Madam Speaker, I am getting sneers from the government benches as a result of me calling this out, but that is what happens when we have a government that does not want to release information to the Canadian public and to the House of Commons. It is disgraceful. We have another case with foreign interference in which the government does not want to release the documents, just as we are seeing here with the green slush fund, SDTC, and the handing over of those documents. It is very disturbing.
The next issue that is very close to my heart is the ArriveCAN issue. The previous speaker, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands mentioned some of the main characters in the arrive scam scandal. This is another situation where, in the committee on government operations, a committee that is accountable to overseeing the spending of the government and reviewing how funds are spent, documents were withheld.
I have a Globe and Mail article. I know that the government loves to quote Globe and Mail articles, so I will quote one at this time. It is titled, “Canada Border Services Agency misses deadline to hand over ArriveCan invoices, declines to identify subcontractors”.
Members may have seen, earlier in the House today, as I was very pleased to share the information with Canadians, that the procurement ombud has, in fact, decided to undertake a review of the bait and switch practices of the government to ensure Canadians are getting value for money and that subcontractors of government contractors are acting not only ethically but also for the best dollar value for Canadians. That is some other good work we are doing here in the House of Commons. Again, it is so difficult because this work is being obstructed in the effort to obtain documents.
I will expand upon the article. Bill Curry always does a wonderful job of covering these scandals of the government, and he writes, “The Canada Border Services Agency has missed a committee-ordered deadline to hand over outsourcing invoices, i.e. documents, related to the ArriveCAN app. The agency president told MPs Monday that she could not provide a timeline for handing over the documents.”
That is another mechanism that we see with the government. It is almost like a form of gaslighting, where someone will not come out and say, no, we are not getting the documents. Instead, they believe that the documents are coming, that if we are patient and if we wait, the documents will arrive, when in fact the intention is for the government to never actually deliver these documents. This is another mechanism that the government uses to obstruct democracy and obstruct the good functioning of the House and of committees in ensuring that Canadians have an opportunity to review the work that we are doing and to judge all of the information for themselves, as they will soon do in a carbon tax election.
I will move on to the next example where the government withheld documents from the House of Commons and Canadians: the Winnipeg lab. Who can ever forget that shameful NDP-Liberal cover-up? We had documents withheld from one of the most serious of national security scandals detailing Beijing's infiltration of Canada's highest security lab. The Prime Minister defied four orders of Parliament and took the House of Commons to court to block the release of these documents.
As the shadow minister for the Treasury Board and a former public servant, I am saddened, embarrassed and ashamed when I see public servants consistently having to wear the poor ethics and incompetence of the government. There was a perfect example of that with the Winnipeg lab documents. The government dragged a top health bureaucrat to the bar and admonished him, when, really, the government was trying to hide and trying to avoid handing over the documents, just as we are seeing with the question of privilege here today. This is another situation where we were denied documents as a result of the government not wanting to be truthful and wanting to obstruct. The SDTC situation today, the green slush fund, is another example of that.
There is another one. My colleague, the member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands, referred to the horrible SNC-Lavalin scandal. As my colleague mentioned, I would really recommend for anyone to read the testimony of the former attorney general and justice minister of Canada, Indian in the Cabinet. I think that it would be very valuable reading for Canadians and give insight from someone who was an insider, who had to participate in the dirty work of this type of governance. She just decided that it was not for her and made the choice to leave the government. She could see the obstruction of justice, of democracy and of the functioning of the House. In that case, this was a result of many things, but today, it is a result of not handing over the documents.
We are in a new era of scandal now. However, another thing is relevant to that era. We can say that there is always a new scandal; it is like Taylor Swift's eras. We have exited the arrive scam era and are into the green slush fund era, but this is from the SNC-Lavalin era, when the government did not produce the documents. I was hoping that all members of the Liberal government would have a chance to hear this, particularly the minister who was most implicated. What I am getting to is the WE Charity; again, documents were not handed over, which was obstruction of justice.
