Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to rise in the House to speak to the subamendment on the privilege motion moved by Conservatives to try to force the government to finally be transparent about the corruption it has allowed to run rampant, corruption which just happened to benefit its friends who it appointed to the board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada.
Time after time, we have seen the Liberal government fleecing taxpayers so it can enrich itself and its friends. It seems the only people in this country benefiting from the government's radical policies are Liberal insiders, who get to abuse Canadian taxpayer dollars without any oversight.
Every time we bring up the scandalous actions of these Liberal insiders, the government resists any attempts at holding them accountable or enacting any sort of consequences against them. Additionally, there is no initiative undertaken by the Liberal government to try to make up for these failures. There is no attempt to recoup the money these corrupt board members at SDTC funnelled to their own companies. In fact, all of the government's effort has been put into blocking Canadians from knowing the truth. It appears as though the whole purpose of SDTC was to just get as much money as possible out the door and into the businesses of well-connected Liberal insiders.
Yesterday, we saw the disdain these Liberal insiders hold for Canadians. When Conservatives have the audacity to hold them accountable and demand answers, they completely lose it. Yesterday at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the lawyer for Andrée-Lise Méthot, who is the founder and managing partner of Cycle Capital Management, actually began yelling at a Conservative member who was asking questions of his client. He seemed to think that to question her actions was unacceptable, despite her involvement in directing millions of dollars to businesses she had a vested interest in.
In fact, the meeting had to be suspended due to the disgusting behaviour and utter disrespect the lawyer showed to the committee. Even after being admonished by the chair during the suspension, he continued, if members can believe it, to make faces and wave his hands at another Conservative member while that member was asking questions. It is unsurprising that this is what it has come to with Liberal insiders treating parliamentary committees with such disdain when the government itself treats the House the exact same way.
What should Canadians think when they see these Liberal insiders can treat Parliament in such a way and still face no consequences from the corrupt government? It is obvious that Liberals and their friends believe that they supersede Parliament, that their abuse of taxpayers' dollars should not be questioned and that their actions are above reproach.
In fact, I am sure these Liberal insiders are confident in their actions because they used to employ the current radical Liberal environment minister, who was their lobbyist before becoming a Liberal MP and now minister. In fact, it came out through the course of this scandal that the environment minister still holds shares in a company that had special insider access to direct funding to businesses that it was invested in, a company that more than tripled in value since its co-founder was appointed to the SDTC board.
I suppose we should not be surprised that these connections have come to light, as it seems every other week a minister is connected to some scandal. This very minister is under scrutiny right now for his abject failure in his own department to manage the grants and contributions program at ECCC. Since 2018, over $4 billion has been given to Environment Canada for its grants and contributions funding. Now the department has failed an audit. The auditors found that there was a lack of documentation, a lack of oversight and an inability to show value for money or that what was paid for was actually received. Does that sound familiar? There was a lack of oversight of and a lack of value for money for over $4 billion, and in some instances, there was an inability to show that what was paid for was actually received.
This has become the common practice of the Liberal government. A lack of documentation, a lack of oversight and an inability to show value for money or that what was paid for was actually received have become synonymous with Liberal corruption. Suffice it to say that the department performed so poorly, the auditors warned that the management of funds was so sloppy that it represented “potential legal and reputational damage”.
The environment minister is happy to let the potential abuse of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars within his department go unaddressed with no consequences. This is the sort of behaviour that is permissible by the government, by the cabinet. When his friends and former employees appear before committee, it is obvious that they feel they are entitled to treat Parliament with contempt. They know that their minister friend will do all that he can to stop Conservatives from holding them to account.
The attempted cover-up of the SDTC scandal, the refusal to hand over unredacted documents to the House and the insistence by the government that it should dictate to the House what information it can receive are indicative of the arrogance it governs with. Canadians are tired of this holier-than-thou attitude. They are tired of the Liberal corruption and are tired of the cover-ups. They are calling on the government to be transparent and to come clean about what it let happen at SDTC. Canadians are paying attention and want the documents to be turned over unredacted. As the Speaker has ruled, the government must do so.
Instead, the Liberals are desperately trying to cover up their corruption. Perhaps we will see them take this Speaker to court, just as they did with the last Speaker. However, if they really want to avoid turning over these documents, they could just call an election and see what Canadians think, but I digress.
With the subamendment, which was put forward by my colleague, the member for Flamborough—Glanbrook, and was seconded by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle, we are seeking to add more witnesses to the amendment to appear at the procedure and House affairs committee. The subamendment seeks to add the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the former deputy secretary to the cabinet, Paul MacKinnon.
It should be noted that the Privacy Commissioner of Canada complied with the order from the House and did deposit all of the documents requested in an unredacted format. To all the Liberals who have been repeating the same talking point that the documents must be redacted to protect privacy, they may want to discuss this with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who sees no issue with turning over unredacted documents to the House.
