Debates of Nov. 19th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, the member is absolutely right. The $400 million was misallocated by Liberal insiders, who were deliberately appointed by the previous minister. The misappropriation of that money could have gone to any of a number of things, including housing our troops. There is a base housing problem, in which our men and women in the armed forces do not have access to housing. That is just one thing that instantly leaps out at me because we have debated that in the House.

The member is right. The Liberals could have lowered taxes by $400 million. They could have not incurred another $400 million in debt. Instead, under the government's watch, with the minister's own senior officials present, the Liberal insiders chose to give the money to themselves.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, as the member likely knows, the Greens supported the original motion back in June and we support the documents being provided, as the House has called for. We also want the House to operate. This is a significant amount of money, $400 million, but so too is the operation of this place.

The math I have, as recently as the beginning of this week, is that 160 Conservatives have spoken on this motion. If we assume it takes $70,000 or so per hour for the House of Commons to operate, that adds up to 80 hours, which is $5.6 million spent speaking on the same motion when many of us, myself included, would like to vote on the motion to send it to committee and have the committee report to the House on doing exactly, as I understand, what the Conservatives want to do, which is to get back to the original motion in June.

Can the member speak to any concerns he has with using this amount of taxpayer money to continue talking about the same motion when we could just vote on it?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, I would be delighted to comment on those things. I would say that the cost to operate this Parliament is a small price to pay if we are debating a motion that goes to the democratic accountability of the government, but that also has the side benefit of preventing the government from introducing more bad laws that will harm Canadians.

I talked about that in my speech. I noted that on the legislative calendar of the government is the imposition of a new destructive tax that expert testimony at the finance committee has said will further erode Canadian productivity and result in less taxes collected for the Crown. I have no problem with using the tools available to parliamentarians to force the government to do what this House has ordered it to do, and that is to produce the documents so that we can absolutely get to the bottom of this $400-million debacle.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, I cannot believe the member's defence. He is saying we found out too late that what the Conservatives are asking for goes against what the RCMP and Canada's Auditor General want and what other legal experts are saying, that we should do it anyway and who cares what they say.

Steven Chaplin, former senior legal counsel in the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, said, “It is time for the House to admit its overreach before the matter inevitably finds it way to the courts which do have the ability to determine and limit the House’s powers, often beyond what the House may like.” Whether the member likes it or not, Conservatives are borderline in contempt of Parliament by continuing on this issue. That is something all Canadians should be concerned with.

It is not too late to listen to what the RCMP, the Auditor General and other law experts are saying. When will the Conservatives start to listen to those experts as opposed to the leader of the self-serving Conservative Party?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, there is a bit to unpack there, but I will start with this. If the votes in this chamber are to mean anything, they have to be respected. It is to—

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Madam Speaker, this is amazing. I am being heckled by the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, who is chirping from the sidelines and telling me they do not have to follow the votes of the House of Commons and that the votes in the House of Commons do not need to mean anything.

That might have been what the Prime Minister was getting at when he admired the dictatorship of the PRC: that parliaments do not matter, that votes do not matter and that the government can act with impunity. Is that really what the member for Winnipeg North believes, that the votes of this Parliament should be just disregarded if the government does not like them?

That is not how democracy works, and yes, he has put forward a couple of fairly tired, at this point, arguments against the disclosure of these documents. The time for that argument was in the spring. The ship has sailed. The RCMP is welcome to make no use or any use of these documents. However, the House has pronounced on this matter, and it is about time the government listened to the people who were elected in the House of Commons, and their vote.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise, as always, on behalf of the good people of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry in my part of eastern Ontario. Here we are, nearing the two-month mark of the Liberals' refusal to adhere to what they told Canadians when they came in nine long years ago: that they were going to be sunny ways. The number one line I remember them saying was “open by default”. They were going to be the most open and transparent government Canadians have ever seen.

After nine years, here we are. Rather than the Liberals' listening to the will, the vote, the majority vote of the House of Commons, the Speaker has found them in contempt for refusing to turn over all the documents in their latest spending and corruption scandal. As I have said a few times here now, and as Canadians see this go on and on, it makes one wonder about a stubbornness, a refusal to just be open by default and to provide the RCMP with full, unredacted access to the documents so it can continue and complete a full criminal investigation into this specific case of insiders' getting ahead.

It makes one wonder what exactly is in the documents that the Liberals are refusing to provide, that they are redacting and that they do not want the RCMP to see. The facts are simple. If there is nothing to hide, as they claim; if they want to be fully co-operative; if they want Canadians to be assured that the RCMP cannot be stonewalled; and if they do not want to act as gatekeepers to information, documents and evidence of their own corruption and spending scandal, they would be open by default as they promised and just provide the documents.

