Debates of Nov. 21st, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I do understand the member's emotion about many things of this place, and he is a very emotional fellow. However, there is a requirement to treat all members honourably. I asked him a very clear question as to what is the worst Conservative scandal that we can learn from, and he failed to answer that. That was the intent of my question.

[The Speaker, Greg Fergus]

That is now entering into debate, but the first point the hon. member made was a point the Speaker had also just made, which is the importance of having respect and decorum in this place.

The hon. member from Calgary Confederation, or rather, Calgary Centre.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to be the member for Calgary Centre. My friend is actually the member for Calgary Confederation. He and I collaborate on a lot of things because we are both the downtown members from Calgary. We have great constituents.

We are here tonight, again, because the government refuses to turn over documents the Speaker demanded. The Speaker demanded that the government provide these documents to Parliament, which is the Speaker's right. It is Parliament's right to get these documents, in their unredacted form, as we call the government to account on a report the Auditor General gave on a fund called SDTC, the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund. The Auditor General reported $400 million of unaccountable spending, which we have referred to many times as the green slush fund because of the way the government has spent its money. The Auditor General's findings were telling in so many ways. When we look at the conflicts of interest upon conflicts of interest, none of these funds should have been disbursed the way they were.

Many of the projects funded through SDTC did not even meet the eligibility requirements. At the end of the day, this happened because a bunch of Liberal-connected insiders were writing cheques to each other and approving money going into each of their companies. This included companies that are partially owned by people who sit on the Liberal bench, which is a shame. It is the definition of a conflict of interest.

The government does not want to disclose this to Parliament. However, we can go back to the constitutional set-up, how we function in this place. The government is the executive; we are the legislature. In Canada, the legislature is supreme. We are all elected across Canada, 338 of us. The Speaker has talked about showing respect to each other; this is legislative respect.

The government must obey the rules of Parliament. If we do not have these rules and we do not know how to function together anymore, we will not be able to continue as a country in the way we govern ourselves, and have for so long, as a democracy. What is at stake here is the governance we have as an actual democracy. This is reminiscent of what happened during COVID; then, the same government took the Speaker's predecessor to court because it was ordered to provide documents on the Winnipeg lab scandal. In that scandal, a whole bunch of information was provided to a foreign government through a bunch of agents. The head of the Public Health Agency of Canada was brought to the bar to testify in front of Parliament about why he would not provide those documents. It was demanded that he provide them, and the government subsequently took the Speaker's predecessor to court to say it did not have to provide Parliament with those documents. That is a clear aberration of democracy, the way we practise it in Canada, and so is this.

This is an aberration. We have to get back to the way we govern ourselves effectively together. Canadians need to understand how their democracy works, and it is not in the way the government is treating their democracy. This is not an autocracy; this is a democracy. There are 338 people elected. I think we are up to about 120 now on this side of the House in the Conservative Party of Canada, and it looks as though we are going to do quite a bit better going forward. However, the government is going to abnormal lengths, at this point in time, to subvert the will of Parliament. We can think about that: subverting the will of Parliament. I am not sure this will continue, but so far, we have managed to hold the three opposition parties together to make sure we continue on this path. We are not going to commence with any of the government business until these documents are provided to the House of Commons for our inspection to find out where $400 million of taxpayer money actually went and whose pockets this money went into.

This is our right to claim, and we are doing that. We are standing here. I hope the other two parties stay with us in this and do not crumble because they are getting some kind of bribe. I do think that is part of the card game that the Liberals want to play. They have to bribe one of these other parties to no longer commit to this effort to make sure Parliament is held in the respect due to it. There is a lot at stake.

In Question Period, every day, we talk about the opposition parties holding government to account. Most Canadians think that happens in Question Period, but it is no longer even a functional part of holding the government to account.

Questions are asked and answers are not given. The government sometimes thinks it is its job to ask questions of the opposition about what is happening over here. Question period is about the functioning of government, and every one of those questions we ask should be about the accountability of government and what the government is doing at any one point in time, but it is not functioning that way. Canadians are watching the practice of democracy being whittled down on a daily basis. I beseech you, Mr. Speaker, to get hold of question period, hold the government to account and make the Liberals provide answers during that 45-minute session every day when Canadians get to watch the government's answers to the questions asked by responsible members of the opposition.

