Debates of Nov. 20th, 2024

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Motions for Papers

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

Mr. Speaker, I would ask that all notices of motions for the production of papers also be allowed to stand at this time, please.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

The House resumed from November 19 consideration of the motion, of the amendment as amended and of the amendment to the amendment.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I rise in the House to deal with this privilege motion. For those watching, just to help us understand where we are, the House, with a majority of MPs, passed a motion in June. It demanded that all documents related to Sustainable Development Technology Canada, otherwise known as the Liberal billion-dollar green slush fund, be tabled with the law clerk of the House of Commons and be transferred to the RCMP for investigation.

It gave the government, the Liberals, 30 days to do this. They did not comply. As a result, on the first day back in the fall, the opposition House leader raised a question of privilege. The Speaker agreed that members' privileges had been breached and that the government had ignored an order of the House. The government decided, yet again, to ignore a majority of MPs of the House, representing a majority of Canadians. Why did the Liberals ignore this?

It is true that they have tabled 29,000 pages of documents, as the government House leader said yesterday; most of them are what is called redacted. What that means is that they are censored, 29,000 pages of black ink. There was so much black ink that the government had to commission the printing presses at the Toronto Star to black out all the secrets they are trying to hide about Liberal insiders who funnelled $400 million of taxpayer money to companies they had a financial interest in.

We have been extensively asking questions in the House and in committee, and the government and Liberal members have been trying to cover it up. They continue to do so. In fact, yesterday, I asked a question in the House about the interest of the radical Liberal environment minister in profiting from the Liberal green slush fund.

I asked that question, as did my other colleagues on other Liberal scandals, and the Liberal MP who occupies the Chair in question period thought that the language we were using offended Liberals. I can tell everyone that Canadians are offended by the corruption and by the obstruction of justice by the government.

For six months since that order, the government has refused to table the unredacted and uncensored documents, the 29,000 pages of hidden Liberal secrets. It must be really bad. I asked questions about the particular individual who sits in cabinet, the Liberal Minister of Environment.

Prior to his election in 2019, the Minister of Environment was an in-house lobbyist for a venture capital company in Quebec called Cycle Capital. In the four years prior to his election in 2019, he lobbied the federal government; the Prime Minister's Office; the Prime Minister's principal secretary, Gerald Butts; the industry department; the industry minister's office; and many other government departments. He did this 47 times.

What was his reward for that? The owner of Cycle Capital gave him shares in the company. How do we know that? We know that because the Minister of Environment declares on his ethics reports that he owns shares in Cycle Capital. The owner of Cycle Capital was appointed to the board of the Liberal green slush fund by former Liberal industry minister Navdeep Bains.

We remember Navdeep Bains. He is the one from industry who left government early and is now an executive at Rogers Communications, the most expensive cellphone company in the world. He was in charge of reducing cellphone bills while minister of industry, and his reward for seeing cellphone bills escalate was a nice, cushy, fat corporate job at Rogers. If that is not an ethical challenge for people, the Minister of Environment's ownership of these shares as a reward for his lobbying for Cycle Capital is. The owner of Cycle Capital was on the board in 2016.

During the Minister of Environment's career prior to politics, when he lobbied the government, companies owned by Cycle Capital received over $100 million from the Liberal green slush fund. They received money from the BDC. They received money from EDC in what is called fund of funds. They were investors in these funds. The Minister of Environment was rewarded with these shares. He has refused all invitations by parliamentary committees to come and explain himself.

I raised the question yet again in the House, which offended many Liberals. I can tell members what offends Canadians. It is the graft and corruption that goes on with the Liberal government. The government seems to accept it and think it is just fine. The Liberals think it is okay to give $400 million of green slush fund money to people appointed to the board by the government, and they voted to give that money to companies they own. That is okay for them. They can just cover it up.

The privilege motion was agreed to by the Speaker on September 26. We are about to be in December, and then into next year. It would be a nice Christmas present for Canadians for the Prime Minister to come clean, stop censoring the documents and release the documents. He will not do that. However, he stands in the House, as he did today, complaining that the important work of the ineffective programs the Liberals are proud of, such as the housing decelerator program, is being held up because Conservatives continue to press for honesty, for integrity, for the government to not put itself above the House of Commons and for it to obey the order of the House. It refuses to do so.