It is incredible that a government is, here in the House of Commons, refusing to do so. As a consequence of that, it has been nearly two months now, 25 or 26 House days of the parliamentary calendar at least. We lose track. That is how long it has been that the Liberals do not care about their government business and their government agenda. Private member's bills are not advancing. It just makes one wonder how desperate they are to drag the issue out and avoid accountability.

What we and Canadians do know from the Auditor General and her multiple reports into this issue is that there is a massive amount of corrupt, inappropriate behaviour.

Think about going back a generation. When I first started getting interested in following federal politics, when I was a little political junkie in my teen years in the early 2000s, there was the sponsorship scandal. Think of where we are at now. The definition of insanity, and we have heard the expression before, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This is what happens when we elect Liberals. It was 20 years ago that the sponsorship scandal came up; it was $40 million, not an insignificant amount of taxpayers' money back then.

What happened? There had to be a public inquiry. People went to jail for criminal intent, for stealing taxpayers' money and for Liberal insiders' getting ahead. It was one of the main reasons the Liberal Party of Canada in 2006 was defeated and the Conservative government came in with the accountability act to clean up the unethical mess.

The accountability act was a cornerstone of the Harper Conservative government that was necessary after 13 years of Liberals in office. Here we are; fast-forward to now, at $400 million, 10 times the size, which has been confirmed by the Auditor General. Over $50 million in ineligible projects was awarded by Liberal insiders to each other in the green slush fund. There were 186 cases of conflict of interest. That is not an accident. It is not that they did not know the rules; it is blatant corruption.

I have explained before that I served in municipal politics. I enjoyed my 12 years in my hometown of North Dundas serving as a councillor, as a mayor and then as a warden.

The number one thing when it comes to governance of a municipality, a charity, a board of directors or anything is learning about conflicts of interest. We call them pecuniary interests as well. People cannot advance their own personal agenda and financial benefit on the board that they serve. They have to declare a conflict and step away. They cannot put themselves in those situations to benefit themselves. It is Ethical Behaviour 101 and Board Governance 101, particularly in a fund.

For the SDTC fund, the program has existed for nearly a quarter century. It was not until the Prime Minister and his then minister of industry started changing the players and appointing Liberal insiders that problems started. Here we are. Let us talk about being frustrated. Canadians are frustrated. The House of Commons is extremely frustrated because the Liberals refuse to take seriously the magnitude and level of corruption and bad behaviour.

Here are some examples: Not only has the House been paralyzed for the last two months, because the government has refused to provide the documents, but there is also the other part of it. Let us take a look at that. There have been several committees. I am looking at my colleague in front of me, the member for Brantford—Brant. He is on a few different committees, and he asks a few different questions and does a lot of digging.

Since this came out about the green slush fund, we have repeatedly asked officials about the $400 million in inappropriate payments, where there were conflicts of interest into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and about the projects that were not eligible.

How many dollars, since the Auditor General's first report and second report, have come back to the federal Treasury so far? Not a dollar, not a penny has come back. The Auditor General was very clear. Projects were ineligible, and there were conflicts of interest in 186 cases. Everybody in the House and in this country knows that when there are 186 conflict of interest cases, it is not an accident. It is not, “Whoops, we didn't know.” The Liberals knew exactly what they were doing.

Here we are, years after brave whistle-blowers came forward and broke the news. They could not take the blatant corruption and inappropriate behaviour coming from these Liberal-appointed insiders anymore. It was almost an incestuous thing of giving money to each other, left, right and centre. Whistle-blowers came forward, and we have gone on from there. What has to happen at the end of the day is that we need the RCMP to get full access to these documents.

I mentioned the sponsorship scandal before, and a history and a record after nine years. The sponsorship scandal was the story and the issue that brought down the last Liberal government, and it is just going to be the continued stacking that will make the sponsorship scandal look like pocket change in comparison, when things are added up.

Let us think about it. There was the $60-million ArriveCAN program. Experts said it could have been done for about a quarter of a million dollars, or $80,000, in one weekend. However, $60 million later, it went to one company, a couple of people working in somebody's basement here in Ottawa. They had millions of dollars funnelled to them in sole-source contracts. They had nice little whiskey tastings and parties. It was all about who they knew. They did little to no work for any of it. How much of that has been returned? Nothing has been returned.

We have the WE Charity scandal and what happened there during COVID. The Prime Minister's family was benefiting. The Liberals tried to give the WE Charity, friends of the Prime Minister, hundreds of millions of dollars in the name of helping young people get employed and be connected with jobs. Once again, it was an absolute farce and a scandal.