We are talking about a $400-million slush fund here, and I want to get to the root of it. Exposing this slush fund will expose a lot because there are a bunch of actors here that the government goes hand in hand with. They are shaking each other's hands and effectively moving money into people's pockets. It is a great redistribution of wealth from Canadian taxpayers to friends of the government. I say that with some reservation because it is almost an accusation and it is not my style to make direct accusations, but why are the Liberals not providing the documents? It has been almost two months. They are withholding something for very good reason.

I will go back to what we are looking at. It is a redistribution method the government has at this point where it is taking money from taxpayers and giving it to people it believes are on its side. This cannot go on forever because despite the fact that the Minister of Finance said we would only have a $40-billion deficit, it is going to be more than $46 billion this year. That adds to the $1.3-trillion federal government debt we have in this country, which is about $30,000 per Canadian, not per family but per Canadian. That is $120,000 of debt for a family of four. On top of that, there is a provincial debt, which is almost the same, but call it $55,000 of debt per Canadian between our two levels of government, which is obscene.

We are $2.2 trillion in debt across this country. We are spending more on interest now than we are spending on anything else. We could spend all this money, coming up to $90 billion a year, on something besides debt if we got a hold of this. It is an awful amount of money to be coming off our income statement every year. It is unsustainable.

What happens once we go through all that? Inflation is going to make sure there is less money in everybody's pockets for their take-home pay, their rent, what they provide for their kids and their families, for their futures and their pensions. The government is inflating peoples' savings down so it is worth less and less as far as what they buy.

I am going to divert at this point to talk about what happened last week. It is relevant because the Minister of Environment was over in Baku, Azerbaijan, for COP29, the Conference of the Parties, about new environmental measures. When he went over there, he pledged more money from Canadian taxpayers, an extra billion dollars per year or thereabouts, going through a fund the government set up called FinDev.

This is a manufactured corporation; it is the people of Canada's money at the end of the day. It is going to provide what they call “blended finance”. I know what that is in the real world, but it is nothing when it is a government organization; it is just taxpayer money the government is throwing at a wall. It is more money, more spending. The problem is that a week earlier, the same minister, the Minister of Environment, put a cap on the Canadian oil and gas production industry. The cap was not even where we are right now.

Every actor in the Canadian economy says we are going to have to cut our oil production by about a million barrels a day. Right now, the country produces about 5.3 million barrels of oil per day, most of which goes for export. It is our number one export in this country at about 30% of our export value. Cutting oil production by a million barrels a day is going to cost the Canadian economy about $100 million per day.

The Minister of the Environment is over in Baku pledging billions of dollars of Canadian money for foreigners, because they have more needs than we have. He is going to say that. We have a country that is already going broke because of our high debt and we are pledging more money and we are going to have less in the economy here to pay for anything going forward. I worked in finance for a number of years. Everybody here knows that. I can guarantee us that this is not a lesson we give people in high finance. This is a lesson we give people in grade school. We cannot continue to spend more and earn less without this going upside down very quickly. It is going upside down very quickly.

There are a number of quotes here that I want to give with regard to that cap that the government is putting on Canadian oil and gas production. They say, “The proposed regulations put a limit on pollution, not production...the oil and gas sector is well positioned to reinvest record profits into projects that drive cleaner production...The draft regulation will encourage the sector to redirect these record profits into decarbonization.”

I think the people over at Environment and Climate Change Canada do not understand what records are, do not understand what climate change is, do not understand anything about economics here, and do not understand how businesses in Canada actually make money and how they lose money significantly in commodity downturns. These are cyclical, as we will know. Every commodity industry is cyclical. We make our money when the product is up. We lose money, often, when the product goes down in price, in the world price.

They then make these false statements. This is Environment and Climate Change Canada, which is a fabrication of an organization. It is really a passenger organization that is there to take care of the non-governmental organizations that feed it misinformation. I can say that very clearly because I have watched it through my five years here. It is an inane department that needs to be cleansed of all the influence that is coming into it that is purely self-serving at the end of the day. It no longer serves Canadians. It serves itself and serves the cannibalistic organizations that are more or less taking advantage of Canadians in this respect.

Let us go through there: “Countries around the world are moving actively, including Canada’s democratic allies and other major countries, including China.”

