Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today as the representative for the good people of North Okanagan—Shuswap. I will be speaking on the issue of the question of privilege raised by my colleague the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle.
For those Canadians who may still be unclear as to why we are debating a point of privilege to this extent, I will give a condensed history of the situation. This may be the first time people are seeing this back home or in other parts of the country, so they deserve to be brought up to speed on why Parliament has ground to a halt here.
I will quote my hon. colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets for the initial information, because he has been diligently bringing up the breaches of interest on this file:
There is a foundation set up in 2001 called Sustainable Development Technology Canada, with the purpose of providing taxpayer financial assistance to green technology companies before they are commercialized. Since the government was elected, the foundation has received a billion dollars of taxpayer money. The result of probing by parliamentary committees is that we found that in 82% of the funding transactions approved by the board of directors during a five-year sample period that the Auditor General looked at, 82% of those transactions were conflicted.
After seeing the Auditor General's report and the seemingly blatant disregard of conflict of interest guidelines, opposition members called for the release of the documents pertaining to the Liberal green slush fund, as it has come to be known.
On June 16 this year, my colleague the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle rose on a question of privilege following notice under Standing Order 48 concerning the failure of government to comply with the order the House adopted on Monday, June 10. A majority of the House voted that day, June 16, to compel the government to produce a series of unredacted records concerning Sustainable Development Technology Canada, now known as the green slush fund, a body engulfed in one of the worst Liberal scandals in recent years.
On September 26, just last week, the hon. Speaker presented his ruling on the question of privilege raised by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle. I will quote only a portion of the Speaker's ruling because it is quite lengthy:
The procedural precedents and authorities are abundantly clear. The House has the undoubted right to order the production of any and all documents from any entity or individual it deems necessary to carry out its duties. Moreover, these powers are a settled matter, at least as far as the House is concerned. They have been confirmed and reconfirmed by my immediate predecessors, as well as those more distantly removed.
The Speaker later went on to say, “The Chair cannot come to any other conclusion but to find that a prima facie question of privilege has been established.”
Here we are today, one week later, debating a motion once again and calling on the government to produce the documents it has thus far refused to provide to the House. One has to wonder what is so damaging in these documents that the government would put all other legislative processes aside in an attempt to cover up what those documents contain.
How bad can it possibly be? Can it be worse than the SNC-Lavalin scandal that saw the same government embarrassed for its corruption and saw the first female indigenous minister of justice and attorney general kicked out of the Prime Minister's cabinet and caucus because she chose to stand up for the truth?
First, Canadians, my colleagues and I suspect that what is in the documents is extremely damning to the corrupt government and its Prime Minister, so bad that they will go to such great lengths to avoid producing the documents demanded by members of the House.
Parliamentarians, at least on this side of the House, take our role very seriously. Members of His Majesty's loyal opposition have a job to do, and that is to hold the government of the day accountable. Lord knows, that is a formidable task these days with a government that has been in power for nine years and is desperately trying to cling to that power.
I recall the 2015 campaign by the Prime Minister, which was during my first campaign in my first election. The Prime Minister made statements about sunlight being the best disinfectant, and he said that his government was going to be so transparent. Well, something has happened to those sunny days, and there are storm clouds brewing all over the out-of-touch, out-of-time Prime Minister and his government. On the aspect of transparency, what has truly become transparent is the Liberal government's clear and penchant leaning to look after its Liberal friends and ignore the rest of Canadians.
When we look at the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Auditor General has identified as having been spent or allocated inappropriately, we have to wonder how much good could have been done with those dollars. How many struggling Canadians would have been better off had the green slush fund dollars been properly accounted for and gone to deserving causes instead of to entitled Liberal friends?
When I am home in the North Okanagan—Shuswap, I hear from seniors who are struggling to get by on their minimal pensions because of the increased cost of living, including food, rents that have doubled and fuel and energy costs beyond what they can afford because of the government's penchant for its carbon tax that is driving up the cost of everything.
These Canadians are the ones hurting the most, yet the Prime Minister and his appointees had no problem letting a billion dollars, or a major portion of it, get blown away unchecked to insiders in conflicts of interest. These are the Canadians who deserve to know that justice can be served for them by holding the Prime Minister and his appointees accountable. These are Canadians like the one in five who skipped or reduced the size of at least one meal because they could not afford groceries; that rate is 45% among single parents. These are Canadians like the one in five parents who ate less so their children or another family member could eat; that rate is 44% among single parents.
I learned that in Vernon, one in 23 families has relied on a food bank in the last 12 months, and one in 13 kids depended on the food bank last year. These numbers are troubling. When I see a government this wasteful leaving Canadians behind, with seniors and children unable to eat, it is despicable.