When it comes to the production of documents, there is the waste, the corruption and the inappropriate use of taxpayers' money. The list of many of those examples from over the last nine years goes on.

What we have when it comes to document production, which is at the heart of this matter, is that Parliament has voted and said that Parliament reigns supreme; it has the right to ask for and order the production of documents. That is what we did. Again, what do we do it for and why do we do it? It is because we want the RCMP to have unfettered access to all the documents.

Here is the interesting thing: To know why it is so important, we have to look back at the behaviour of the Liberal government.

It was the Prime Minister when he fired the first indigenous, female Attorney General in this country on the SNC-Lavalin scandal. The RCMP said the case was closed, it was not proceeding and there were no charges. Why? The Prime Minister blocked access to cabinet documents, which were at the heart of the scandal. The RCMP said it closed the case and it did not proceed with the possibility, because it did not have all the information it needed or wanted.

It goes on. During the Winnipeg lab documents scandal in the midst of COVID, we had to call someone to the bar here. This was a very rare use of discipline in the House of Commons because the Liberals refused to provide the documents about how they allowed such a national security breach at the Winnipeg labs in a time of crisis.

I already mentioned the WE Charity scandal. Now we have another question of privilege with the Minister of Employment. I have to be so careful here. He faked being indigenous, but I do not know if we can say that or not. He pretended to be indigenous. We are playing word salad in the House of Commons today about what we can and cannot say about some of the most preposterous, shameful behaviour from the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages, the member for Edmonton Centre, who is the first person to lecture anybody about their morals and integrity. Holy mackerel, that man has confidence to stand and lecture anybody. The look of the Liberal members behind him showed they are utterly ashamed at the number of examples of unethical behaviour. This is another example in nine years of unethical behaviour, of not following the will of committee and of this Parliament, and of obstructing the truth and access to information for Canadians to get to the bottom of all of these Liberal scandals. It goes on and on and on.

I see my colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton here. He and I have a good time at the procedure and House affairs committee. Let us talk about blocking the production of documents. Here we are today at the PROC committee trying to get to another question of privilege. Liberals want to send it to committee so they can bury it under the rug. Now we have a question of privilege referred to PROC about members from all parties who had cyber attacks by the People's Republic of China and foreign interference by nefarious actors who were attacking members of Parliament and their personal email accounts. As we were talking about motions and how to move forward on the issue, we casually found out that the Communications Security Establishment, the CSE, said that it was not going to come back to committee because it has given us everything we need. Also, it has a substantial number of documents left, and is not sure it is going to give them to us.

The document production order deadline of the House was in the middle of August. The CSE ignored that. It started dropping documents in September and quietly dropped about seven more sets of documents, then only said today, months after the deadline and months after it came back to answer questions at committee so that could try to wrap up and come to some conclusions, “By the way, there is a substantial trove of additional documents that we have not given yet. We will let the committee know by the end of the week when we might be able to give a timeline for that.” That is how seriously the Liberals take document production. They talk about accountability and open by default. They said two months and then they shut down.

The Liberals want to move this to committee and sweep it under the rug. I would say to any Canadian, just watch what happened today at PROC. It is exactly what they did on a very similar question of privilege. The House of Commons and the committee ordered the production of documents. It set a deadline of mid-August to provide all of them. They did not. We only learned today, months and months after the deadline, that there are a bunch more coming, but the Liberals are going to redact them and they said that they are not sure what they are going to give us.

Now the Liberals want to us trust them. They say, “just take this issue on this $400-million green slush fund.” They have provided all the documents they think the RCMP should have and they redacted what they think should be redacted. They have lost the trust of Canadians. They have lost the right to pretend to have any sort of maturity, trust or judgment.

This is like somebody being in a courtroom accused of a crime and getting to decide what information the jury sees. People laugh; they shake their heads. However, this is exactly what is happening here, and let us be clear that the behaviour the RCMP has been asked to look at for criminal intent in its criminal investigation, which it said is open and ongoing, by the way, is the government's behaviour. That is absolutely right.

If we look at the history and conduct of the Liberals for the last nine years, Canadians do not trust them, so the House of Commons has stepped in, which it has the absolute right to do, and said to provide all the documents, unredacted, to the RCMP. It can take a look at them and make a determination. Only then will Canadians know justice. Once we know that all the documents have been given, with full access, not what the government wants to give and not what is unredacted, Canadians may start to feel like justice is being done in this country.