I have the emissions profile from China, all Asian countries and other countries around the world. Canada's oil and gas industry is an environmental producer, and it is very effective at reducing its emissions. It has been. It has gone down by 30% in the oil sands over the last two decades, more so, from an emissions reduction perspective, per barrel of oil produced, than any other producer in the world.

Does that make any sense to anybody on the other side of the bench? The industry, the sector that is performing the best as far as our pollution profile, our emissions reduction, is the one we are going to punish here by actually saying we cannot produce anymore. We are not only punishing the Canadian economy, we are punishing technology around the world. We are punishing the environmental solutions as they come forward here. All this is based upon what is going on here in the green slush fund. A lot of green stuff is going through this.

Here is something that they actually got partially right: “Oil and gas companies in Canada have proven repeatedly that they can innovate and develop new technologies to produce more competitive oil and gas with less pollution.”

There is some nonsense in that sentence but I agree with the sentiment. They got something mostly right there.

Let us get through to a few other things here, because the same week that the environment minister came up with that production cap on Canada's most profitable industry, for the country, not for themselves, because the banking industry is way more profitable than the oil and gas industry, the environment commissioner came out on Thursday, three days following, and gave this report card on where the environment minister and his whole department has been for their delivery across this.

I am going to quote a few things from the environment commissioner. He says:

...missing and inconsistent information, delays in launching important measures, and a lack of reliability in projections hindered the credibility of [the government's] plan.

I am going to go through a few other neat quotes here from the environment commissioner, not from an opposition politician but from the environment commissioner, who is there to make sure that Canadian dollars are spent well, and that we get results in our environmental outcomes here. There is a:

...lack of transparency on emissions reductions and projections....

That is, ECCC, Environment and Climate Change Canada, is making it up as they go along.

Here is another one:

The recent decreases to projected 2030 emissions were not due to climate actions taken by governments but were instead because of revisions to the data or methods used in modelling.

If we do not like the results, we should just monkey around with the model a little bit to show that it is doing better than it actually is, but it is failing.

Everything the government is spending billions of dollars of Canadian taxpayer money on is failing as far as emissions go. There are provinces and industries around this country that are doing very well in making sure we reduce emissions per barrel, per unit of GDP and on an energy efficiency basis. However, that is not the result of anything the government or Environment and Climate Change Canada is responsible for. It is a complete sham. If they do not like the results, they just change the numbers, get some different inputs and change the modelling.

Here is another one: “This issue of the lack of transparency in the modelling continues to be an ongoing concern, which can undermine the trust and credibility in the reported progress.” The environment commissioner is telling the government that it cannot be trusted, that its modelling is wrong and that, effectively, the numbers it is putting on paper are a bunch of hogwash. This lack of transparency means that accountability for reducing emissions remains unclear.

The gist, of course, is that the government's approach to greenhouse gas emissions is a complete failure. It does not know what it is doing. It does not know how to accomplish its goals. It does not even know how to measure the outcomes it seeks.

This goes back to the parasitic organizations that are well-funded by the government. That is where the $400 million that I am talking about comes in, the relevant part of this equation. This was a green slush fund that accomplished nothing green, which is the problem. It was just a wealth transfer. It was money going into a whole bunch of pockets that was not reducing anything, nor accomplishing anything environmental for Canada or the world. We were just spending taxpayers' money, and that spending of taxpayers' money was going toward nothing effective. It was just going into the pockets of a whole bunch of insiders. It was a sham.

How did this nonsense arise? This nonsense arose four years ago when the pandemic happened. I would like to quote some of the insiders who were getting rich off the government, and when I say rich off the government, I mean off taxpayer money. The government does not have any money; it is a government going broke, but it continues to take money from taxpayers across the country and give it to rich organizations that are profiteering from the largesse that the government foists upon them.

This is a real doozy from the task force for a resilient recovery:

By using a $13-billion public investment to leverage $35 billion in private capital through de-risking and co-investment strategies, and enabling regional efficiency finance networks through standardized project origination and underwriting approaches, and aggregation and warehousing of projects to attract large institutional investors.

