Madam Speaker, I am off by a day, September 26. It is now October 28. They have paralyzed Parliament for a month rather than simply complying with the production order.
What is a production order? For those watching on CPAC who want to know the intricacies of this parliamentary word, I note that Parliament has the power to compel every government agency, institution or department to produce information. To do our jobs and make good laws and sound decisions, we have the ability collectively, when the House decides that it needs documents or wants to hear testimony from witnesses, to send for persons or papers. We are talking about papers right now.
We have uncovered, thanks to brave testimony from whistle-blowers who unveiled the depths of this corruption at great risk to their own careers, that Liberal-friendly insiders sitting on a board, who had control of a billion dollars' worth of taxpayers' money, got to determine who got millions of dollars' worth of government grants. What the Auditor General found out, thanks to the tipoff by this whistle-blower and thanks to my hard-working colleagues sitting on the committee that litigated this scandal, is that insiders were funnelling taxpayers' money into their own companies, which is outrageous. It was 400 million dollars' worth of corruption. The Auditor General found that $58 million went to 10 projects that were completely ineligible and had nothing to do with the mandate of the fund.
The fund was originally set up to help Canadian companies innovate and find solutions to environmental problems. The government would help underwrite some of the costs of innovation. The thinking was that, as a benefit, Canadians would perhaps get the commercialization of whatever innovative products came out of that. Then of course there was the environmental benefit of having cleaner ways to do things and make things, fewer emissions going into our atmosphere and fewer pollutants going into our lakes and rivers. The key point was that it had to have something to do with the environment.
The Auditor General found that 10 projects for $58 million were completely ineligible. That is a lot of money. Just to put that into context, the sponsorship scandal started off at about $40 million and people went to jail for it. There were criminal prosecutions.
I should point something out to my hon. colleague from Winnipeg, because I anticipate that he might get up. Every once in a while he likes to get up for questions and comments to make his views known and to ask Conservatives for their take on some of the things he is interested in. He will somehow paint the spectre that as long as Parliament is doing anything with this, there should be a complete, pristine cone of silence around any kind of investigation. I will point out to him that there was a lot of investigation into the sponsorship scandal. In fact, there was a full public inquiry, a judicial inquiry, called the Gomery commission.
I was in the House at the time. I remember the daily drip of details that came out, the sordid facts of Liberal insiders and even Liberal cabinet ministers at the time who were sitting around the table when a scheme was concocted. It was to take money that was supposed to protect our national unity and spread the message of a cohesive and strong country and to instead put it into the pockets of Liberal insiders. It was very similar.
The inquiry, the debate in Parliament and the litigation at committee did not prevent the RCMP from successfully prosecuting and convicting wrongdoers in that case. I just want the member to know that; it might save him some time when my speech is concluded. Hope springs eternal.
We found out more. I do not have it printed out, but I have it. One of my colleagues, the member for South Shore—St. Margarets, found out something today about the owner of Cycle Capital, which by the way is the same firm that the current Minister of Environment is involved in. A lot of people say there were Liberal insiders on the board and ask what the link is to Liberal ministers and the government of the day. Here it is: The Minister of Environment is a partial owner in the company called Cycle Capital.
Annette Verschuren's company was valued at $140 million when she was appointed to the Prime Minister's slush fund. After years of funnelling millions in taxpayers' money to companies she owns, Cycle Capital is now worth $600 million. This is exactly like GC Strategies. It is never better than when Liberals are in power, for government lobbyists and well-connected Liberal insiders. That is why Canadians should care about the issue.
Let us think back to when Canadians were locked down, the economy was suffering and many people were going through severe hardship. Think about all the devastating impacts that had on the lives of Canadians. All members know of people in their communities who lost everything. They lost their businesses, sometimes businesses that had been in the family for two, three, four generations. People had to sell their home, families were broken up and people had to move to other parts of the country to find work.
Some of the redirection of money, the misuse of taxpayers' money, was happening during that time, and the Prime Minister was saying that he was plunging the country into debt so Canadians did not have to go into debt. We should never forget that during that incredible time of hardship, Liberals got a Liberal. They found a way to enrich their friends and help their partisan supporters. That is the crux of the issue.
This could all end today. Every once in a while, I chat with a Liberal member in the hallways of this place, and they ask me how long the debate is going to go on for. The ball is in the Liberals' court. It will end on the day they respect the order of Parliament, the day they direct all their departments to comply with the lawful order of Parliament so the information can be handed to the RCMP and the RCMP can have all the information.
The Auditor General has the “follow the money trail” kind of thing. She has the documents about where money was paid and how decisions were made, and she understands the conflicts of interest. However, there is a lot of information behind the scenes.
A whistle-blower said that with respect to intent, when one has the information that is contained in the production order, they will see the intent. We believe that, at the very least, the RCMP should be able to access the documents so it can make the proper determination. It is a very important principle that we, as the guardians of taxpayers' money, are able to let it do that. That is why the motion is so important, and that is why it is so important for the government to comply with the order.
I should point out another argument that I anticipate. I hope I addressed an issue that the member might have gotten up on, but just to give him some rest and maybe to avoid having to answer another question about it, I will add this: He might also say that there is somehow some terrible precedent being set and that complying with the production order would somehow taint the investigation and create a terrible precedent for future cases. I should point out that some departments have complied with the order.
In fact, I believe the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has complied with the production order. Some departments did provide documents, so the Liberals cannot on the one hand claim they cannot comply with the order because doing so would taint the criminal investigation, which is some bizarre argument about violation of charter rights. I should point out that the charter is not there to protect the government; it is there to protect the people from the government.
The government cannot have it both ways. It cannot go ahead and say that it is somehow going to damage the integrity of the RCMP investigation while simultaneously some departments are complying with it. Those two arguments are mutually exclusive. Only one of those scenarios can be true.
We believe that some departments did the right thing and complied with it. Some departments decided to ignore a lawfully passed production order by the elected body of the people of Canada, whose money, by the way, was taken out of their pockets or off their paycheques to go into this fund that was then redirected to these Liberal insiders.
For that reason, I hope that today, after a month of Parliament not being able to proceed to other business because the government has chosen to paralyze Parliament rather than comply with this order, might be the day the Liberals all go home, reflect on what was said today and wake up tomorrow with a renewed sense of democracy and of proper stewardship of taxpayer money. That is my hope. It is not just a hope for myself and my Liberal colleagues, but for the Canadian people, so they can once again have faith and confidence in their institutions.
The member talks a lot about institutions and preserving the integrity of those institutions. How about preserving the integrity of the institution of Parliament? How about restoring the integrity of the concept that taxpayer money is used properly and that the government does not reach into the pockets of Canadians through the use of its monopoly on force? Nobody has the choice as to whether or not they pay their taxes. The government has that awesome power to force people to fork over when it decides to make them fork over. At the very least, what should accompany that is the money that is raised in that way only goes to what the government says it is supposed to go to and not to enriching the well-connected partisan friends of the Liberal Party of Canada.
We are almost at the end of today's session. Let us all take that hope home with us, reflect on that tonight and send positive energy or say prayers that we will all wake up tomorrow, or at least the Liberals will all wake up tomorrow, with a bit more wisdom, a little more respect for the Canadian taxpayers and comply with this production order so the RCMP can get to the bottom of this sordid affair.