A full investigation must be done into criminal intent. Why? It is because of the corruption, the insiders being put ahead of others, the 186 cases of conflict of interest and the $50 million in projects that were ineligible. For a country that had money growing on trees, that still would not be appropriate, but here we are now with massive, endless deficits in this country, and food bank use at a record high of two million visits every month. Housing costs have doubled and our immigration system is in shambles. People are finding it harder than ever before to make ends meet and to have a bit of money left over at the end of the day for Christmas presents. Homelessness and tent encampments, now in the thousands, have exploded in this country. Canadians are worse off undoubtedly after the last nine years.

All that ache, all that pain and all the strain that millions of Canadians are under already is simply from the government's inflationary policies. They have doubled the national debt, caused a 40-year high in inflation and caused record high rent, mortgages, housing costs and down payments. Canadians anywhere in this country are hurting, struggling under the weight of the record of the Liberal-NDP government.

We saw the Liberals take $400 million of money sent by Canadians to Ottawa, but not to help get people food on their own tables without needing to go to a food bank, not to address the crisis of health care lineups or the mental health and addictions crisis this country is facing, and not to address housing. This $400 million went to Liberal insider friends.

We saw this at some companies, including the very company the environment minister worked for. They got board appointments and gave themselves money in all these conflict of interest cases, and then saw the value of their companies increase by tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, putting themselves ahead. Canadians are frustrated by what has happened under the Liberals' record and by the cost of living they face.

When Canadians see the books, the finances and how little regard the Liberals have for taxpayers' money, instead putting Liberal insiders first, they are disgusted by it and ashamed of the conduct of their government. They are already hurting, and it is another jab, another kick. When Canadians were already down, the Liberals casually blew $400 million. The Auditor General's first report, the Auditor General's second report and many committees, over and over again, have demanded accountability and demanded that this money, which never should have gone out the door in the first place, come back. It is years later and multiple whistle-blowers later. We have been talking about this for nearly two months in the House of Commons and not a single dollar has even come back yet.

I am proud to stand on behalf of the people of Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry to say to the Liberals to be open by default, as they promised to Canadians nine years ago, and give all the documents, unredacted, to the RCMP. It is time for accountability. It is time to put trust not in the Liberals, but in law enforcement in this country to look into their conduct.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is heartening to hear the hon. member talk about some of the problems the nation is facing, but if people are tuning in from home, most of what they see are Conservatives talking and talking. We are going through another round. I hope they all have their second speeches lined up, or maybe their third ones.

The fact is that the RCMP has said it would not want to get documents from the House of Commons because that could easily compromise its investigation. The RCMP has received thousands upon thousands of documents, and it is not asking for any more. If it does want more, it knows how to get them. Why do the hon. member and his party not trust the RCMP to know how to do its job?

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, Canadians can trust Conservative members of Parliament to hold the Liberals to account and make sure the RCMP has every single document that it should have, unredacted, for a full investigation. That is completely reasonable because Canadians do not trust the current government. They do not trust the Liberals anymore.

I will read from an editorial in The Globe and Mail. We talked about the stalling and the stonewalling that is happening. It is the Liberal government that is causing this. The Globe and Mail editorial is called “A Parliament that is dead on the inside”. It states:

It's a farce that needs to end for the good of the country....

There are a few ways this could end. But there is only one right way, and that is for the Liberal government to respect the will of the House and hand over the documents. Anything else would be a disgraceful blow to Parliament’s ability to hold governments to account....

It is no way to run a country....

Only the Liberal government, with its refusal to respect the will of the House, is responsible for Parliament’s paralysis.

I could not agree more.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Madam Speaker, yesterday the government House leader of the Liberal government went on a CBC program and purported that the government had handed over all of the documents to the parliamentary law clerk and that, therefore, this matter could be simply referred to the procedure and House affairs committee.

The member, my colleague on PROC, will recall that the parliamentary law clerk appeared before our committee today. I asked him whether the member's representations were accurate, and he confirmed that they were not. He confirmed that the government continues to withhold documents and has submitted other documents that had been redacted. What does it say about the government when not only is it obstructing the will of the House but also the government House leader is actively and willfully misrepresenting the facts?

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, I could not agree with my colleague more. I was at the meeting today when the law clerk did confirm exactly that, which is that what the government House leader told the CBC and media yesterday was absolutely inaccurate.

Members do not need to take my word for it or my colleague's word for it. They can take the words of the Speaker himself. They can think what they want of the Speaker. The Speaker ruled in September that the government clearly did not fully comply with the House order. Even the Speaker has said that the government did not provide all the documents as it should have.

We are not on board with what the Liberals love to do and what we have seen at our committee, which is to send something to committee so they can just shove it under the rug. Then, when we do have the documents produced, the committee might get around to it months after the deadlines.

