Madam Speaker, Liberal insiders are getting rich. That is what is happening here. This is what this all boils down to. I am often asked what is going on in Ottawa. Back in the riding, people want to discuss what it is truly like out here. In essence, the privilege motion we are debating today does just that.
An unfortunate series of events led us to this position. When asked by our constituents what is happening in Ottawa, we say that Liberal insiders are getting rich. In this case, $400 million in questionable spending has resulted in 186 conflicts of interest being identified so far.
How are Liberal insiders getting rich? We have to go back to what this program was for, how it was set up and how the board was picked to see how Liberal insiders got rich. We have a program, the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund, which should be helping Canadians to leave our environment better than it is today. It is for technology. It is for initiatives that could help green our economy and our country, which is a noble goal for one fund.
However, as soon as the Liberals were elected in 2015, things changed. First, the Liberals changed the board. They also changed the chair of the board to an individual who, as the Auditor General has found, is in a conflict of interest. The actual chair of the board, who decides where all this money goes, was hand-picked by the Prime Minister. Can we guess which companies she picked? They were her very own. That is Liberal insiders getting rich.
It is not just the case of the chair of the board; we found conflicts of interest over 180 times, with the board of directors investing in companies for the environment. However, they were really doing it so the Liberals could get rich. We have seen this with the Minister of the Environment, who is the owner of a company that got money. It is interesting to go through some of the details regarding who got rich, who owns shares and who owns some of these companies that got money. It is frustrating because the Auditor General found this; they found the corruption and the conflict of interest in these cases.
What happens when there is a crime? Do we call a meeting of local people to discuss that crime, or do we call the RCMP? This should be going to the RCMP. I am not the one saying this; many people have testified that it is questionable, regarding the different groups that got rich from this.
We are very grateful to the whistle-blowers out there. I thank the men and women who work in the public service for the work that they do and for doing what, I believe, is what is right for our society. The work that the bureaucrats do is administrating the wishes of the government. Therefore, when selecting a new board, the names would have been forwarded by the Prime Minister; maybe there would have been some quick background checks and some procedural things to get the people on board. I am very grateful for these bureaucrats, who work tirelessly to make sure that Canada provides for its citizens as much as they need, and it is with the disdain of these people's views of what actually happened—