Many of the food bank users in Vernon are hard-working, middle-class families struggling to put food on the table. I bring this to the current debate, because those Canadians have an expectation that we hold this government accountable through the actions of the members in this chamber, accountable for the taxpayer dollars those Canadians pay and this government continues to waste.
Many of those Canadians have to work two jobs and still rely on the food bank to feed their families. They deserve to know how this Prime Minister has let hundreds of millions of dollars be given to privileged insiders he appointed, while at the same time families, seniors and hard-working Canadians cannot afford food for their tables.
I spoke of the situation in Vernon and the North Okanagan, but the same situation is playing out across that riding and across Canada, with homelessness and tent cities popping up faster than a Liberal can spew talking points. We have heard members from across Canada speak of the rise in food bank use and the rise in homelessness, all while this PM and his insiders have funnelled millions of dollars to themselves or their close friends, leaving honest Canadians to go without.
I will shift topics a bit here to emphasize some of the points made by the member for South Shore—St. Margarets regarding some of the objections by the government to providing these documents.
If I was the owner or manager of a company and became aware of alleged criminal activity within that company, I would be expected to turn over evidence to the police to have it investigated. In fact, I would find it an obligation to point out wrongdoing, criminality and waste. There is no reason we would not provide the documents of evidence to enforcement agencies and investigative teams, except for one possible reason. That reason would be if the body providing the evidence was also guilty in the activity.
This House and its members should be held accountable in the same way, as managers of the business of government. We, through the motion to provide the documents and the question of privilege we are debating today, are working to do just that: to report alleged wrongdoing and conflict of interest, so that the proper authorities can investigate and, if needed, prosecute. We, through the motion to provide these documents, are doing what we are supposed to do: exposing the activities that have allowed $390 million to go to Liberal insiders.
As I have noted, there is only one reason apparent for this Prime Minister and his appointees to keep these documents hidden from the sunlight that he espoused to be the best disinfectant. It is also so intriguing that a government, or maybe it is just the Prime Minister and a few insiders, would go to such extreme measures to keep the truth from seeing the light of day. They have so far been willing to set aside all other legislative debate in this chamber to keep something hidden. We can only surmise what that may be, but from what we have seen in the Auditor General's report, it does not look good: numerous cases of conflict of interest; $58 million to 10 ineligible projects that on occasion could not demonstrate an environmental benefit or the development of green technology.
The Speaker may already see, but Canadians may not, that there is a way to end the impasse we are now at. All it would take is for the Prime Minister to release these documents as the House has directed. I say “directed”, not asked or requested. It was a clear direction, an order from the House and the members of this chamber, for the Prime Minister and his government to produce these documents. It was not a request from one party. It was a motion that the majority of the House voted to support.
The motion that Parliament adopted also did not say the documents could be redacted. Therefore, government could not pick and choose which portions to produce. It did not give permission for the Prime Minister or the PCO to decide which parts the House would see and which parts it would not. It would be highly inappropriate for a potentially guilty party to be given the leeway to remove or redact portions that could be damaging to their reputation.
Speaking of reputations, the government continues to build on its reputation of being untrustworthy when it comes to campaign promises, election promises and fake commitments. Now the corruption runs even deeper, and the government and the Prime Minister are refusing the will of Parliament. We saw how the government previously provided documents that were so redacted, entire pages were completely blacked out; not a written word was to be found. It must have gone through volumes of printer toner and ink just to keep parliamentarians and Canadians from seeing its dark secrets.
As I mentioned earlier, parliamentarians do not take their jobs lightly or without consideration for the impacts on Canadians, that is, most parliamentarians with nothing to hide. The Prime Minister and his insiders are not supreme rulers. They are servants of the people of Canada, not the other way around. That is why we, as a majority of Parliament, adopted the motion to bring to light the documents that may show whether the Prime Minister has served the people or whether it is the other way around, and he has made taxpayer dollars serve him and his appointees.
We do not take lightly the demand for production of documents. We will also not take it lightly when a Prime Minister and his government ignore an order of Parliament, nor should Canadians. All 338 members, as duly elected members of the ridings we represent, are here as the voices of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. If the Prime Minister ignores the will of Parliament, he ignores the will of Canadians.
Where would we expect the leader of a country to ignore the will of the people? I suggest the only places where that would occur is in dictatorship countries, the types of countries that the Prime Minister has said he has a liking for or an admiration of. Dictatorships are where the leader and government have the people serve them. That is not the Canada we knew before the current Prime Minister and government, and it is not the Canada we want to see in the future.
One thing I learned before I entered the political arena is that responsibility cannot be passed on to someone else. In early media training, I learned that, when we make a mistake, it is best to fess up, own up, dress up and admit it.