We have had enough of the games. The government needs to get the information to the RCMP. Canadians expect no less.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, what the member does not say is that the Speaker was also very clear that the matter should go to the procedure and House affairs committee. I find this all a bit hypocritical if we look at the many scandals and the corruption of Stephen Harper.

I want to go to a booklet and quote from it. It states, “For refusing to disclose information on the costing of programs to Parliament, which Parliament was entitled to receive, the Harper government became the first in Canadian history to be found in contempt of Parliament.” Gee whiz, he was found in contempt of Parliament for not giving information. Can members guess who his parliamentary secretary was? It was none other than the current leader of the Conservative Party.

The difference is that we are listening to the RCMP, the Auditor General of Canada and other legal experts, who say that what the Conservatives are doing is not right. Who am I to listen to? Is it the Conservative Party or the experts? Well, excuse me, I am going to listen to the experts. I am not going to follow the recommendations and this multi-million dollar game that the Conservatives are playing. What ever happened to Stephen Harper on the contempt charge?

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, the Kool-Aid over there must taste really good to the member, holy mackerel.

Again I will put right here before the House the words of the Speaker with respect to the order and what Parliament has said. The Speaker himself said that the government clearly did not fully comply with the House order. It did not honour it.

Here is the thing. I sit on the procedure and House affairs committee. I do not need to tell Canadians that they should not trust the Liberal government; they already do not. I am on the very committee that the member thinks we should just push the issue over to, the PROC committee, and it will be fine. What is going to happen is the Liberals are going to bury it.

Today, right at the very committee the member is saying to send the issue to, one national security organization, five months after the deadline by which it was ordered to provide all of the documents, was casually dropping them off to the clerk. It said that it had a substantial amount more. It was not sure, but would let the clerk know by the end of the week when it might get it to the clerk.

That is enough of the games. The government should just listen to the House order, give everything to the RCMP and be open by default, if that sounds familiar to the member.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am concerned the Conservatives have spent way too much time inside the House of Commons and not enough time in their communities listening to their constituents. In committee today we heard from seasonal workers, fishers who are about to start the lobster season. We heard from a woman who is desperately trying to pay bills and make ends meet. With climate change, the workers are finding it more difficult to find lobster and to make a living.

How do the Conservatives think that people are supposed to make a living when their government is being held hostage by their desire to listen to itself speak instead of getting the documents to committee as the Speaker has said needs to happen?

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the New Democrats need to take a little more time door-knocking and listening to Canadians. Trust me; I have spent a lot of time this year in many parts of the province of Ontario alone, and I do not know where the New Democrats get the idea that they should have been propping the Liberals up for the last number of years and delaying what Canadians want, which is a carbon tax election. It is so rich for that NDP member to stand up and lecture Conservatives.

There is a reason we have said it a bit before, and we are going to keep repeating it, which is that it is what Canadians want. They want a carbon tax election. They want to get rid of the tired and corrupt Liberal government. Canadians want an election so they can axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. I can assure the member of the NDP that they do not want the NDP to continue to prop up the tired, out-of-touch and unpopular Prime Minister. She should take no lessons and should maybe talk to some more real people at the doors in her riding and across the country.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Madam Speaker, one of the primary responsibilities of Parliament is to hold the government to account. That is exactly what we did as the loyal opposition of His Royal Highness, working together with the other opposition parties, when we passed an order of the House compelling the government to produce documents relating to its most recent scandal, the green slush fund.

Just a little while ago we heard from the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader that, in his opinion, the government does not have to comply with an order it does not like or agree with. Therefore I would like to ask my hon. colleague, the member for Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, whether he could comment on the future of parliamentary democracy in Canada if the current government stays in power for much longer.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to serve in the House of Commons and have done so for the last five years. The thing we know and Canadians know is that Parliament reigns supreme. When Parliament speaks, it has the right to order persons and papers. In this case, it is the production of documents. We have the right and have exercised that right. Multiple parties have voted in favour of doing it. The Speaker has ruled that the Liberals are in contempt for ignoring that.

At the end of the day, the thing that matters the most is that the Liberals have lost the trust of Canadians after nine years and multiple scandals. It should be common sense that the RCMP should have all the documents, unredacted, for a full criminal investigation. The Liberals have used, for the last two months, every excuse in the book and have failed miserably. They should be open by default, give transparency and, for once, own up for their own corruption and waste.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, it is always a privilege to stand in the House to speak about important matters, not only to my constituents but also to all Canadians. It is always good to be able to do so in great detail, delving into the various areas of importance of a given issue.