From September to December, it will have been four or five months in which the House has debated this. It will go on. The way to stop this is for the government to actually obey the order of the House, the Conservatives, the Bloc and the NDP. The majority of members of Parliament voted for the release of these documents. It has not received much media coverage. We had $16 glasses of orange juice receive much more media coverage than this. The mainstream media are not covering this, although online media are covering it.

Shockingly, yesterday, The Globe and Mail wrote an editorial on this. I will quote what it said. I will not read the whole thing, because I know that Liberal members read it intently and then quietly kept their heads down in question period, hoping no one would notice. Here is what The Globe and Mail said is the actual cause of what is going on here in the House. It said, “But the actual cause is the Trudeau government's contemptuous refusal—

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Order. The member referred to the Prime Minister by his name. I know the member is reading a quote and it is always difficult, so I just want to get the hon. member to back up.

The hon. member for South Shore—St. Margarets.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, here is what The Globe and Mail said: “But the actual cause is the [Liberal] government's contemptuous refusal to hand over an unredacted set of documents that the House ordered it to produce in a motion passed in June.”

It went on to say, “The House has already lost more than a fifth of the 122 sitting days scheduled in 2024. If this goes on to the end of the year, Canadians could see half of Parliament's sitting days erased”, and I will add that this is because of the intransigence and the cover-up of the Liberals.

It goes on to say:

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 government to account.

It goes on to say:

...it's not hard to suspect that, were the reference to the RCMP not in order, the Liberals would find other excuses not to hand over the documents that might well embarrass them...even if the [PROC] committee ruled the government had committed a violation, the upshot would still be that the Liberals were able to thumb their noses at the House's right to demand the production of government documents.

It must be really bad. We know about the financial interests of the radical Liberal environment minister. Since that radical Liberal environment minister joined cabinet, the company that he owns shares in has received another $17 million from taxpayers. The value of Cycle Capital has gone up 600% since he started to lobby his friends in the PMO to get money into the company that he owns shares of. I would have thought a person with strong ethics, on becoming Minister of Environment, would have sold the shares in an environmental venture capital firm to ensure no actual, or appearance of, conflict, but as we know, from the two Randys onward, that is not much of a concern.

Early on, we heard lots of excuses from the government house leader in a vain attempt to say only the police can ask for documents or turn over documents. Of course, that was disposed of quickly by most members of the House who said that any company that discovers inappropriate action is free to turn over its documents to the police for investigation, which is what we are doing here.

However, the Prime Minister's department, called the Privy Council Office, said for departments to use the Privacy Act to exempt and censor the documents. However, the Privacy Act actually says that, for a body that can order the production of documents, such as Parliament, the Privacy Act cannot be used as an excuse to exempt information. If a body that has the power to demand documents has that power, the Privacy Act does not apply, yet the Prime Minister's office uses that as an excuse to direct every government department to do differently.

Just in case anyone is saying that this is kind of arcane, there is an act that created this organization: the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology Act. Section 7 of the Conflict of Interest Act says, “No public office holder shall, in the exercise of an official power, duty or function, give preferential treatment to any person or organization based on the identity of the person or organization that represents the first-mentioned person or organization.” An example of a “public office holder” is somebody who has been appointed by the government to the board, while being on the board is an example of the “exercise of an official power”. What that means in “lawyerese” is that, if someone sits on the board of SDTC, they cannot profit by being on that board.

What did the Auditor General find out? The Auditor General did an audit for five years of SDTC. She did a sample of only about half the transactions, 226 transactions, that the board approved, and the Auditor General found that 186 of the 226 transactions, in other words 82% of all those transactions, were conflicted. That was not a mistake. That was not bad lawyerly advice. That was people coming in and out and voting for each other's stuff.

That is a culture of conflict of interest driven by a chair who was appointed by Navdeep Bains, over the objection of the then CEO because the chair's company was already doing business with SDTC. The chair said not to worry, that they can manage the conflicts. Well, the way they managed conflicts was to take 82%, or $400 million, and stuff it into their own pockets. One of the beneficiaries of that was the accelerated value of those shares of Cycle Capital owned by the Liberal environment minister. Perhaps that is the reason the government will not release the unredacted documents. Perhaps they show the extent to which that minister is involved in this corruption and the unethical breaches of acts of Parliament.