What a bunch of hogwash. Those are the words that these organizations put on paper. They do not even make sense. They are from the government's friends putting together a paper excusing that they will be paid billions of dollars for accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Here is another one, from a news article: The “primary focus” of the task force was “a review of The Resilient Recovery Framework, a document submitted to the Task Force by the Smart Prosperity Institute on the very day of its launch.” Smart Prosperity was also the principal researcher for the task force. The task force was put together to look at Smart Prosperity's work, and Smart Prosperity was doing the research for the task force. Have members ever seen such a bunch of circular nonsense?

Let us look at that. The Smart Prosperity Institute is a joke. It is an organization cobbled together from the government's friends to funnel money into their pockets and the pockets of a whole bunch of other friends of the government. It is an absolute atrocity.

Fifteen people were on the task force for a resilient recovery and four of them had business experience. About 13 of them were just government grifters, people riding the tails of government and making sure they got paid all the way along. However, when they got paid, who did the paying? It was the Canadian taxpayer who did the paying. These are the people we need to hold to account, and they will be held to account. There is a reckoning to be had here, and that reckoning is part of the $400-million slush fund that we need to address very clearly.

I have said a lot and have a lot more to say, but I will entertain some questions at this time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I take it from the member's comments that, like many other Conservatives, he does not recognize that climate change is a reality in life. That is fine. That is not what my question is about.

What we have before us is a motion to see the issue brought to the procedure and House affairs committee. That is what the Conservatives have moved, and well over 100 continue to play a million-dollar plus political game as they try to twist reality and put a great deal of misinformation not only inside the chamber but also outside the chamber through social media.

My question for the member is this. When will the Conservative Party stop with the self-serving interests of the leader of the Conservative Party and start dealing with the interests of Canadians and the issues that they are facing on a daily basis?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am going to address one thing. The member should never put words in my mouth. If he wants them to stick, he can say them from his own mouth.

Everybody knows the climate is changing. It is something people are experiencing on a day-to-day basis. I hope you discipline him, Mr. Speaker, because that is just absolute nonsense, and I would like him to withdraw that comment.

Nevertheless, I will address what he said here. We serve Canadians, each one of us who comes to this House of Commons, so for him to suggest I am providing misinformation is a great insult. I think he knows me better than that. He knows when I show up in this House of Commons I have done my homework. I look at the problem and what the solution set looks like. Therefore, for him to suggest I am providing misinformation, as you know better, Mr. Speaker, and the Liberals should know better, frankly, I think a withdrawal is required.

[The Speaker, Greg Fergus]

I thank the hon. member. I can understand how temperatures can get high.

I would hope that all members extend their full respect and decorum to all members in this place. We should never presume what people are feeling.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Windsor West.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in that spirit, I have a couple of things. We have seen in this House documents and information not provided that should have been provided. One of the problems that we have in Canada is Crown copyright. Crown copyright prevents parliamentarians and other Canadians from seeing information that was supplied to the government of the day, as well as research that was done that affects many businesses, organizations and not-for-profits, and the chamber here with respect to what we get on a regular basis.

Given that the member was prepared to come here and look at this in a different way, I hope, than others, would the Conservatives support amending Canada's crown copyright to be more similar to that of other Commonwealth nations and the United States? We have not updated this properly since 1911, so that would also provide regular information that would be important for parliamentarians and the public.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is something I confess I have not looked at. I think anything that provides us with better information in this House of Commons is going to be good for the outcome, which of course is good government for all Canadians at the end of the day and making sure we have that information available.

What I am seeking today in this speech is the information from the government on a $400-million slush fund. That is the first step. However, I appreciate and would entertain, as I am sure my party would entertain, the ability to update information available to parliamentarians going forward.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we agree that the government should hand over the redacted documents, but the Conservatives need to stop this filibuster that has been going on for weeks. People in my riding are wondering what this paralysis is accomplishing. Moreover, the needs of the public are not being met, either. What about our legislative role? Is my colleague comfortable with having contributed to this paralysis?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her interesting question.

Are the Conservatives the ones causing this obstruction right now? I think it is the government that is systematically obstructing the House by not turning over the documents that we as parliamentarians need to do our work.

