Madam Speaker, I figured you would just let me go on and on. I have ensured no harm can be done with that thing. If it rings, you can toss me, as you should have done with many members who have been out of line here today, especially on that side of the House.
It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of the great people of Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame to speak on this privilege motion on the failure to produce documents pertaining to funds delivered inappropriately by Sustainable Development Technology Canada. This is just another reason Canadians have lost faith in the corrupt NDP-Liberal government. It is one of the reasons 24 of the very people connected to this Liberal slush fund have decided to sign a letter asking the Prime Minister to quit, which is what 40% plus of Canadians want him to do.
The government has become so corrupt that the business of the House has ground to a halt. This is the place where we represent the people who elected us and work on issues that are important to them, but no, the work has stopped. We have to debate this question of privilege until the corrupt entity across the way decides it has had enough and produces those documents, which the Chair of this House has demanded that it do.
There is quite a simple remedy. On June 10, a motion was adopted calling for the production of documents related to SDTC to the law clerk. What happened over the summer? Very little. The documents were either redacted on the order of the corrupt Prime Minister or simply not produced at all. The common-sense Conservative House leader raised a question of privilege because of the failure to comply with the order of this House.
On September 26, the Chair ruled that this House privilege had in fact been breached, so here we are debating and begging for accountability, once again, from the corrupt government that Canadians have had enough of. It is just another attempt to cover up Liberal corruption.
One might ask what is so corrupt about the green slush fund. The Auditor General sampled a five-year period of SDTC transactions and found that 82% were in conflict. Is anyone shocked? I doubt it. Twenty-four MPs just signed a document and presented it in caucus to the Prime Minister, demanding that he step down. They are demanding that he leave because his corruption and his cronies are taking away their chance of re-election, taking away their chance to sit in this place representing the people they love.
What does 82% of these SDTC transactions look like? It looks like $330 million that was found to have been granted to Liberal insiders in conflicts of interest. It was found by investigating only 226 of the 405 transactions approved by the board over that five-year period, so no doubt it is just the tip of the iceberg.
The board was headed by a close friend of the Prime Minister, Andrée-Lise Méthot, appointed in 2016. That chair received $250 million for her very own venture capital firm, Cycle Capital, in the form of grants from the board that she became chair of. We cannot make this up. Before Méthot joined the board, a radical jumpsuit environmentalist lobbied for her, before he became the radical Minister of Environment. He lobbied his crooked pals and the Prime Minister, and secured $111 million for her. Over Méthot's time on that board, a further $114 million went to so-called green companies she was invested in.
All together, so far, it is looking like around $390 million was dished out to Liberal insiders through just this one crooked slush fund. I will speak about another slush fund a little further along. This one is called the green one, and I will refer to the other one as the blue slush fund.
Let us get a little context here. The Chrétien sponsorship scandal was all over $42 million of taxpayer money that went to further the Liberal Party's cause at the time. That pales in comparison to the nearly $400 million represented in the green slush fund cover-up scandal.
Scandals are nothing new. We can look at the WE Charity. The Liberal government blew nearly $1 billion of taxpayers' money and passed it on to Liberal friends. This is nothing new. It is a continuation of a trend: SNC-Lavalin, the Aga Khan, the arrive scam, and it goes on and on. If the NDP-Liberal government is not removed from this place, it will continue.
This privilege debate over the green slush fund could come to an end very quickly. All the Prime Minister has to do is follow the orders of the Chair, produce the documents, unredacted, and the privilege debate would come to an end. It would be all over. We could get back to the business of the House, working on trying to fix the country. It is impossible to get through to the people who sit across the way and to the crooked Prime Minister. However, it is not just him.
There is something I am going to refer to as the blue slush fund, known to others as small craft harbours. It is going to be a real shocker. Would anyone be surprised to know that one member of the House, who just so happens to be the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, who administers the small craft harbours program, delivered 20% of the projects in this program to her very own riding this year?