The minister at the time, Mr. Bains, has appeared before committee. His deputy at the time, a fellow named Knubley, appeared this week. For those who remember Hogan's Heroes, there was a character called Sergeant Schultz. Sergeant Schultz always said, “I know nothing” when confronted by Hogan on things. Well, former minister Bains could not remember anything about SDTC, even though he appointed all of these people, and even though one month after former minister Bains left cabinet and joined CIBC, one of the people who worked at SDTC went to work at CIBC. However, he does not remember anything.

The deputy minister, Mr. Knubley, could remember the résumé of Annette Verschuren, the Liberal-appointed chair, back to grade six. He could remember everything she had ever done. He could remember his ADM Noseworthy and everybody who sat in on every board meeting. They worked together since Meech Lake, for 40 years. He could remember everything in his career.

Mr. Knubley said that ADM Noseworthy had been there to be his eyes and ears on what was going on and that not every deputy minister believes in that, but he did, so he had a person there all the time. I asked whether, when 82% of the time the board members were voting for money for their own companies, ADM Noseworthy, as his eyes and ears, had told him about it and if he had told the minister. Mr. Knubley answered that he did not remember. He did not remember having discussions with him on it. Then, he said that he did remember that the act needs to be changed and that he had specific ideas about how the act needs to be changed. I asked if the act needs to be changed to allow for conflicts of interest, since it does not allow for it now, and he said that he was not that familiar with the act.

These folks were covering up for the Liberals, and that comes straight from the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office. We have been unable to locate the director of appointments who approved all of these people. The minister of industry of the day, Navdeep Bains, claimed that they made him do it. It was the devil that made him do the PMO appointments and he was just a puppet. The Prime Minister said they have freedom, but apparently not. Navdeep Bains said he did not appoint anyone; he was just doing what the PMO told him to do. What we have here is a situation where absolutely nobody in the Liberal government is responsible yet again. This time it is for the $400 million being stuffed into Liberal pockets and the 29,000 blacked out documents are probably hiding more corruption that we are unaware of.

This is not a one-off incident with the government. It is a corrupt government, and it has been a corrupt government. It is led by the Prime Minister at the top who has been twice found in ethics breaches by the Ethics Commissioner and Conflict of Interest Commissioner. We remember the Aga Khan incident and the Prime Minister's going for free vacations to billionaires' Caribbean islands on his private jet. He did not declare it, saying “Oh, sorry, I forgot. He is a friend of the family, so I am excused. I can get freebies from people I call friends of the family.”

Do members remember the second one where the Prime Minister's family members got paid by the WE Charity while his minister of finance was sending taxpayer money to the WE Charity? The Prime Minister's mother was getting paid by them. His brother was getting paid by them, and the minister of finance's daughter was getting paid by them. They were found in breach of ethics rules. Of course, everybody remembers the blackface incident, and of course, the Prime Minister experienced that differently.

In 2019, there was also the SNC-Lavalin scandal, which resulted in the firing of the first first nation justice minister because she told truth to the fake feminist Prime Minister. He fired this female indigenous justice minister. We know about the sole-source contracts the minister of trade had for her companies and her own campaign manager. We know about the Minister of Public Safety appointing his sister-in-law as the ethics commissioner as a way to cover up their Essex stuff. Everybody is aware of arrive scam, that app that was supposed to cost $60,000 but cost millions and millions of dollars.

The list goes on. I would be remiss if I were to not mention the other Randy, although which Randy, I am not sure. It is the now former employment minister, the other, other, Randy, Randall or Randy. It is very confusing. One of the Randys has now left cabinet to go and look for the other Randy. I think he will find the other Randy with the killer of O.J.'s wife. There is about the same credibility here.

What we have, wrought from the top, is a Prime Minister who leads by example and who does not believe in ethics, so why should any of his appointees? The result is that $400 million that was shuffled to Liberal insiders.

