade questions at committee hearings. They actually defend them over and over again, and they bring up continuous points of order.
As I stated, when former Liberal industry minister Bains testified earlier this month, he would not answer our questions. That is why he is being called back. Mr. Bains knows the political process. He knows what is acceptable and what is not. He would know what it means to be held accountable and to be transparent with taxpayers' dollars. As a former cabinet minister and member of the Privy Council, he must be held to a higher standard.
When discussing the appointment of Ms. Verschuren, Mr. Bains told the president of SDTC, who questioned her conflict issues, that they would manage her conflicts as they appointed her the chair. Who is this referring to? Could it be the PMO? Who said, “Oh, don't worry; we'll manage all the conflicts. There are only 186 of them so far. We will look after them. We will look after them for the people. We are going to do a good job here.”
Though former minister Bains is not a politician today, there are no points for evading or refusing to answer the questions posed by the public accounts committee members. Regardless of the party they represent at the table, they represent Canadians. Mr. Bains is, however, accountable for his time in public office. He was and will always be a member of the Privy Council, forever bound by those rules
Four hundred million dollars is a lot of taxpayer dollars. It was a lot of money for the Prime Minister's hand-picked appointees, the chair and others, who got themselves into a position to benefit their own companies. It is deeply shameful, discouraging and disappointing, and it is pathetic too.
The $400 million may not seem like a lot of money to some Liberal members, but there are record numbers of people at food banks. There are punishing carbon taxes and spiking grocery prices, and people in the constituency of Miramichi—Grand Lake call me daily and say they are choosing between medications and groceries, or sometimes between fuel and groceries. Rent is way up. All of these affordability problems are on the watch of the current government, which has inflated prices. The cost of living crisis has been created by the Prime Minister and his colleagues.
The reason we are here today in the House of Commons is to talk about the privilege around the production of documents because questions have not been answered. We watched earlier this year what happens when people do not answer questions; they get hauled right in here to answer questions. Maybe that is not far off, because we are going to get the answers no matter what it takes.
I will say this: When the questions are not answered by the individuals who have the answers, like the officials from PCO yesterday at the public accounts committee, it is our privilege to get those answers to the Canadian public. That is how our democracy works. We are doing the right thing right now.
It is deeply disappointing that we are still here today talking about the Liberal green slush fund scandal of $400 million. The Auditor General made it clear that the blame for the scandal falls squarely on the then Liberal industry minister and the current industry minister who did not sufficiently monitor the contracts being given to Liberal insiders.
The Speaker has ruled that the government violated a House order to turn evidence on the $400-million green slush fund over to the RCMP. The NDP-Liberal government's refusal to respect the ruling has paralyzed Parliament, pushing aside all other work to address the doubling of housing costs, food inflation and the crime, corruption and chaos that we see in our streets because of its policies. Why will the NDP-Liberals not end their green slush fund cover-up and provide the ordered documents so Canadians can have the accountability and transparency they so rightly deserve?
It is only my common-sense Conservative colleagues who will end the corruption, end the chaos, find out what happened to the $400 million and get some clarity and justice for the people of this country.