If the Bloc Québécois does not want to have the information that the government has a responsibility to provide to parliamentarians, that is the opposite of what it has said so far. I think that it is very important for Parliament to continue operating like a Parliament, like a democracy. It is very important that we stay here to ensure that the government fulfills its responsibility to hand over the documents to Parliament.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to sort of pick my hon. colleague's brain a little bit, because I know he has a finance background. He brought up and highlighted in his speech a number of important things that I hear frequently from my constituents too, in particular about the state of our national finances, the sheer amount of interest we are paying on our national debt and how big that national debt is.

The member said that the scandal is a $400-million one, but he highlighted another issue, about the government's latest decisions that are tied to emissions, and what the cost of those is going to mean to Canada's gross domestic product. I just wanted him to clarify whether he said $100 million a day. Maybe I got that number wrong.

How could the Canadian government and Canadians have ultimately benefited from the money that is no longer going to be contributed to our economy?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, $100 million a day is based on the reduction of a million barrels a day of export capacity towards our main trading partner, the United States of America. It is based on the price of oil, obviously, that is going to be there at times and not there at times. We could say that between $60 million and $120 million will be the amount. Multiply that by 365 days and there is a whole bunch of money that is no longer going to be in the Canadian economy. That is just the trading volume.

There are also jobs. Up to 400,000 jobs will be implicated in the manoeuver from the government. Four hundred thousand jobs provide a lot of tax revenue for the government at the end of the day. The main revenue source for the government is actually income tax revenue from individuals.

Of course our trade surplus with the United States is very important as well. The manoeuver would hamper that trade surplus significantly. Inflation would go higher, people would earn less and our country would go upside down economically.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I did not mean to offend the member, but the motion says that we have to send the issue to the procedure and House affairs committee. The government, as well as all the political parties, is saying, yes, let us send it over, but the Conservatives are putting up speaker after speaker, thereby filibustering.

We listen to the lines being used by Conservatives, whether it is on this issue or on the other issues they continue to bring up, such as being Liberal-friendly, but we know that the chair who was appointed was actually a great donor to the Conservative Party. She was a political adviser to Stephen Harper and to Brian Mulroney.

Conservatives have actually misled Canadians by making those types of assertions in many different speeches they have given. Would the member not agree?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the tone brought to the question by my colleague on the other side of the House. I do not agree that the issue is something we should just push off to a committee at this point in time. The committees are actually not working well. We want the documents now in Parliament, not at committee for examination and for pushing down the road, as the case may be.

The documents were demanded by Parliament for Parliament, and they should be brought here. We can look at the documents at that point in time and determine whether they are referable forward to somebody for examination into whether there have been some crimes committed that need clear examination. That is something that needs to happen as quickly as possible, not by referring it on and on to committee and examination.

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lévis—Lotbinière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by congratulating you on having succeeded in restoring some peace in the House. The government members opposite are calmer than they were during question period.

It is a privilege for me to rise once again to discuss the Liberal green fund scandal. It is another opportunity to shed light on the devastation felt by thousands of Canadians from coast to coast to coast for having been sold the Liberal idea of a responsible, democratic and free country.

I have been the member of Parliament for Lévis—Lotbinière since 2006, so for nearly 19 years. During the 19 years of trust placed in me by my constituents, I have been fortunate to witness the birth and growth of an entire generation. That is significant. I am moved and very honoured by that. Many are related to me, some were my children's playmates, still others have heard about me from their parents, at school or even on television. I have taken part in many activities that have given me the opportunity to get to know these fine young people, from skating and hockey to the choir and the theatre, from school graduations to our traditional Canada Day celebration at the Saint-Agapit agricultural fair.

We are proud of these young people and all the people in my riding, and we are proud to share the values we hold in common and a vision for our society where everyone knows they can trust their parents and their community without worrying about whether the people governing our country are trustworthy, honest and just. Unfortunately, that is not the way things are today. The Liberals' latest green fund scam is once again upsetting the balance we had before the Liberal government was elected in 2015.

They say we do not miss what we do not know, but losing something good can sometimes be devastating, and our whole society is now paying a heavy price. Debt is at an all-time high, and crime is rampant everywhere. Young people are born at a disadvantage to parents who do not have the resources to raise them, or to families grappling with addictions that set them on the path to poverty or even violence. Why has it come to this? I will explain in the rest of my speech.

