Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to take to my feet today to talk about one, maybe two Liberal scandals that have happened over the last nine years. Actually, there are probably 68 Liberal scandals that have happened over the past nine years under the government. In 2015, I remember a young, bright-eyed, beautiful-haired person running to be Prime Minister, and that person promised to lead the most open and accountable government in Canadian history. How far and how quickly we have fallen.
Today, we are debating the subamendment to the privilege motion concerning Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which was supposed to help people become more sustainable. A greener Canada is what this fund was supposed to be for. My colleague from Regina—Qu'Appelle said it very well and very succinctly. He said that Liberals are going to liberal. I will unpack that. It means that it does not matter which generation it is or what iteration of Liberal people are, they are always going to enrich their friends. Liberal years are tough years for Canadians, but they are great years for Liberals.
I will go through a couple of examples. SDTC was a $380-million fund, and when it was audited by the Auditor General, she found 186 conflicts of interest. That is $380 million that the Liberals used to pork barrel and give to their friends and families.
I will have a few examples of this as I go through my presentation, but I would be remiss if I did not congratulate Premier Scott Moe and the Saskatchewan Party for once again returning a common-sense government to Saskatchewan. This is the fifth term for the Saskatchewan Party under premiers Wall and Moe. This has been done only two other times. It was done when Saskatchewan was first formed and had a Liberal premier for six terms and, when there used to be an NDP that stood for something, Tommy Douglas won five terms in Saskatchewan. Premier Moe and Premier Wall have tied Tommy Douglas in how many terms they have won consecutively. It is a great thing for my province.
I know lots of people put their names forward, and I will congratulate everyone who put their name on a lawn sign or a ballot. It is never an easy thing to do. There were candidates for the NDP, the Saskatchewan Party, the Sask United Party and the Buffalo Party. I congratulate everyone who put their name forward to take part in the election process. Some lose the election, but they always gain some experience and learn a few things.
Some friends of mine sought re-election. I want to congratulate Ken Cheveldayoff, who won in Saskatoon, and Blaine McLeod, who won in Lumsden-Morse. He is a great MLA as well. Lots of people have been returned to the legislature for the Saskatchewan Party, and I once again congratulate Premier Moe and his team for delivering a fifth term for the Saskatchewan Party.
We talk about scandals here, but in Saskatchewan, in 1982, Grant Devine ran against Allan Blakeney. History tends to repeat itself. There is a wonderful quote from Grant Devine when they were debating that sounds similar to the answers we sometimes get from some of the Liberal ministers. They were debating, and Allan Blakeney kept saying how great the government had it and how everything was going well for the government. There is one line in one particular debate when Grant Devine said that, if the province was so well off, why did they not have more money in their pockets? That is an interesting comment. Do members not feel that is happening right now in Canada?
The NDP-Liberals continue to say that Canadians have never had it so good, that Canadians are doing so well and that we have all these wonderful programs that they are paying for, which boggles my mind. The government does not pay for anything. The government does not have any money unless it takes it through taxes from businesses or people's paycheques. Therefore, it is not paying for anything.
Canadians, through their tax dollars, are paying for all the programs the NDP and the Liberals are foisting upon the people. They do not have a choice to pay their taxes, but when it comes to tax dollars, I say that a dollar in the pocket of the person who earned it is always better spent by them than by a government. That is something I will always believe.
I want to talk about the SDTC motion, some of the things that have gone on and where the money has gone.
Whenever we scratch the surface of Liberal-NDP spending, it seems like there is always a connection to, perhaps, a minister, like the Minister of International Trade. There are a lot of other examples, including the foreign affairs minister, whose spouse got quite a few grants from a few economic development funds. It is weird how there is always a familial connection to the people who are receiving grants from the government.
There have been a couple of other scandals over the last nine long years. We all remember the Aga Khan vacation scandal, the prison needle exchange program and the pressure put on the former justice minister to get Liberal donor SNC-Lavalin off the hook, with her being fired for not helping. I think we all remember Jody Wilson-Raybould and that she stood up for what was right, but the Prime Minister threw her right under the bus. We also remember Jane Philpott, who stood side by side with Jody Wilson-Raybould. She was also thrown under the bus by the feminist Prime Minister.
We also remember the WE Charity scandal, which is interesting because it caused the 2021 election. There was a prorogation too, which may be a bit of foreshadowing for the current scandal. With the WE Charity, the Liberals were once again caught giving money to well-connected friends. I think they used some of that money to help the Prime Minister's family with some travelling and a couple of grants to some brothers.
To get themselves out of that situation so that the House of Commons and committee could not dig deeper, there was a prorogation. Then what happened after the prorogation? The 2021 election was called. Around how many millions was that? It was about $600 million. The current scandal is only $380 million, so not quite as expensive as the WE Charity scandal, but the Liberals prorogued and called an election. Let us hope they follow that pattern, because I think Canadians are ready for a carbon tax election.
The list is so long that I might have lost my spot. Another scandal was giving hundreds of thousands of dollars in ventilator contracts to Liberal Party insider Frank Baylis. I think Frank got $25 million for that contract, which is interesting because he never even produced ventilators.
That leads me to another point about the SDTC scandal and the way Liberals spend money. During COVID, over $600 billion was spent, but $300 billion of that was not spent on any of the COVID programs. We would love to know at some point in time where the other $300 billion went that was supposed to help Canadians.
Here is another great line by the Prime Minister. Do members remember when he went on TV for a big, national press conference and said that the government will go into debt so Canadians do not have to? Does everyone remember that line? I wonder if the Prime Minister understands how government debt gets repaid.