Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to have the opportunity to rise in the House and to be recognized by the Chair. The circumstances, though, are unfortunate. We are talking about a $400-million scandal, over 186 conflicts of interest and a lawful order from the majority of democratically elected members of Parliament, passed in the House, ordering the NDP-Liberals to hand over to the RCMP the documents pertaining to the scandal.
What they would like to do is turn the documents and the matter over to a committee. I find that wholly insufficient, and that is what I have heard from Canadians when I have talked to them, when they have called me and written to me about the matter. They want to know, when a crime is committed in their community, for example if someone steals $100, $1,000, $10,000 or breaks into a home, whether they are supposed to call a committee or supposed to call the cops. The answer is, of course, to call the police.
It is $400 million dollars that is involved, and it is interesting to note that this is what has been detected thus far, because the Auditor General reviewed only a sample in the SDTC matter. The actual malfeasance, misappropriation, theft and embezzlement that has gone on would be much, much higher than $400 million. That is exactly what the police would find out, and that is exactly why the Liberals are refusing a lawful order of Parliament to hand the documents over.
Every day, there is a new scandal with the Liberals. Today we started the day talking about the Liberal member from Edmonton who had shady business dealings, his company being sued for fraud for hundreds of thousands of dollars; his company being investigated by the Edmonton Police Service for fraud; and he and his business partner fraudulently applying for government contracts designated for indigenous-owned businesses.
The former minister said he never claimed to be indigenous except when he was applying for the contracts, disenfranchising actual indigenous-owned businesses. He now says he got his previous claims about his heritage wrong. The Liberal former minister said he was not directing his company from the cabinet table, but now we know he was and that what he said was not true.
He said his company was not applying for any government contracts while he was a minister, but we know it did in fact apply for a contract with Elections Canada, and it was awarded that contract for tens of thousands of dollars. Why would a government department award a contract to someone who sits around the table and decides on the funding and fate of its organization? I wonder why, if it did not advantage the Liberal former minister and disadvantage every other small and medium-sized business.
The business he had, by the way, was a pandemic profiteering business, taking advantage of people who were scared during a time of scarcity and great concerns about their health. Today we learned that the Liberal member from Edmonton is not in cabinet anymore. He is stepping away from cabinet to spend time with the other Randys.
It is not because the Liberal Prime Minister recognized that any one of the incidents, including having someone fraudulently claim to be indigenous, having someone have a business that is being investigated by the police for fraud, or having a minister who is directing a company from the cabinet table, would be enough to get them fired from a job in the private sector. Any one of those things would be enough to get them fired from any self-respecting government that was determined to serve Canadians and not just serve themselves and Liberal insiders. No, none of that was enough. However, I will note that Canada's first indigenous attorney general was fired for speaking out against the Prime Minister and his interference in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. He kicked her out of caucus.
I wonder how many more days the former minister has in the Liberal caucus. The answer should be zero because his behaviour has been reprehensible. It is unbecoming not just of a minister of the Crown but of any parliamentarian. However, the Liberals stood up day after day and defended the indefensible. Some of them will stand up today and ask me questions after this speech. They defended the Liberal minister because it is not about helping Canadians when it comes to the Liberals. That is not their raison d’être.
What is the Liberals' primary objective? It is to help well-connected insiders, just as in this green slush fund. They are refusing to hand over the documents to the law clerk to go to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Liberals have to protect the insiders. Every time we raised it and identified that there are some serious baddies working at that organization, the Liberals tried to sweep it under the rug, saying they were taking a look at that. No, they were not. The minister would quite excitedly proclaim that they had restored governance, but they did not. They did such a bad job at remedying the corruption, which they fostered and allowed to fester, that they just folded it into a government department, away from prying eyes and accountability to Canadians and parliamentarians. They did this so that their board chair, their other GIC appointees and their well-connected friends could line their pockets while Canadians lined up at food banks.
That is the thing about the Liberals. They are only ever sorry when they get caught. They said they had it in hand all along, but they are never willing to go far enough to do the right thing for Canadians.
Just yesterday, the Prime Minister said of the disgraced Liberal member for Edmonton Centre that he was happy for him to continue in cabinet. Knowing what he knew about all of his false claims and all the alleged criminality at his business, the Prime Minister was happy for him to stay, just as the Liberals are happy for everyone who is involved in SDTC to avoid the prying eyes of the police.
What are they so afraid of? I think they are terrified that once RCMP officers get a look at what went on, it is going to be bigger than the $400 million that was identified in the sample examined by the Auditor General's team, with more than 186 conflicts of interest. It is going to be worse. That is the culture that has been allowed, though, under the current NDP-Liberal government.
The Prime Minister himself has twice been found guilty of breaking the law while serving as Prime Minister. The now Public Safety Minister was found guilty of breaking the law, as was the trade minister. The former finance minister was found guilty of breaking the law while serving as finance minister. The current Speaker, former parliamentary secretary to the Liberal Prime Minister, was also found guilty of breaking the law. Why is this? It is because they used their positions to help their friends, well-connected insiders and themselves.