It is because of the Liberal promises about legalizing marijuana and decriminalizing hard drugs. It was a fantasy to think that allowing this to happen would lead to better control. The outcome is that we have reached the end of the road and nothing better lies ahead if we continue down this path. Throughout this Liberal reign, I have held on to my Conservative values, and I have not stayed silent in the House, even at the risk of appearing old-fashioned or over the top. I have stayed true to my values and beliefs.

I keep speaking out at every opportunity, with each new scandal, like the green fund scandal before us today. I have never lost hope that each small seed would eventually bear fruit and lead us back to a better understanding of what our government should be. Despite the many opportunities we have given to the Liberals, who are backed by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, we have never given up on the goal of bringing back common sense to this government and to this Parliament.

On November 12, TVA Nouvelles reported on a recent Leger poll showing that more and more young people are turning to us Conservatives. It is clear to me that young people are coming back to us because they are tired of living in a world with no rules or guidelines, where they see their childhood friends and loved ones sinking into the hell of drugs and addiction. They are tired of seeing people who were once full of life and full of hope now struggling to hold down a job and keep a roof over their heads.

When we look at where we now rank in the G7, it would be an understatement to say that the Liberals' policies have left us in a very sad situation.

Returning to the poll, it clearly shows that family values, a strong work ethic, wealth building and pride in being able to put food on the table and create community solidarity are making a comeback. People want to go back to acting in accordance with their core morals, their true nature, without deceiving anyone, especially the most vulnerable.

I believe that young people clearly understand that their future is at risk and that making the right decisions as quickly as possible is essential. Separating from Canada is not what young people in Quebec dream about or need. That is why the Bloc Québécois is lagging so far behind in young people's voting intentions in Quebec. Young people are not looking for another empty dream. They want to feel united with other people and pull together in the same direction, to keep what gains they have and create a prosperous future, like we once had, before 2015.

We have strong young people in Canada with visions and values that show their hearts are in the right place. They see their parents worrying about the fact that they work day in and day out but never get ahead. Parents are stunned when they hear about all the crooked stuff that the Liberals have been involved in and have yet to be punished for. In fact, many constituents of all ages come up to me in my riding to say that they are completely baffled that the Bloc Québécois and the NDP are supporting measures that make no earthly sense. People can see that they are using blackmail to buy time just so they can keep warming their seats until October 2025. Because of the support of the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, it is costing us a lot of money to keep this three-legged government going. It has been limping along for far too long.

I am very happy that young people have learned from the Prime Minister and this shady Liberal government. They have learned what not to do. We are learning the hard way, even more drastically, that thugs are not nice, whether they wear ties and ride around in limousines or supply drugs and roam our alleys with illegal weapons. How did we get here?

Unfortunately, I think that many people fell for the Prime Minister's charm. The Liberals' political tactics are as old as the hills and well known to all. They offer free membership, but then make members pay dearly to attend cocktail parties and fancy dinners that provide access to certain well-placed individuals in order to obtain favours. Then the best members are appointed to key positions and bingo, that is how we end up with all those fine people defending each other, protecting each other, giving each other contracts, and getting their vacations paid for, all by reaching into Canadians' pockets without the slightest scruple or remorse.

I am already looking forward to answering my colleagues' questions at the end of my speech. Some will be blue with anger, others will be red with embarrassment, and maybe some will even be pale green over this whole green fund business.

I would love to keep going, but since I have only a few seconds left, I will gladly continue my speech tomorrow morning, in the first hour, as soon as the House opens.

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

The Environment

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I asked the independent, non-partisan environment commissioner if Canada's emissions reduction targets could be achieved without a carbon tax. He said yes. Does the government agree with him?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and to the Minister of Innovation]

Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has confirmed once again that the vast majority of Canadians will receive more money back from the Canada carbon rebate. In Manitoba, that is $1,200 annually, and it is even higher for residents in rural areas. In fact, there is a 20% top-up. It was 10%, but our government decided to double that to give rural constituents and residents across Canada even more money back. Experts agree that putting a price on pollution is the most cost-effective way of fighting climate change. The Premier of Saskatchewan has even confirmed this. Premier Moe has said that his government looked at alternatives to carbon pricing, but they were too expensive.

