Madam Speaker, for days now Parliament has called to move the scandal to an investigation so we can get to the bottom of it, but the Conservatives are blocking all kinds of work on crime and health so they can filibuster with their endless speeches. It is all based on the fact that they think people have no memory.
I, with my grey hair, was here when Brian Mulroney was caught accepting money in a brown paper bag in a hotel room. That is normally what bikers get caught doing. He was the prime minister of the country, but he was a Conservative. I was here when Tony Clement took $50 million of border protection money and gave it out through his bogus little network to have sunken boats, fake lakes and gazebos.
Here is the thing. Does everyone remember, during the pandemic, when people could not go to work and the Conservatives were saying not to give them money because it would make them lazy? It was CERB money that was meant for waitresses, factory workers, people who could not go to their jobs because of the pandemic. Stephen Harper said it was “overkill” and “bad macroeconomic policy on an enormous scale”.
What Stephen Harper did not tell us is he was scamming the taxpayers for CERB money for him and his associates. This is a guy whose claim, when he gets $250,000 a year in pension, is that people give him money for the advice of a G7 leader. Is this the kind of guy who needed CERB payments? We will never see a single Conservative stand up and say someone should pay the money back when it is one of their hacks or friends. They will go along with it. If a Conservative gets caught with their hand in the honey pot, Conservatives will say it is okay, but it is not okay. It is not the—