What did Canadians get with nine years of Liberals helping themselves and well-connected insiders? Our national debt has doubled. Home prices, rents and the needed down payment for a home have all doubled. Food bank use is now at a record high. When we talk about the struggles that Canadians have after nine years under the NDP-Liberals, child poverty is at its worst today. Now, 25% of Canadians, as reported by the Liberal government's own stats agency, are going to have to rely on food banks. That is interesting, because 25% is not the unemployment rate. This means that we have millions of Canadians who are working but have to go to the food bank.
In my conversations with operators and volunteers at food banks, I hear that they are having a real challenge in keeping up not just with the food-side demand but also with the volunteers needed to operate the food banks. The people who are using their services, who are relying on food banks to feed themselves and their families, now have to go to the food bank between shifts or between jobs. After they finish their first job for the day, they have to go to the food bank and then go to their next job. Therefore, people are working two and sometimes three jobs, but they still cannot afford nutritious food for their families. Man, are these guys ever helping themselves out, making sure that it is sunny ways for Liberal insiders and their well-connected friends but cloudy skies for everybody else.
It really makes me wonder why the Liberals do what they do. They say that they have altruistic goals, such as wanting to do something about the environment. Are they going to reduce the carbon footprint, let us say, for the head of government? No, of course they are not. The Liberal Prime Minister is a high-carbon hypocrite, the likes of which we have never seen. Meanwhile, he is raising the carbon tax on everyday Canadians, with food price inflation in this country outstripping that of our peer nations; he is taxing the farmers who grow the food, the truckers who move it, the grocers who sell it and the people who buy it. We have higher taxes just for the crime of heating our own home.
Can we imagine that, in our climate, the government would punish heating one's home? The Liberals say this is a behaviour that needs to be changed. We know that the Deputy Prime Minister, a Liberal from Toronto, thinks that people out in P.E.I. are going to be taking the subway instead of driving their pickup truck. However, I have news for the Deputy Prime Minister. Whether it is Victoria-by-the-Sea, Prince Edward Island; Victoria, British Columbia; or Athens, Ontario, in my community, no one is getting on the SkyTrain, the subway or a streetcar. They are getting in a minivan to take their kids to hockey, getting in the pickup truck to drive to the job site, or getting in their car to get some groceries or pick up their mom to take her to a doctor's appointment. They are just trying to live their lives.
Meanwhile, it is jet-setting and high-carbon hypocrisy with the Liberals. Of course, they are backed up on every bit of the pain they foist on Canadians by their accomplices in the NDP, who have abandoned working Canadians. While the Liberals impose binding arbitration on workers, we have seen the NDP saying that they are still going to support the Liberals. They have abandoned the very people they purported to represent in order to get elected.
Let us just take the tally. It is not about helping the environment; it is about helping themselves, jet-setting around the world all the while. It is not about helping Canadians, who just want to get by. They want to afford a good home in a safe neighbourhood, to be able to feed themselves and their families nutritious foods and to have a comfortable retirement someday. We have seen that with the economic vandalism perpetrated on Canadians with the inflationary deficits and monumental waste they have engaged in with the support of the NDP. They have abandoned workers, Canadian families and the Canadian middle class. The dream of people who came to this country long before I was born, as well as those who have aspired to come to it since I was born, was that they would be able to do those things I said: work hard, earn a good paycheque, buy a home in a safe neighbourhood, feed themselves and be able to retire. They believed their kids would do better than they did.
I have good news. The picture painted after nine years under the NDP-Liberals sounds pretty gloomy. However, life was not like this before the NDP-Liberal government, and it is not going to be like this after. That is why our common-sense Conservative plan will restore that promise for Canadians. I am so excited about it; I am very optimistic and hopeful for the future of this country, for my five young children, for young children across this country and for people who dream of coming to this land.
We know the Liberals have broken so many things, including housing and our immigration system, but we can fix it. All it will take is a carbon tax election to restore the fairness, promise and affordability that Canadians were born with and that people around the world have aspired to enjoy.
The Liberals do not want to do the right thing and turn over these documents so that they can be transmitted to the RCMP. They are terrified of what will be revealed. However, it does not mean we are going to stop our important work of holding them to account and making sure that, when a government oversees, presides over and permits, thereby promoting, the kind of fraud and corruption we have seen in this green slush fund, we are not going to abide it. The Liberals want to turn it over to a committee; we want to turn it over to the police, which is the rightful place for it to go.
Canadians cannot count on the Liberals. They have done a lot of carping about wanting to get on with other things in the House, but this is what we are here to do. I have a really simple solution for the Liberals: They can turn the documents over to the RCMP, and we can get on to those other things.