Madam Speaker, today, we find ourselves in an incredible mess. I have been around this place for some time, and I can tell members that it is rare for a government to be so blatantly obvious in protecting those who have engaged in outright corruption. One would wonder this: What drives this unbelievable motivation to ensure that the evidence on the corruption that has been uncovered by committee members, followed by the Auditor General and now the RCMP looking into this, is not released? I do not know, but I have known folks who have been guilty and wanted to hide evidence. I am a dad, and I have been there. I asked my son when he was younger, “Kyler, did you eat a cookie that you weren't supposed to?” Well, he immediately backs up and moves into the corner, where there is evidence of the cookie crumbs, trying to hide them. The government reminds me very much of my four-year-old child trying to hide the crumbs, the evidence of the crime.
The government has been in power for nine years, and over its nine years, it has engaged in many different things that were found to be corrupt. Obviously, lining the pockets of Liberal insiders has become what the Liberals are known for. What is increasingly devastating is the fact that this behaviour just keeps happening again and again. It seems as though they get caught once and they say, “Well, now we know how to do this, and we will do it a bit better next time. Maybe we can do it in such a way that we don't get caught.”
The Liberals have decided, after having been found out and found guilty for so many different things, that the tools of government should now be used to simply cover the evidence. We have seen this before. We saw it when the Prime Minister was found guilty of having accepted an illegal vacation; there were attempts to cover the evidence. We have seen this time and time again with the government; the Liberals have decided that the best way to defend themselves is by trying to hide the cookie crumbs.
This scandal is unprecedented in recent history. This is $400 million of taxpayers' money that was handed out. The Auditor General found 186 conflicts of interest, meaning that the people who were doling out the money were in conflict. They would be benefiting themselves personally with the money they were handing out. These people were appointed by and, in many cases, good friends of the Liberal Party. However, rather than saying, “You caught us. We're going to come clean”, now the government says, “We're going to stop at nothing, including ensuring that this institution isn't able to do what it must constitutionally be able to do.” That is to demand the evidence.
This did not just happen in the last number of weeks. As a matter of fact, the government has had some time. All the parties of the House, except for the Liberals, voted to ensure that this documentation, the evidence, would be released to the RCMP.
Now, the government claims that this would be a massive charter violation, which is its new defence. It is completely laughable. Every student of history should know, or does know, that the charter is there to protect Canadians from the government, not to protect the government from Canadians. Canadians deserve, through their Parliament, to be able to demand that evidence be brought forward; that is one of the rights and responsibilities of the House.
Constitutionally, it is our responsibility to hold the government to account on behalf of taxpayers. Our number one job as parliamentarians is to oversee the spending and the misspending of government. Our members found the misappropriation of funds. The Auditor General, having reviewed that, found 186 conflicts of interest, $400 million that was given to members, Liberal appointees. They gave the money, nearly $400 million, to companies that those individuals were actually part owners of.
Imagine that. At a time when millions of Canadians are lined up at food banks because of the policies of the Liberal-NDP government, with millions of Canadians unable to feed their kids, individuals who were appointed by the Liberal-NDP government were lining their own pockets to the tune of $400 million. It is unbelievable. Now the government says that the evidence the Auditor General found, which the government has in its possession, should not be handed over to the RCMP.
We have talked a lot about the numbers, 186 conflicts of interest and nearly $400 million that has been handed out inappropriately to line Liberal insiders' pockets. What is startling is that there were just spot audits; there was not a full audit of the program. As a matter of fact, when they went through and just chose individual grants and contributions, they did not even get to half of them. What they found was that 82% of those they reviewed were in conflict and were ineligible, in many cases, to even have the money distributed to those particular programs.
Imagine an 82% failure rate, an 82% corruption rate. Imagine if they had done an audit of the entire program. We would see that the number would have been significantly higher if the entire program had been audited.