Mr. Speaker, I am probably going to disappoint a lot of my friends and family members who were ready to tune in around five o'clock tonight, on the edge of their seat, ready for this. We have brought it a bit forward to quarter to two in the afternoon, so I do not think they are as keen around the TV as I thought they would be, but here we go.
Today I am pleased to speak to an egregious violation of parliamentary privilege as a result of the Liberal government's refusal and failure to comply with a Conservative motion that was duly passed by the House in June. The House of Commons as a collective and members of Parliament as individuals have a number of rights and immunities that are necessary in order for them to perform their work. These rights and immunities are integral to the work of parliamentarians and are required in order to protect members of Parliament, as well as the authority and dignity of the House of Commons.
Individual rights of members include freedom of speech in the House of Commons and committees, freedom from arrest in civil actions, exemption from jury duty, exemption from being subpoenaed to attend court as a witness; and freedom from obstruction, interference and intimidation. Collective rights of the House of Commons include the right to discipline those found in breach of privilege or in contempt and to remove members for misconduct; to regulate its own internal affairs, including its debates, agenda and facilities; to maintain the attendance and service of its members; and to institute inquiries and demand papers.
These rights are extremely important, and when the collective or individual rights of members of Parliament are violated, it is so serious that all other work must cease. The reason we are here today is that the Speaker of the House of Commons found that the Liberal government violated the collective rights of members by refusing to produce documents that the House of Commons had ordered. As I mentioned, the House enjoys or should enjoy the absolute and unfettered power to order the production of documents that is not limited by statute. These powers are rooted in the Constitution Act 1867 and the Parliament of Canada Act.
Since the Speaker agreed with Conservatives that our rights as parliamentarians have been breached, all business of the House has ceased. There will be no debate of government bills and no debate of private members' bills, because the issue is so important that it must take precedence over all other business, and because the Liberal government has refused to comply with the lawful order of the House of Commons. For the benefit of Canadians who may be watching at home, I will discuss how the motion came to be and why the House has been seized with the issue for months.
Sustainable Development Technology Canada was a federally funded, non-profit fund that approved and distributed millions of dollars annually to small and medium-sized businesses in the clean-technology sector. The fund was established in 2001 by the Government of Canada to fund the development and demonstration of new technologies that promote sustainable development. The fund managed to run without controversy for many years, that is until the Liberal government came to power and turned it into a green slush fund for its well-connected Liberal buddies.
The trouble began when former minister of innovation, science and industry Navdeep Bains and his Liberal colleagues handpicked the board members and chair, who went on to spend $1 billion of taxpayer funds. This flagrant disregard for taxpayer dollars and blatant corruption flew under the radar for many years. It was thanks to the work of Conservatives on various parliamentary committees, but especially the industry and technology committee, that the scandal came to light and was fully investigated.
In February 2023, the allegations surrounding financial mismanagement and ethical lapses first came to light in the form of a complaint from a group of employees at the fund. The Government of Canada responded by conducting an internal investigation, which found several issues with how the fund was managed. Parliamentary hearings began at the same time.
The Auditor General of Canada first began to look into the allegations a short while later, in November 2023, and issued a damning report earlier this year. She found that 186 conflicts of interest had occurred, meaning that the board of directors and the chair had hand-picked where funding was going on. Some of the funding went to their own companies.
The Auditor General took only a sampling of the funding and found that 82% of that sample was in conflicts of interest totalling $330 million. The Auditor General also found that SDTC did not follow conflict of interest policies in 90 separate cases, spending nearly $76 million on projects connected to the Liberals' friends appointed to run the fund, $59 million on projects that were not allowed or had been awarded any money, and $12 million on projects that were both a conflict of interest and ineligible for funding. In one instance, the hand-picked chair of the fund gave a shocking $217,000 to her own company.
Canadians at home might be wondering how this could possibly happen. How could the Liberal-appointed board of the SDTC misappropriate such a large amount in tax dollars? How could the board possibly have so many conflicts? I will explain.
Every single dollar that was disbursed by the billion-dollar green slush fund had to be approved by the board of directors. The members of the board of directors would declare their conflicts when they happened to arise; at the beginning of a meeting, those conflicts were declared. The trouble is that, in many cases, a director would stay in the room, or in some cases they would leave the room, while members were voting to give funds to their own projects. This is, of course, a completely absurd way to run a fund, and it led to these members' willfully and purposely enriching themselves and the value of their companies.
One egregious example of the scenario is when a member of the board, Andrée-Lise Méthot, who runs a venture capital firm called Cycle Capital, received $114 million in grants from the green slush fund while she was sitting on the board. Her company's value tripled during her time on the board at SDTC because the receipt of the funds lent an untold amount of legitimacy to her company.
Another shocking tidbit from the example is that Cycle Capital's in-house paid lobbyist was none other than the Liberal Minister of the Environment. He lobbied the PMO and the industry department 25 times while he was the paid lobbyist for Cycle Capital. Ms. Méthot then went on after her time at SDTC to become a board member at the Canada Infrastructure Bank, where she gave a handsome gift of $170 million in Infrastructure Bank money to a company owned by the chair of SDTC, Annette Verschuren.
I will now turn to Ms. Verschuren's conflicts, which are a second shocking example of the corruption that took place under the Liberal government's watch. Annette Verschuren was appointed to the chair of the green slush fund by former minister of industry Navdeep Bains after he had removed the previous chair, Jim Balsillie, given the latter's public criticism of the Liberal government's privacy legislation. Mr. Baines proposed Annette Verschuren, an entrepreneur who was receiving SDTC funding through one of her companies, as a replacement.
The minister, the Prime Minister's office and the Privy Council Office were warned of the risks associated with appointing a chair with so many conflicts of interest, and they were told that the fund had never had a chair with interest in companies receiving funding from SDTC. In 2019, Mr. Baines proceeded with the appointment of Ms. Verschuren despite repeated warnings expressed to his office.
Ms. Verschuren sat in on and moved two motions to funnel $38.5 million out the door in COVID relief payments, payments that went out the door in contravention of the contribution agreements that SDTC had with ISED or Industry Canada. Not only did $38.5 million inappropriately go out the door in these COVID relief payments, but $220,000 was also funnelled into Ms. Verschuren's own company, of which she was the CEO, founder, majority shareholder and sole director. She moved a motion and voted on sending $220,000 to her own company. Just recently, Ms. Verschuren was found guilty by the Ethics Commissioner of breaking ethics laws. In his report, the Ethics Commissioner stated that Ms. Verschuren “improperly furthered the interests of the beneficiaries of SDTC funding to companies associated with those accelerators.”
These are just two examples of the shocking revelations uncovered by the Auditor General, the Ethics Commissioner and my Conservative colleagues. According to the Auditor General, nine directors accounted for the 186 conflicts. I will remind members of the House that this fund had run well, by all accounts, until the Liberal government came into power and turned it into a slush fund.
In fact, one of the whistle-blowers who worked at the company stated, “The true failure of the situation stands at the feet of our current government—