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

Mr. Speaker, when I take a look at the leader of the Conservative Party today, and the issues that we see, I see there is a multi-million dollar game being played. If we look at the time when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, when he was found in contempt of Parliament, his then parliamentary secretary is the now leader of the Conservative Party. If we advance that to today, we get to the leader of the Conservative Party believing he does not require a security clearance, unlike every other leader of the House of Commons.

If we read the CBC story that came out today, it says, “After two years of [the leader of the Conservative Party], many Conservative MPs say they are much less free now than they were before his arrival.” It goes on to say, “The man who promised during his leadership run to make Canada ‘the freest country in the world’ maintains tight control over the actions of his caucus members.” It says that it is almost as though the leader of the Conservative Party wants to dominate. The question to the member is—

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

We need to keep the questions going because there is only a certain amount of time for everybody to get their questions and comments in.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, is the member concerned at all that the leader of the Conservative Party is using his authority to potentially be borderline in contempt of Parliament because we are being denied the opportunity to pass legislation and deal with budgetary measures?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the only people holding up the House are the Liberals who are refusing and blocking the House order to release unredacted documents and turn them over to the police. Why will they not turn them over to the police? How many more Liberals are going to be caught and charged in this conspiracy to defraud the taxpayer of their money and funnel it to Liberal ridings?

The member for Winnipeg North knows very well that I am not often accused of being a person who has been silenced. Even the Speaker could not silence me yesterday.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the speech by my colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets. I agree in part with several of the things he said, especially with respect to the Liberal Party's inherent corruption and lack of transparency.

That being said, it is easy to talk about others. I would like him to talk about his own party. I will remind him of something. Does he know what former Conservative minister Tony Clement did? He was not just any minister. He was president of the Treasury Board at the time. He diverted $50 million of public money to his own riding, which was criticized by the then auditor general. What is that called if not a lack of transparency, even inherent corruption within the Conservative Party?

I would like my colleague to explain what has changed since. How can Quebeckers trust that party, which has demonstrated its own lack of transparency and whose ministers have engaged in corruption?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell colleagues what has happened: almost 10 years of a corrupt Liberal government. I need a spreadsheet to keep track of all the corruption.

I will give members another one. Liberal fisheries minister number six spent $45 million of taxpayer money in her own riding on small-craft harbours this summer because she will be running against a Bloc MP and fears for her life. She is abusing taxpayer money for her own self-interest. That is yet another example of Liberals using taxpayer money for their own personal benefit, driven from the top by the Prime Minister.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as the member knows, thanks to NDP MPs, we got to the bottom of the SNC-Lavalin scandal and the WE Charity scandal. The NDP is supporting this motion to get to the bottom of the SDTC scandal.

The member talked about spreadsheets. We have a spreadsheet on the Harper regime, the most corrupt government in Canadian history, with scandal after scandal. We are not talking about tens of millions of dollars; we are talking about billions of dollars. I think it is important to remind the member of the ETS scandal of $400 million; the G8 scandal, a billion-dollar boondoggle; the Phoenix pay scandal of $2.2 billion, which was sadly continued by the Liberals; and the anti-terrorism funding of $3.1 billion. That is over $7 billion that the Conservatives, with their corrupt government, basically stole from Canadians. They never apologized and they shut down Parliament so we could never get to the bottom of it.

My question is simply this: Is there one Conservative MP who has the fortitude to stand up, apologize for the years of corruption under the Harper Conservatives and say, “I am sorry, Canadians. We'll never act that way again”?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the gall and hypocrisy of the member absolutely knows no bounds, because the most corrupt government in the history of this country is the NDP-Liberal government, for which he is the House leader. I just went through scandal after scandal, and he voted for the government every time there was a budget or to protect it.

The New Democrats continue to vote and support the government. Their fake ripping up of their document meant nothing. They scotch-taped it back together and continue to vote every single day with the Liberals to keep this corrupt government in office.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, at the public accounts committee, we heard from the founder of Cycle Capital, who was a partner of the Liberal Minister of Environment. She claimed it was basically okay to scam money from the government because she and the minister only benefited a small amount.