Really, does that add up? There are 338 members in this House and one of them gets 20% of the small craft harbours budget for her own riding, and signs off on it herself. We have East Pubnico and West Pubnico, two harbours where the landed value of the catch is higher than the entire Pacific catch in the commercial fisheries, and they did not get a nickel. Vessels are four abreast and wharves are condemned and falling apart. The fish harvesters cannot even receive fuel shipments because the wharves are not safe enough for the fuel trucks to pass over. There are hazards to anyone who uses those wharves. They could fall through broken planks or whatnot. Ladders are missing.
What is happening is unbelievable. There are a whole bunch of ridings in Atlantic Canada where a disproportionate amount of catch is being landed compared with the funding they receive from small craft harbours, while the minister uses the program as her very own slush fund.
A few other things do not add up. I am not sure if members are aware that the oyster industry in P.E.I. is in great peril. In mid-July, it was discovered that the MSX parasite had been detected in three areas of P.E.I. By mid-August, the minister declared she is going to invest $500,000 a year in the P.E.I. oyster industry and have a summit this fall with industry experts to try to figure out what is going on. There have been no talks at a summit so far, but $500,000 this year and $500,000 next year have been committed to try to save an industry that means about $100 million to that small island economy.
A report that came out a couple of weeks ago from the CFIA says it thinks MSX has spread all over P.E.I. Everywhere that virus has shown up, it has completely decimated oyster populations. If the oyster industry gets wiped out, it will take a minimum of three generations, or nine years, to start to rebuild. Those in the oyster industry in Prince Edward Island reached out and asked me to go to P.E.I. to see them. They said they had to explain it. I went to P.E.I. in August to meet with the stakeholders in the oyster industry and hear their pleas. All these pleas were being made to save a $100-million industry, and the minister offered $500,000.
At the same time, the Atlantic healthy oceans initiative, or the AHOI group, an outfit that has five employees and three board members, one of whom works for two Liberal senators, received $1.8 million in grants. When I questioned the minister yesterday in the fisheries committee, she had no idea who they were, and neither did her deputies. No one knew who they were, but everyone knows of the oyster industry in Prince Edward Island and how much it means to the economy, cultural fabric and even the tourism industry in the province.
Everyone has heard of the Malpeque oyster, which, in 1905, was named the number one oyster in the world in a Paris competition. This is very serious. There was $500,000 for a $100-million industry, including spinoffs, and $1.8 million for an ENGO that has five employees. It just does not make sense. Where are the Liberals' priorities?
It is no surprise that Canadians are disgusted with the priorities of the government. It is no surprise that 24 backbenchers signed their names to have the Prime Minister take a walk. Canadians have suffered long enough. They have suffered through a record cost of living rise and record food bank usage. Most of this is driven by the carbon tax.
If the Liberal-NDP government stays in power long enough, and if common-sense Conservatives do not come to the rescue, Canadians are going to be paying 61¢ a litre for gasoline, for diesel and for any kind of energy that is petroleum-based that moves goods around the country.
Crime is out of control, both metro and rural. This country is broken. I stood in this House not long ago and I spoke about rural crime in my riding, which the media downplayed and said I was exaggerating. The RCMP also said that I was exaggerating and that it was not aware of a crime issue like what I laid out in this place.
However, people are living in fear. Our senior citizens have to sleep with a baseball bat or a gun next to their bed. The people who built this country, paid taxes, worked hard and raised families have now retired and are not able to sleep at night. They are afraid their homes are going to be broken into and robbed by someone who needs to feed a crack or a meth addiction. It has gone too far.
Canadians want an election. This country needs to heal. It needs to mend. It needs to go back to where it was before everything was broken. We are not going to deal with any of those things while we have to stand here day after day and debate this privilege motion. The Prime Minister is using it to deflect while he tries to get his infighting under control.
As long as we are debating this motion, we are not finding new ways in which the country has been broken and we are not putting forward the confidence motions that the people who sent us here dearly want. It is time to give the people what they want. They want an election. It is time for this debate to be over. It is time for the Prime Minister to produce the papers that he was told to produce.