Our government is committed to fighting climate change while also making life more affordable, and that is exactly what putting a price on pollution does. The Bank of Canada has confirmed this. The Governor of the Bank of Canada said that carbon pricing contributed less than 0.15% to inflation. That is 15¢ on $100 spent. That is not a significant amount; moreover, with the carbon rebate, eight out of 10 families get more money back in their pockets, and those are predominantly lower- and medium-income families. That is a fraction of half a per cent. That puts it in perspective.

The Conservative Party keeps claiming and have continued to claim that they have a plan to fight climate change, but it has yet to produce any kind of comprehensive plan. It has a few slogans here and there, but there is no plan that I can see. In May 2023, the Leader of the Opposition held another fundraiser with more than a dozen lobbyists from the oil and gas industry, accepting over $60,000 in donations. They wanted to ensure that he would not fight climate change and do the opposite of climate action. In essence, he would make pollution free again in this country.

When I knock on doors in my riding, I ask people at their doors who should pay for pollution, the average Canadian or industry. Even among those who are somewhat critical of the price on pollution, every single person says it should be industry. That is exactly what our government does. By putting a price on pollution, we are incentivizing innovation. We are setting a significant price signal in terms of changing behaviour in the market, and that is exactly what we are seeing. If members listen to the environment minister's responses in question period, they will hear that there is a significant amount of emissions reduction in Canada.

It does not end there. Since the Conservative Leader of the Opposition was elected 20 years ago, he has voted against climate action and protecting the environment over 400 times. We cannot find a member in the House who is more opposed to fighting climate change. It is embarrassing and shameful. When I look my two daughters in the eye, I want to make sure that I am doing everything I can to protect our clean water and the environment for a healthy future for all Canadians, including my daughters. I do not know how the Conservatives can look themselves in the mirror when they never take climate change seriously. Not once have I ever heard them say that they believe in climate change and have a plan to address it.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals have a long history of firing people who speak truth to power. I am sure the environment commissioner is worried about keeping his job after exposing the truth about the Liberals' carbon tax.

Does the Liberal government plan to fire the environment commissioner for admitting the carbon tax is not needed to meet Canada's emissions targets?

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is kind of rich to hear the Conservatives ask such a question. It is very interesting because they seem to want to fire every independent expert who happens to disagree with them. They want to fire the independent Governor of the Bank of Canada when he does not agree with the slogans and misinformation the Conservatives spew in the House every single day. I wonder if they want to fire the guy they quote regularly about food price inflation, Sylvain Charlebois, who was at the industry committee not so long ago. I posted the clips of him saying very clearly that climate change is the biggest challenge in our agri-food sector in Canada and that we must address it.

If the Conservatives are so interested in price inflation in Canada, why do they not have a plan to address the biggest challenge that our agri-food industry is facing, which is climate change?

Innovation, Science and Industry

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to ask a follow-up question to a question I had about a month ago in the House of Commons. We are listening to all kinds of stuff, and this pertains to the debate we had today, which was about providing documents to the House of Commons on the green slush fund, the SDTC scandal.

What we are trying to get, of course, is real information that the government has to provide from one of its documents. We passed a motion in the House, supported by all the opposition parties, demanding those documents from the government, as is Parliament's right. However, when I asked for that, I asked if the government thought it was not providing the documents because of incompetence, an oversight or actual corruption.

There are different degrees of a problem in there, but the one we are most worried about is that the Liberals are complicit with some of their friends in giving this money to a whole bunch of people connected to the Liberal Party and not providing a type of oversight, which is what the Auditor General has provided. The response I got back was, effectively, “We have warnings from the Auditor General and we have warnings from the RCMP that this might be a charter issue.” The issue with that fabrication, if I may say that, is that normal jurisprudence on this has us collecting the documents.

Let us remember who is supreme in Canada, in our Canadian Constitution. Parliament is supreme, not the executive, not the RCMP and not the courts. Nevertheless, each of these organizations has a purpose here. Those documents that have to come before Parliament for us to look at and provide to the police authorities are not something they have normally looked at before. In this respect, we are driving that bus forward.

The RCMP will look at the documents and find out if there are charges to be laid. We are not the ones laying the charges. We are the ones who are going to be putting the documents to people who have the ability to make that decision. That is our role, and every one of these organizations has a role. This is Parliament's role. Somehow the government does not think Parliament has a role in this process or any process going forward. It just looks at Parliament as a speed bump.