I wonder if the member can say what level of corruption is acceptable such that the minister and his partner can steal from Canadians because it is only a small amount.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, apparently the amount of money that is not significant enough to call a corruption problem was the at least $400 million that went to Liberal slush fund appointees. It is incredible that the board director said this is what entrepreneurs do. Andrée-Lise Méthot admitted only two weeks ago at committee that our numbers were too high, as she only got $10.7 million while on the board, as if somehow $10.7 million excused her trough at the Liberal gravy train. For Andrée-Lise Méthot, at least, $10.7 million was okay and not a conflict.

When I search through the SDTC act and the Conflict of Interest Act, I do not see a clause saying that up to $10.7 million is okay and is not a conflict of interest. I do not see a clause that says if someone walks out of a room while their buddies vote to give them money, that is okay and they can still profit from it. I do not see the Conflict of Interest Act or the SDTC act giving the freedom to a chair to tell somebody to go out of the room while they vote to give them money.

Liberal MPs at every single committee continue to defend that behaviour. The Liberal MP for Beaches—East York sits there saying there is nothing to see here; he does not see any problems. This is a person who aspired to be the premier of Ontario. Luckily, the Liberals did not pick him to do that. That is probably the reason he was not capable of leading the four-seat Ontario Liberal Party and instead sits here defending the Prime Minister, saying it is okay to steal $400 million. By the way, he also decided to curse and swear in committee at other members of Parliament, being the class act that he is.

Business of the House

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, there have been discussions among the parties, and if you seek it, I believe you will find unanimous consent for the following motion.

I move:

That, notwithstanding any standing order, special order or usual practice of the House, during the debate pursuant to Standing Order 66 on Motion No. 69 to concur in the twelfth report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, no quorum calls, dilatory motions or requests for unanimous consent shall be received by the Chair.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

All those opposed to the hon. member's moving the motion will please say nay.

It is agreed.

The House has heard the terms of the motion. All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

(Motion agreed to)

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Public Services and Procurement, and the hon. member for Spadina—Fort York, Democratic Institutions.

Refusal of Witness to Respond to Questions from Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to respond to the question of privilege raised by the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford respecting the meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security for the study of Russian interference and disinformation campaigns in Canada on November 5, 2024.

The committee reported to the House on November 7, 2024, that the witness at the meeting in question refused to respond to questions posed by members of the committee. The committee expressed its view that the failure to respond to questions constituted contempt.

I want to be clear with the House that this particular witness was called before committee for a very serious reason. We believe that the evidence suggests that she has been involved in very odious behaviour on behalf of a foreign government. The government takes the issue of foreign interference very seriously.

I submit that this is a unique situation that requires some restraint on the part of the House in considering how we deal with this case. The witness is under indictment in the United States on very serious charges for which she has been advised by her legal counsel to not speak about the material facts of her activities, which are before the courts, for fear of self-incrimination. While the House does have the authority to compel responses from witnesses at committee, this matter is being considered before a court in another country that may not agree that witness testimony is protected under our privileges. It could therefore be used as evidence against her.

Our role as parliamentarians is to be thoughtful about the context in which we compel information from witnesses. I submit, due to the extremely unique situation we are in, that before the Speaker pronounces on whether this constitutes a prima facie question of privilege, a thoughtful and balanced study of this matter at the procedure and House affairs committee be undertaken. It would provide members and the Speaker with recommendations on the appropriate manner to handle situations of such a delicate nature.

I would like to quote my hon. colleague from the Bloc and thank her for her thoughtful intervention on this issue. The member indicated:

However, the Bloc Québécois finds that the reason provided by Ms. Chen to justify her systematic refusal to answer might require an analysis of whether the immunity relating to freedom of speech extended to Canadian defendants applies before a body having jurisdiction in another country, in this case the United States, considering that Ms. Chen is currently being investigated in a criminal matter in that country following allegations.

She continued:

What we can glean from her testimony, or at least from the little she provided as testimony, is that she was afraid that what she said before a House of Commons of Canada committee could be held against her in the United States. In that case, I think it is important to take that into account. We believe that the case should be referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

We do not believe this matter should displace all other House business at this time. This is a unique set of circumstances where the witness is under an indictment in another country where testimony is not protected by the usual parliamentary privilege that exists in Canada and where the witness is at a real risk of self-incrimination. While we want to get to the bottom of the witness's actions, we believe that at this time it would be premature for the Speaker to find a prima facie breach of privilege and that a reasonable approach, given these circumstances, would be for PROC to undertake a study of its own volition to provide recommendations on how to deal with this unique situation.