Clearly, the House has not yet had ample time to consider the matter of privilege set before us or the full ramifications of the government's failures. We are happy to continue in our quest to help the government understand this issue. We will give it an opportunity to consider its position, and perhaps even reconsider it, and take the steps that the House has been requesting for some time now. That is to stop holding up the House's business and the business of the nation, as well as to turn over the documents so that we can get back to the pressing issues concerning Canadians, rather than the political issues that appear to be so concerning to the Liberal government.

The passion for secrecy and cover-ups that defines the government is deeply troubling. When we look at the scandals of the government, of the failed and corrupt Prime Minister, it is really quite astounding. We have the Aga Khan island scandal, SNC-Lavalin, WE Charity, billions of dollars in so-called COVID spending that found its way into the pockets of Liberal insiders, the ArriveCAN scam, McKinsey, the green slush fund, foreign interference, and the degree to which China has been allowed to infiltrate this country and put our citizens at risk.

The list goes on and on, and most of that is just from the Prime Minister. If we throw in a few of his ministers, the list gets exponentially longer. Every time, the Liberals seek to cover up the truth from Canadians. They refuse to produce documents, refuse to be transparent and refuse to answer the most basic questions; they cannot even bring themselves to tell us who the real Randy is. It is just sad. It is no wonder that a growing majority of Canadians no longer trust the Liberals and are champing at the bit to throw them out of office.

I had to laugh the other week. The Minister of Innovation is the same minister who was in charge of overseeing Sustainable Development Technology Canada, also known as SDTC, this green slush fund that we are going to keep talking about. He is a nice guy, but he said the other week that the question being asked on every street corner in Canada is why the Leader of the Opposition will not get his security clearance. That just shows how out of touch with Canadians the government is.

It tells me that the minister has not even ventured very far beyond Wellington Street in recent months. I can tell him that this is not the question Canadians are asking. They are not asking that of me in my riding, and I am talking to my constituents. Do members want to know what I hear every single day, often multiple times a day? I am asked when we can get rid of the Prime Minister. People say we need to get rid of him; we need to get rid of the corrupt Liberals who are destroying our country.

It does not matter if I am at a community event, a high school, a farm, a church event or even at Remembrance Day events. I have had the opportunity, as I am sure all of my colleagues have, to attend those Remembrance Day services during our constituency week. It is always a privilege to participate, particularly to meet our veterans and their family members. However, it is always the same. Even at Remembrance Day events, the question is the same: How and when are we getting rid of the Prime Minister? The Liberals are destroying the Canada people knew, loved and fought for. It is a sad indictment of the failed government and its radical, woke policies.

On the other hand, Canadians like our leader. There is a reason for that. The difference is that the Leader of the Opposition is listening to Canadians. He is not lecturing. We can watch the Leader of the Opposition at a rally or an event with staff. He will stand there, sometimes for hours, and meet every single person. He will take the time to talk to them, to ask them about themselves and their concerns. He takes the time to listen to Canadians.

I have seen the Leader of the Opposition go for three-plus hours at events. He is not telling people what to think, to feel or to believe. He is not talking down to them or going after them if they say something that he disagrees with. He is actually listening to Canadians. He is listening to their concerns and offering up common-sense solutions. Canadians are common-sense people, and they trust him and our great team over on this side of the House, Canada's common-sense Conservatives, to fix the problems that the government has created.

Trust is a big deal. Once that is broken, it is awfully hard to win it back. When someone breaks trust, when they get caught often enough, as the Liberals have, it is broken. When the people cannot trust the government, that spells disaster for a country. In a democracy where the government does not trust the people, that is equally disastrous. The current government does not trust the people.

It refuses to trust them with the truth. It refuses to listen to the growing majority of Canadians who are begging for the Prime Minister to step down, to give them the election they are asking for, a carbon tax election, a referendum on its disastrous record. Speaking of disaster, the government has often been compared to the Titanic, particularly when it comes to shuffling some of these failed ministers. The ship is plowing straight ahead toward an iceberg, another scandal. Rather than switch course, the Prime Minister is busy rearranging the deck chairs. This combination did not work for the Titanic and it is not going to work here either. However, he continues on with that. He shuffles the chairs. He sees a minister failing in one or two portfolios and he promotes them to a third.

I think there is a secondary way we could look at this comparison, particularly in relation to an iceberg being a scandal, including the scandal of SDTC. When we see an iceberg, 90% of it is under water; it is hidden from view. That is often how scandals work. We only see 10%. We only see a sliver, and there is an indication there is something going on here. Something does not feel right. Something is amiss here, but it is only 10% of the real scandal. There is 90% hidden from view. They want to keep talking about this motion because they want to keep covering it up. They refuse to hand over the documents. It begs the question: what else are they hiding? What else is that 90% that we have not even discovered?