An article states, “The government released thousands of pages of documents related to the WE matter as the committee requested last month.” I congratulate it. The article continues, “But rather than have the independent law clerk redact certain information, such as cabinet confidences and personal information, the various departments responsible for this...program did the blackouts themselves—an apparent contravention of the committee's request.” That is a key word, “independent” law clerk.
The committee requested the documents unredacted. This, again, is how we completely evaluate all the information. When there are no redactions, we are able to read, in its entirety, the information that is there to present it to Canadians. Canadians are permitted, in many cases, to read the documents in their entirety. However, here, we again have a situation where documents were presented and were redacted regarding the WE Charity scandal. It was information only known to public servants who red-pencilled the material. It is scandalous that they did not even use a sharpie, but a red pencil. A spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office told CBC News that the redactions were done by the parliamentary law clerk, who was following the committee's direction to remove documents and personal information. However, in a confidential letter of August 18 to the clerk of the finance committee, that law clerk said that the vast majority of the blackouts had been done by government bureaucrats, which is not a surprise at all. August 18 also happens to be my wedding anniversary and my father's birthday.
Again, it is no surprise that we find ourselves in this situation today, in which documents have been held back, because thais is what the government does. It holds back information because it does not want the collective members of the official opposition, or Canadians, to have it.
I have one more example of the government holding back information. This is relative to the Governor General's scandal, although not even the latest one. That was the trip she recently took to Quebec, where it seems that she was not able to achieve a level of competence in our second language, despite committing to taking classes. I am referring to her predecessor, Julie Payette, who was mired in even more conflict and more scandal.
I will say that when I served as consul to Dallas, Texas, I did audit Ms. Payette's invoices because she was based out of Houston. There was a problem at that time, and I do not ever recall any discrepancies, but it was information relating to documents that were held back in relation to the former governor general.
A National Post article says, “The public accounts list the $277,592 figure”, which is an easy number to say because I am used to reading them in the millions and getting to the billions now, “as going to five claimants whose names are withheld due to “‘publication exemption.’” That is another excuse to withhold information and another excuse to not provide information, like we are seeing here today with withholding the documents. The article continues:
The document provides no comprehensive breakdown of how the money was spent or even what type of claim was settled.
“Further details are not available for the line item in question,” said a spokesperson for the [Office of the Governor General].
The Privy Council Office also declined to comment and referred all questions to Rideau Hall.
That is not surprising.
Again, I wish I could say that this is just the first instance where documents have been withheld, but no; this is a pattern we have seen time and time again, where information has been withheld from Canadians and from the official opposition because the government does not want us to have the information to further examine it and to bring light to the issues for Canadians.
The irony is incredible, because the Prime Minister has always said, “sunshine is the best disinfectant”. Let the sun shine in and allow the documents to be brought forward to the RCMP, to the House and to whatever committees and bodies require them for evaluation and use, so the correct actions can be taken and the Canadian people can decide.
Another tactic we have seen the government use, and which is being used here again in this situation, is saying that the organization is an arm's-length one. The government just washes its hands of the situation because it is an arm's length organization. There is no mea culpa. However, we we have seen this before. We saw it with, for example, the former minister of transport when there was resumption of travel after the the pandemic.
The minister refused to take responsibility, as the minister of transport, for the actions of CATSA. We all know CATSA. We go through the airport and do what is required to allow safe and productive travel within our nation as Canadians. However, not only did the former minister blame Canadians; he actually said that CATSA was an arm's-length organization so he did not have to worry about this.
We have seen this type of behaviour time and time again, and in addition to withholding documents and saying organizations are arm's-length, we could go on and on about the situations where the government has avoided responsibility: sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces, wildfire risks to Jasper, informing the public about Luka Magnotta, or the passport onslaught, which I would love to talk to the government House leader more about.
Aristotle said that character is revealed through actions. Government members, through their actions, have revealed their character. They want to obstruct democracy. They want to obstruct oversight. We are not going to let them do it.