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

I thank the hon. member for that input. I am sure the Speaker will be coming back soon with a decision.

The House resumed consideration of the motion, of the amendment as amended and of the amendment to the amendment.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a privilege and an honour to rise and speak on behalf of the great people of Vancouver Kingsway and to bring their voices, opinions and concerns to the floor of the seat of their national government.

Having had the privilege of representing these great constituents for a number of years now, I have a very good sense of what their expectations are of members of the House. I know that, regardless of their political hue, whether they are Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, Greens or some other partisan supporter, they expect the people they send to the House to act with honesty and integrity. They expect them to address their minds to the pressing issues of the day, the issues and policies that affect 40 million Canadians from coast to coast, who struggle each day to put food on the table, to put a roof over their heads, to support their families, to pursue their education, to pursue their dreams and to realize their potential.

Members may have noticed that New Democrats have not gotten up to give speeches very often on this matter. That is because, frankly, most of what I just said about what the people of Vancouver Kingsway expect has been violated in the House for the last six weeks. For the people watching and for my constituents, I will give a brief summary of what has been going on for the last six weeks to explain why we are here and what brought us to this moment in time.

We are debating issues that go right to the heart of a lack of integrity, a lack of honesty in government and a refusal of many members of the House to put their minds, skills and efforts to addressing the real issues affecting people. We are here because we have a sordid story of corruption, scandal and misspending, which is not surprising if one looks at the history of the Liberal Party and its governing of this country. It is horrible misspending, inexcusable misspending, of taxpayer dollars.

In this case, it concerns the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund, which was established in 2001 and was afforded a little over $1 billion in 2021 over a five-year period. Through an Auditor General report and spot audit of this fund, alarming facts came to the fore. Dozens of cases of conflicts of interest were identified, 90 in fact, totalling about 80 million taxpayer dollars. A question was raised about whether the people who were making decisions to allocate those funds, all appointed by the Liberal government, were giving them to companies that they themselves controlled or that they were connected with in some way, which is obviously a blatant conflict of interest, or at least an apparent conflict of interest.

About $60 million was given to 10 projects that were not even eligible when the Auditor General took a closer look. Frequently, the projects that were approved and received millions of dollars of taxpayer funds overstated the environmental benefits that came to pass. In fact, over the past six years, SDTC has approved over 225 projects worth about $836 million, and although the Auditor General only did a spot audit on a sampling of them, she found consistent, pervasive and repeated conflicts of interest, misspending and wasteful spending. The Auditor General put the blame squarely on the Liberal minister responsible for this fund and said there was a lack of oversight. Imagine that. This was a fund of almost a billion dollars, and there was a lack of oversight by the Liberal minister who was supposed to make sure that funds were spent in accordance with the authorization of Parliament. That did not happen.

The Ethics Commissioner is now investigating the former chair of the SDTC fund, Annette Verschuren. She approved two grants greater than $200,000 to a private firm that she directed. She did not recuse herself. She actually participated in the decision of SDTC to approve those grants. I do not think we have to be a lawyer or particularly informed on ethics issues to know that we should not sit in judgment in a case where there is money that could go to our personal benefit if we are actually charged with protecting the public interest. That case is being investigated as we speak.

In this case, the NDP joins with all parliamentarians, particularly on the opposition side, who are horrified. Frankly, we condemn this kind of wasteful spending and absolutely scandalous corruption. The official opposition has put forth a motion demanding documents from the government so that we could get to the bottom of it, as is Parliament's right. The New Democrats also joined with the official opposition and, I believe, the Bloc Québécois when we supported that request and demanded production of documents to the House so that Parliament can exercise its constitutional and historical duty to scrutinize spending of the government and to hold government accountable.

