Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has been slapped with five ethics violations, the most in Canadian history. Time after time, the Prime Minister has shown total contempt for our ethics laws. He himself has been the subject of three ethics investigations and was found guilty of breaking ethics laws twice. The Liberal government allows the culture of law-breaking to persist, as six Liberals have been found guilty of breaking ethics laws.
Several ministers in the Prime Minister's government, as well as the Prime Minister himself, have been found guilty of violating numerous laws. In fact the Prime Minister, as I have indicated, has been found guilty on two occasions. The first was in 2016 for accepting a vacation on the Aga Khan's private island while the Aga Khan was lobbying the government. The second was for improperly pressuring the Attorney General during the SNC-Lavalin scandal to interfere in a prosecution.
Similarly, the former finance minister breached ethics laws by failing to disclose ownership of a French villa held in a corporation and for overseeing federal dealings with WE Charity despite his family's financial ties to the organization. The former fisheries minister also violated conflict of interest rules by awarding a lucrative Arctic surf clam contract to a company linked to his wife's cousin. Additionally, the former minister of small business was found guilty of violating ethics laws for awarding a contract to a firm co-owned by her friend Amanda Alvaro.
These cases underscore persistent issues of ethical lapses within the government.
After nine years, it is now the member for Edmonton Centre, the employment minister, who is caught in yet another ethics scandal. I will give some background. While serving as minister, he co-owned Global Health Imports, GHI, a company that secured questionable government contracts. Despite his claiming to step away from the business, evidence leads to his continued involvement, ultimately violating ethics rules. His former business partner Stephen Anderson is now facing fraud charges, raising further questions about the misuse of taxpayer dollars.
The minister has also faced criticism for false claims about his indigenous heritage, which the government and he had to retract. This, combined with his ties to a lobbyist who secured $110 million in federal contracts and his company's receipt of $8 million in contracts, shows a pattern of misconduct. Canadians deserve accountability, but the Liberal government continues to protect its own instead of delivering solid, ethical leadership that Canadians expect.
Before I get into the crux of the speech, I want to share for those listening that the conflict of interest rules require cabinet ministers to divest their controlled interests either by selling them or by placing them in a blind trust within 100 days of their appointment. They also forbid them from having any management or control over the trust assets. A minister would then be found to be breaking the law if they were found to have either managed or controlled the trust assets or the day-to-day business of the company itself. I will get into that later on in my speech and on how it bodes very poorly for the Minister of Employment.
How did it all start? The mysterious Randy texts are at the heart of the probe in the employment minister's shady business dealings. A year after he joined the federal cabinet, revelations came about, questioning his involvement with GHI. When appearing at the ethics committee, the minister repeatedly denied that he was the Randy in question, and he stated that he never had any operational role in the company that he co-founded since his re-election in 2021, even though he still owns half the shares in a numbered company, which he in fact disclosed to the commissioner.
The first set of text messages obtained by Global News showed that Stephen Anderson, the co-founder of GHI, transferred an urgent message from a certain Randy to Malvina Ghaoui, principal of a PPE company in California, to send a wire transfer of half a million dollars to secure a large shipment of nitrile gloves. The text reads, “it literally takes 10 seconds to complete a transfer. I am telling you we are not allocating like this, please reach out and see what the reason is now, you assured me this morning this was done first thing; and allowed you to hold the stock today; it's midday and nothing is completed”.
The message ends by telling Anderson to be ready in 15 minutes for a partner call. Anderson followed up with Ghaoui 30 minutes later, telling her that he spoke with Randy and other GHI employees, who agreed to wait a little longer for the wire transfer. The exchanges were dated September 8, 2022, which is almost a year after the minister was first sworn in to cabinet as associate minister of finance.