The Liberals keep throwing up roadblocks to keep these documents secret so they can avoid any semblance of accountability. The real question here is this: What are they hiding? It is important that we hear from these witnesses to get the full picture of the extent of the cover-up the government is trying to orchestrate. This subamendment would change the amendment to read:
“provided that it be an instruction to the committee:
(a) that the following witnesses be ordered to appear before the committee separately for two hours each:
(i) the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry,
(ii) the Clerk of the Privy Council,
(iii) the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, who respected the Order of the House and deposited unredacted documents,
(iv) Paul MacKinnon, the former Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet (Governance),
(v) the Auditor General of Canada,
(vi) the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
(vii) the Deputy Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada,
(viii) the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel of the House of Commons,
(ix) the Acting President of Sustainable Development Technology Canada,
(x) a panel consisting of the Board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada; and
(b) that it report back to the House no later than Friday, November 22, 2024.
The subamendment is important, as it would allow the amendment to prescribe a list of witnesses the committee on procedure and House affairs should hear from to learn the full scope of the issue at hand. The importance of witness testimony in this matter cannot be overstated.
The scandal broke with the testimony of an SDTC whistle-blower. Looking back at that testimony, it is clear there is plenty more to uncover with the scandal. The whistle-blower said:
I think the Auditor General's investigation was more of a cursory review. I don't think the goal and mandate of the Auditor General's office is to actually look into criminality, so I'm not surprised by the fact that they haven't found anything criminal. They're not looking at intent. If their investigation was focused on intent, of course they would find the criminality.
The whistle-blower went on to say:
Just as I was always confident that the Auditor General would confirm the financial mismanagement at SDTC, I remain equally confident that the RCMP will substantiate the criminal activities that occurred within the organization.
It is clear that the investigation must continue and that the government must be forced to comply with the investigation and to turn over the unredacted documents. In fact, the whistle-blower even made a comment about the Minister of Industry's claim that there was no criminality. He said:
I know that the federal government, like the minister, has continued saying that there was no criminal intent and nothing was found, but I think the committee would agree that they're not to be trusted on this situation. I would happily agree to whatever the findings are by the RCMP, but I would say that I wouldn't trust that there isn't any criminality unless the RCMP is given full authority to investigate.
The Minister of Industry may see no issues with SDTC board members' awarding millions of dollars to their own companies or to companies that they had investments in, but Canadians do. Canadians are outraged that at a time when two million people are using food banks every month and a time when people are struggling to afford housing, the government is letting its Liberal insider friends gorge themselves on taxpayer dollars. It allows them to enrich themselves on the back of Canadians, and then it shields the insiders from any consequences.
The Auditor General found that nearly $400 million was involved in cases of conflict of interest. We have heard that, but the minister would like everyone to just move on and to stop looking into the issue because he has moved the program under the responsibility of the National Research Council, which means there is nothing more to see here and there is nothing to be done.
The money the minister allowed Liberal insiders to take from Canadians is lost forever. Instead of trying to recoup the money, which was clearly awarded in instances of conflicts of interest, the Liberals just want to move on and forget that the issue ever happened. In fact, the minister does not even want an investigation to happen.
We would think that one of the first steps one would take in response to hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money being abused in this way would be for the RCMP to investigate what took place and assess whether a crime has been committed. However, the minister did not do that, because he does not want to throw his friends under the bus, especially at a time when he is likely to be looking for new employment in the next year.
This is not the first time Liberals have chosen their friends over Canadians, and we can assume it will not be the last. Whether we are talking about SDTC, ArriveCAN, McKinsey or any one of the other Liberal procurement scandals, there are clear patterns. In every one of them, there is always a severe lack of documentation. In fact the Auditor General said that the lack of documentation around ArriveCAN was the worst she had ever seen.
ArriveCAN is an application that started out with a price tag of $80,000, which then ballooned to $60 million that we actually know of. It is an application that, according to the Auditor General, we will never actually know the true cost of, given the lack of information available for her to do a proper audit.
It is deeply concerning to know that the Auditor General cannot even do her work. There is a complete lack of documentation, a lack of information available, as she is trying to demonstrate that taxpayers did in fact get good value for the money that was spent.
We also saw in these cases, many times, that there were specific companies that received special treatment because they just happened to have connections to the government or its top officials. In each case, we saw a similar reaction from the government. First, its members denied that there were any issues. Then, they tried to block any investigation from happening. Then, they refused to comply with the investigations by not turning over documents. When we finally got some answers and revealed their corruption, they wanted to move past it, chalk it up to lessons learned and move on. We are not willing to allow that to happen while taxpayers foot the bill for enriching Liberal insiders.
We believe that Canadians deserve answers, and they deserve a fulsome investigation into what has happened at SDTC. This is why we are here today. We continue to argue on behalf of Canadians and argue for their right to have their questions answered. That is why we continue to call on the Liberal government to hand over the unredacted documents and to pass this subamendment and the main motion, once it has been properly amended. We can then get to the bottom of this issue so that Parliament can move on to other work.