The Liberals demurred. They did not want to do that. It resulted in a motion calling for the Speaker to find a violation of privilege in that refusal to produce those documents. The Speaker agreed with the request to have those documents produced here. Parliament is supreme. Parliament does have the right to have those documents produced. I think that transparency, accountability and respect for our constitutional obligations support the New Democrats and the opposition members in that quest.

This is where it gets a little bit funny. The government is prepared to produce documents to the House, but they want to redact them to some degree. This is a consistent and common theme of government, where they want to redact for certain reasons. Some are more legitimate than others, in my view. Sometimes it is to protect commercial information. Sometimes it is for national security. Sometimes it is to save their political bacon. I am not sure which is the case in this until we see the documents.

The official opposition, though, is not happy with that. They want all the documents, unredacted, to go directly to the RCMP. That is where it gets a little bit confusing, because the government has refused to do that, saying that while Parliament has the right to have documents produced to it, it is unprecedented to demand production of documents to a third party. There is also an issue of whether the police forces, in this case the RCMP, might have their investigation compromised by having documents produced to them in that way.

In any event, we have had a standstill for six weeks. Instead of working productively, I would say, like responsible parliamentarians, to resolve this issue and conform with the Speaker's direction to send those documents to PROC, which is a committee of Parliament, to work these out, the Conservative opposition has decided instead to bring the work of the House of Commons to a grinding halt for six weeks. For six weeks, the Conservatives have not allowed a single piece of the people's business to move forward in the House.

A former colleague of mine, Nathan Cullen, used to famously say that the currency of Parliament is time. We only have a certain amount of time to address the issues that are important to Canadians. Every hour counts, yet the Conservatives have decided it is more important to them to have not a single issue move forward in the House for six weeks, not on housing, not on inflation, not on international trade, not on foreign affairs, not on issues that affect every single Canadian in every community in this country. Not a single issue important to Canadians has been allowed to move forward while they filibuster and debate a motion in the House that could easily be ended.

In terms of cost, I am told that the filibuster the Conservatives are engaging in costs us $70,000 an hour. That is about a million dollars per day. By my calculation, that means the Conservatives have cost the House about $20 million over the last six weeks. In my view, that pales in comparison to the cost to Canadians of refusing and failing to deal with the real issues that they are facing, that my constituents are facing in particular.

I want to delve into a couple of those issues we could and should be dealing with. Some information came out recently, in the last week, showing that the price of groceries and the price of rent have gone up 20% and 21% respectively over the last three years. From September 2021 to September 2024, food has gone up 20% and rent has gone up 21%.

Figures came out the day before yesterday that showed, when comparing October of last year to October of this year, so just in the last 12 months, the price of rent has gone up 7.3% for Canadians; the cost of shelter, which includes mortgage interest and all other forms of paying for accommodation, has gone up 4.8%;and the price of food has gone up 2.7%. For three consecutive months, food inflation has exceeded the headline target of 2%. Remember, that is on top of the stratospheric increase of the cost of all these things that has already happened in the last three years.

People are struggling. People are cutting back on their grocery bills. It is not just working families, but middle-class families are cutting back on their food. Parents are skipping meals so they have enough money to make sure their children can eat.

In my hometown of Vancouver, it is not uncommon for people to have to spend between $2,000 and $2,500 per month to rent a one-bedroom apartment. Two-bedroom apartments cost between $3,800 and $4,500 per month. These rents are absurd. People are being driven out of the communities they grew up in, businesses cannot find workers to staff their enterprises and people are having to move out of the cities they want to live in.

I have heard a lot in this place about Conservatives blaming the Liberals and their inattention to housing, and that is well placed. The Liberals have been in power for 10 years, and I can say it is absolutely the case that housing affordability has become worse in the last 10 years. I do not think there is a community in this country that would come forward and say housing affordability has become better in the last 10 years.

However, it also wrong just to blame it on the Liberals. This is a problem, at least where I live in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, that started well before this. The housing crisis did not start in 2015, so I pulled some statistics to see if my intuition was correct and will share what I found. I checked the Greater Vancouver Realtors, which has been watching statistics for many decades. It tracks the prices of varying forms of housing, in this case a single detached house, and it does that for the entire Lower Mainland, from Squamish in the north to White Rock in the south, where millions of people live. What it found is that the average price of a single detached house in the year 2000 was $380,000. In 2004, it was $600,000. In 2008, when the Harper government came to power, it was $800,000. In 2012, it was $1.2 million. In 2016, just when the Harper Conservatives left office, it was $1.6 million. In 2020, it was $2 million, and in 2024, it is $2.25 million.

