Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise in the House this morning to continue to talk about the ethical failures of the Liberal government. I will start where I left off.
The trade minister also violated ethics rules by awarding untendered contracts directly from her office to her close friend and campaign manager. She too was found in violation of ethics rules, yet we hear very little from the Liberals about these repeated breaches.
Many Canadians are rightly concerned about the recurring pattern of law-breaking within the Liberal government. It is well known that there have been multiple violations of ethics and other laws. The Prime Minister's own parliamentary secretary at the time was found guilty of breaking ethics laws, along with several current and former Liberal MPs, who used their offices to benefit themselves, their family members and their friends.
We are currently witnessing yet another scandal, this time involving the employment minister, a Liberal cabinet member from Edmonton, and his pandemic profiteering business partner. This scandal is so serious that it has prompted a ruling from the Speaker on the right of democratically elected members to receive full, honest answers and information from individuals summoned by the House. In this particular case, the business partner of the Liberal minister from Edmonton Centre refused to provide crucial information about an individual referred to as “the other Randy”.
Why is this significant? It is because it strikes at the core of a scandal involving a sitting cabinet minister who, while serving in government, held a 50% stake in a company that was awarded government contracts by his own government. This is not just unethical; it is deeply concerning.
What exacerbates the situation is that the minister claimed he had no contact with his business partner throughout 2022, a key year in the timeline. He even testified to this in the House. His business partner echoed the same claim. However, what did we discover when the documents were produced? They had been texting and communicating throughout that entire year.
This is the clear problem: The minister's testimony was not truthful and his business partner's testimony was not truthful. They misled the House, the public and the media. Now we know that instead of working for Canadians, this sitting Liberal cabinet minister was actively managing the day-to-day operations of a company profiting from pandemic contracts awarded by his own government. This is the kind of corruption that has brought the House to a standstill. It is about conflicts of interest and a blatant refusal to follow the law. Canadians are expected to follow the law. Why not the Liberals?
Canadians have had enough, and they are demanding that the RCMP fully investigate these scandals. A letter from the RCMP dated October 9 states, “the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) investigation into SDTC is ongoing.” We know that SDTC operated under various governments, including that of Stephen Harper. However, according to Canada's Auditor General, it faced no issues until 2017. It was after 2017, when the Liberal Prime Minister appointed his own choice as chair of SDTC, that the problems began.
What happened next? The most ethically challenged Prime Minister, who has allowed corruption to fester within the government, appointed his hand-picked chair to oversee SDTC. It is no surprise that we have now seen 186 conflicts of interest and $400 million in mismanaged funds. The Auditor General's report only examined a portion of the deals made under the billion-dollar slush fund, and she found conflicts of interest in 80% of the cases that were reviewed.
The Liberals continue to claim that they are hiding the truth to protect charter rights, but as the leader of the Conservative Party rightly pointed out, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is designed to protect citizens from the government, not to provide cover for the government to withhold documents from the people. We must uphold the supremacy of Parliament. Parliament, with its elected representatives of Canadians, writes the rules, creates laws and directs our justice system, not the other way around, yet the Liberals are constantly attempting to distort this fundamental truth.
All of this has come to light thanks to a courageous whistle-blower who said:
The true failure of the situation stands at the feet of our current government, whose decision to protect wrongdoers and cover up their findings over the last 12 months is a serious indictment of how our democratic systems and institutions are being corrupted by political interference.
This is absolutely correct. The Liberals have not attempted to comply with the Auditor General's report. They have ignored the recommendations of the industry committee and continue to refuse to comply with the House's order to produce the documents essential to uncovering the truth about how their friends and Liberal insiders are getting rich while ordinary Canadians continue to struggle.
The RCMP will continue its investigation, but it is crucial that it receives all the necessary materials to complete its work. What can we expect from the Liberal government? It will claim it wants this matter referred to a committee, but instead of tabling the documents, it wants the committee to study whether the documents should even be tabled in the first place.
The House has already ordered the production of these documents. That decision was made by a majority of MPs, yet the Liberals, with their shrinking support, refuse to comply. They are hiding behind redactions and claims of cabinet confidence, but Canadians see through this charade. The Liberals are playing a dangerous game with our democracy, and if they are willing to violate this law, what other laws might they be willing to break?
In a piece in the National Post, Christopher Nardi wrote:
The fact that government organizations are still withholding information that was ordered by the House of Commons in June is significant because it appears to fly in the face of a ruling by [the Speaker] last month that they likely had no right to do so.
The Prime Ministernot only has failed to lead by example when it comes to ethical behaviour, but has also shown himself unable to ensure that a high ethical bar is met within the government he runs.
The complete disregard he has shown for the will of the House is not surprising. Time and time again, he has doubled down in the midst of scandals instead of fessing up and delivering good, honest government to Canadians. It has certainly been interesting to hear that some of the Prime Minister's own Liberal MPs are finally getting fed up with a Prime Minister who dismissed their concerns and whose leadership has been continuously scandal-plagued. Their concerns echo the sentiments of many Canadians who, after nine years of the Prime Minister, are tired of higher costs, increased crime and government corruption.
We have already witnessed the government repeatedly breach the Conflict of Interest Act. The Prime Minister, ministers, Liberal MPs and insiders have violated the very rules designed to protect Canadians from this type of corruption. Enough is enough. Canadians deserve transparency, they deserve accountability and they deserve a government that upholds the law. It is time for the Liberals to stop playing games with our democracy, hand over the documents and allow the RCMP to complete its investigation. Only common-sense Conservatives will end the corruption and get answers for Canadians.