It is dangerous to Canadians, but it is far more dangerous to the government and the Prime Minister to shed light onto that. The sad part is that these Liberals are desperately trying to cover up their latest scandal to protect the Prime Minister who is not worth the cost, the chaos or the corruption. Canadians are hurting and they are afraid. Like I said, I go home every weekend so I can connect with and hear from my constituents. A lot of folks cannot afford to eat, heat or house themselves in Canada. Many of these folks have good jobs, and some of them have more than one job. They work hard, they work long hours, but they still cannot afford the skyrocketing cost of living under the government.

The government has borrowed, printed and spent money so recklessly as to double the size of our national debt. The Prime Minister has spent more money than every other prime minister and government in our history combined. They are addicted to spending. There are solutions for people who are addicted and that is to get addictions counselling. I think that is what the government needs. As a result of this addiction, everyday Canadians are forced to make sacrifices and they are getting tired of doing it. They are sick of the corruption they see happening here in Ottawa. They are sick of the government having its hand in its pocket. They are sick of being told what to think, feel and believe. They are sick of the arrogant, “I-know-better-than-everyone” attitude that pervades the Liberal government. They are fed up with seeing their hard-earned money that should be going to feed their kids, fix the house, maybe go into a savings account for a rainy day, go into the pockets of wealthy and well-connected Liberals, like what has happened at SDTC.

Here, on the opposition benches, at least Conservatives are saying that we understand, we hear them, we agree. We are standing up for Canadians and their interests in Ottawa. We are here trying to hold the government accountable for the money it has stolen. Yes, I mean stolen. It has stolen it from the taxpayer. SDTC, this green slush fund, where Liberals took taxpayer dollars and gave them to their own companies, that is theft. ArriveCAN was theft. The government and the Prime Minister need to be held accountable. To what extent they must be held accountable we will not know until we actually see the full damage, until we see the documents and until Canadians know what was happening with that 90% under the water.

As I mentioned earlier, the sad reality is we sit here debating what is really undebatable. The folks at SDTC took nearly $400 million of taxpayer dollars and gave it to themselves. That is indefensible. The sad reality is, while we are here debating this, there are other important issues we are not able to address.

The government's failure to be transparent has bogged us down in process for weeks now. All the Liberals need to do for the House to continue with the good work that it should be doing is come clean and present the documents unredacted, as they have been been requested to do by the Speaker of the House. Then we can all get back to important issues. However, they will not do that. They refuse. They are way more concerned with their own plight than that of the people they are supposed to be serving.

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about some of the issues that folks in my riding of Provencher are bringing to me, who tell me what could have been done with the $400 million. I have already mentioned some of the scandals, the Liberal corruption and the desire for the Prime Minister to finally take a hint and resign. I have also mentioned some of the major issues for my people. I think for the country it is about the cost of living, but here are a few more issues.

The abuses heaped by governments at all levels on citizens during COVID still remain a major issue in my riding. Restrictions and vaccine mandates damaged the social fabric of our communities and a generation of young people.

Two years ago, when we were debating Bill C-293 in the House, I raised the troubling reality that some 51,714 documented Canadians had suffered vaccine injuries as a result of their COVID shots. At the time, I reported, based on the numbers available on the government's website, that 10,501 people had suffered severe reactions, including 874 anaphylactic reactions, 1,342 cases of myocarditis, 104 thrombosis cases and 382 reports that had an outcome of death. I also shared that despite all of that, the government's vaccine injury support program had paid out a mere eight claims. Many Canadians do not know this, but the government does have a vaccine injury support program. It is called VISP. It can be found on the Government of Canada's website.

That was in November 2022. Two years later, in November 2024, where we are today, the number of injuries has risen to 58,712, with 488 reported deaths. After two years, do colleagues know how many claims have been approved? After thousands of injuries and thousands of claims, a mere 183 claims have been approved. There is still a question as to whether compensation has actually been issued. The truly bizarre thing is that back in April, the government added another $36 million to the existing $75 million it had allocated to the vaccine injury support program. Why are folks not getting their money? The folks over at SDTC seemed to have had no problem disbursing nearly $400 million in fairly quick order.

These injured folks did what the government told them to do. The Prime Minister and all of his ministers looked down the lens of a camera and told Canadians to get these shots, that they were safe and effective. Every day, we heard from the Prime Minister. Every day he came out and told Canadians to get the shot; it would prevent them from getting sick. That did not work. It was supposed to prevent them from transmitting COVID to somebody else. That did not work. It was supposed to prevent them from going to the hospital. That did not work. It was supposed to prevent them from being in the ICU. That did not work. It was supposed to prevent them from dying. It did not prevent that either. In fact, the greatest number of deaths from COVID occurred among those who had been triple vaccinated.