What does that mean? When the Harper Conservatives were in power between 2006 and 2015, the price of a house in Vancouver went from $800,000 to $1.6 million. It doubled. The greatest increase in housing cost that happened in the last 25 years occurred under the Harper government, under the Conservatives' watch. When they come here and say that the housing crisis is all the Liberals' fault, it is the Liberals' fault from 2015 on, but it did not start there.

That is the kind of issue the people of my riding have sent me here to deal with. They want to know how we can make sure that everybody has a secure, affordable and decent place to live. There are thousands of issues in politics, and they are all important, but some are foundational. Housing is one of them. Housing is not a luxury. It is a necessity. It anchors people in community. It makes it possible for people to access all of the civil rights and duties that they want, like to find a place to work, to send their children to school, to connect with neighbours and to build community. They all require a stable, secure, affordable home, and that is an illusion for far too many Canadians.

People under the age of 30 in this country should be furious, because people under the age of 30 in this country cannot find a place to rent that is affordable, and the dream of home ownership is almost completely gone. That is a failure of policy that should be laid at the foot of every single federal government, of both Conservative and Liberal hue, going back several decades.

I just want to talk for a moment quickly about scandals. The funny thing is we are talking about Liberal scandals. It is a genuine Liberal scandal, but I was here when the Harper government actually self-destructed on its own after many scandals. I have heard Conservatives say they were not here at the time. The leader of the Conservative Party was here. He was in cabinet the whole time the scandals were happening.

The Conservatives say that was then and this is now. The best predictor of how the Conservatives will govern next time is how they governed last time. What happened then? They blew $2 billion with the Phoenix pay scandal. They did not even ask anybody about it. They just decided to contract out and privatize human resources in the public service. It bungled. It did not work and they are still trying to clean up the mess today. It was $2 billion wasted.

Not once but twice the Harper Conservative government was found in contempt of Parliament. It was the first government in the history of Canada to be found in contempt. In the greatest irony of all, it was for refusing to produce documents. The Conservative government refused to produce documents in the Afghan detainee scandal and documents that underpinned their so-called tough-on-crime legislation. When this Parliament demanded, by majority vote, when Parliament was supreme, for the Harper government to produce documents, it refused.

We have Conservative after Conservative getting up, spouting respect for principle, demanding that Parliament is supreme and demanding the production documents. The Conservatives did not do it when they were last in government; they will not do it when they are in government again.

There was a $400-million G8 scandal. We all remember the $80,000 gazebo by former Minister Tony Clement, who, by the way, had to resign because of a sexting scandal after he was extorted because of that.

There were Conservative logos on government cheques when they were handing out taxpayer dollars in a cheap attempt to blur partisanship.

There were four Conservative senators suspended. The Mike Duffy affair happened, where the legal counsel to the former Prime Minister wrote a cheque for $90,000 to pay the legal expenses of Senator Mike Duffy. I do not know who pays $90,000 in legal expenses for people they barely know, but they did.

Two Conservatives had to resign for election cheating. There was Peter Penashue and Dean Del Mastro, who was taken away in handcuffs and jailed for cheating in elections. There was the robocall scandal and the in-and-out scandal. They lost $3.1 billion of $12.9 billion in funds allocated to public safety and anti-terrorism initiatives. It took the Treasury Board six months to try to track the money down.

That is the record of the Conservatives who are standing up here today, attempting to be the moral and ethical leaders of this country. I say to Canadians, if they want to look and see how the Conservatives will be next time, take a look at how they acted last time. They will find a record of corruption, dishonesty, lack of ethics and poor governance.

If Canadians really want to elect a party that would actually do the work of the people of this country, then they would vote a New Democratic government in for the first time in history. We would spend our time working on the real issues facing Canadians every day, not this kind of back-and-forth corruption that we see from the two old-time parties in this place.