[Mike Morrice, Green, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am rising on a point of order to understand the relevance of the current speech to the motion, which I believe is about SDTC. I wonder if you can give a comment on that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

I appreciate the input. Some latitude is given, but the hon. member did clearly link it to SDTC in some form. I am sure that as he continues his speech, there will be more relevance.

The hon. member for Provencher.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member asks a very interesting question. I wish he had listened to what I was saying, because he would understand the relevance.

The relevance was the misinformation and the disinformation provided by the Liberal government, by the Prime Minister, to Canadians about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines. There have been vaccine injury support program claims made by Canadians who have had negative experiences, and I hear from many of them in my constituency office and in my Hill office. Those claims are not being approved in a judicious manner, and they are not being paid out as they should be. That is the whole point.

SDTC officials had no problem getting $400 million out the door, but the over $100 million that has been earmarked for vaccine injuries seems to be lagging significantly. That is my point: The money is not getting out the door. It seemed to get out the door somehow for Liberal insiders but not for people who did what the government asked them to do and suffered negative consequences for it. Those people are not getting reimbursed, and they should be.

In fact, what people are being offered instead of cash is MAID, and that is so incredibly sad. I heard stories from vaccine-injured people who, because of being so frustrated with their injuries and the failure to be recognized for the hardships they have gone through, have been offered MAID. Some have actually participated in that program. That is incredibly sad.

The message I bring to the government from my constituents is to just butt out, provide the basic services government is supposed to provide and then back off and let people live their lives. My constituents want the government to axe the tax, stop the reckless deficit spending, stop the alarmist anti-energy crusade and embrace responsible resource development.

Under the Prime Minister, Canada is going through the worst decline in our living standards in 40 years, the worst drop in income per person in the G7 and the worst economic growth in the OECD. However, the Prime Minister and his radical, woke environment minister just keep making things worse by attacking Canadian energy and energy workers. Their latest scheme is what they claim is an emissions cap. It is not really an emissions cap. This is not a cap on emissions; it is a cap on responsible Canadian oil production. It is a cap on jobs, on paycheques and on prosperity for Canada. Let us label it for what it is rather than as a cap on emissions: The Liberal government wants to cap Canadians.

The government's own analysis admits that the cap is going to cost Canada billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. We would think its members learned their lesson from previous failures in attacking the energy sector; they have missed every single climate target with their carbon tax, and all they have done is make people exponentially poorer.

The Prime Minister and his radical environment minister refuse to accept that Canada's energy sector is the country's single-largest private sector investor in clean technology. Canadian oil and gas is the best in the world. The sector has a clear record of reducing emissions and adhering to the highest standards of environmental protection, not to mention that, in 2022, the oil and gas industry provided $45 billion in revenue to Canadian governments, funding schools, hospitals, roads and other crucial public infrastructure.

Instead of celebrating this and working with Canada's energy workers to tackle environmental issues, Liberals want to crush the energy sector, putting hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk at the worst time possible. This ideological crusade against Canadian energy must end.

We could be working to fix the budget. We could be working on common-sense energy policies to get Canada's economy booming again. However, we are stuck here instead, talking about another Liberal scandal.

A big one is immigration, which is a significant concern in my riding. My office does a lot of work on immigration files. We help hundreds, if not thousands, of people a year, both Canadians and those seeking to become Canadians. However, our immigration system is broken. It is out of control. The government finally admitted that a couple of weeks ago; I believe it did so again just recently. Its radical, reckless and uncontrolled immigration policies are partly to blame for joblessness, the housing crisis and the health care crisis Canadians are facing.

The Liberals increased population growth by over 200% in the last several years. They did it without ensuring adequate housing, health care or available jobs for newcomers. The government also failed spectacularly to ensure that those flooding into the country were given proper background checks. To add insult to injury, the Prime Minister called Canadians racists if they questioned his reckless policy.

I can say on behalf of the incredibly diverse group of people, including newcomers, that my office has helped and those who have lived here for years that it is not racist to ask why the government is bringing upwards of one million new people each year when there are not even enough homes for Canadians, including many new Canadians who are already here. It is not racist to question the wisdom of bringing in more people who will cause additional strain on an already untenable health care system and social safety net when Canadians are unable to access those programs and forced to wait unacceptably long periods to receive services that they have paid for with their tax dollars. The government's failures on immigration are almost too many to chronicle.

With that, there have been discussions among the parties and if you seek it, I am confident you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at 7:32 p.m.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Carol Hughes]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.