The government is disrespecting the Speaker because it is he who delivered the request on behalf of Parliament to provide those documents. The government members are asking if they should listen to the RCMP, the expert legal person they spoke to or the House of Commons, which is the Speaker. I am going to tell them right now that, hands down, there is one person they should listen to, and that is the Speaker, in providing that actual ruling.

I am not concerned about the House treading on charter rights, because those charter protections happen at the judicial level. We do our job here, and sometimes Parliament passes legislation that gets overturned by the Supreme Court. That is where that judicial interpretation of charter rights happens, not here. We do our job and do not let a whole bunch of bureaucratese and certain legal opinions move us in one direction or another. There are far better legal opinions at the end of the day that will determine what happens.

I can guarantee members, and I think the Speaker knows this from a previous legal background, that if we seek a legal opinion, particularly on a charter issue, we are going to get six opinions, each pointing in a different direction. Let us get our job done here in Parliament. I beseech this government again to get us those documents so we can see what is behind them, come to the bottom of this and move on with the work of Parliament.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and to the Minister of Innovation]

Mr. Speaker, let me set the record straight. For months now, the House has been paralyzed by Conservative politicians who are putting partisan politics ahead of delivering real results for Canadians. Instead of focusing on delivering for constituents, which is what we were all elected to do, the Conservatives have chosen to filibuster their own motion in the House, to avoid sending it to the procedure and House affairs committee, which is exactly what was recommended by the Speaker.

The member opposite is voicing serious accusations, and I want to be clear: ensuring public funds are disbursed ethically and transparently is of utmost importance to this government. That is why, when allegations of financial mismanagement at SDTC first came to light, our government acted swiftly and decisively, and commissioned a range of independent audits and studies to get to the bottom of the troubling allegations.

There is absolutely nothing to hide. The evidence is there for all to see. This government took immediate action to undertake the proper due diligence to understand the facts, which is what we do when there are allegations of mismanagement in an arm's-length foundation the federal government set up over 20 years ago. We have submitted thousands upon thousands of pages to the House, and are willing to further study this issue at the procedure and House affairs committee, if the Conservatives ever allow the House to proceed in its normal functioning.

What we are not willing to do, however, is compromise the independence of the RCMP investigation. The RCMP commissioner has said very clearly that he does not need or want the information that the Conservatives are asking the Auditor General to provide, that they already have an investigation under way, that they have all of the documentation they need, and that providing the information in the way the Conservatives have proposed would actually compromise their independent investigation. This would compromise one of the pillars of our democracy, which is judicial and police independence.

Conservatives have this reputation. When they do not get their own way, they want to undermine the independence of our institutions. They want to run rampant right over top of them because they want to get their way. They want to paint this with the brushstroke of their partisan politics for political gain. That is just wrong. We have also heard from former House law clerks and from the Auditor General herself, who have warned us that this partisan overreach is a dangerous precedent to set in the House. We know weaknesses were identified in the SDTC governance model, and that is exactly why we have taken definitive action. We have followed up on all of the recommendations that were made by the Auditor General.

In addition to having done a number of third party reviews, we have moved forward on improving the governance model at SDTC. The board's chair and CEO resigned. The board was dissolved and let go. There is a new board that is transitioning under the National Research Council. That is intentional to ensure the minister and our department have better and clear oversight for this organization. Previously it was independent, it was at arm's-length, and that is one of the reasons we felt the monitoring and supervision was not as tight as it needs to be in the future. We take these matters seriously. We have gotten to the bottom of this. This is the accountability all of us should expect.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the responses he gave to my question. I do not think they are proper responses; there are a whole bunch of holes in what he has provided here. Number one, the RCMP is the agency looking into whether there will be charges here to press or not. All we are providing, at the end of the day, is the unredacted documents. Those unredacted documents right now are unavailable to the RCMP because they are unavailable to us. The government member says he has nothing to hide. Then why are there hundreds and thousands of pages of pure black ink in redacted documents here? Nothing to hide means that would be a lot more transparent.

Let me give an example where we have actually worked in this respect through one of my committees. George Young, the chief of staff to the minister of defence at the time during Afghanistan, provided documents that we thought should be looked at from a criminal perspective. The RCMP did not. In the end, they made the decision not to.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have basically tried to answer the member's question in the best way I can, which is to say that we have tried to get to the bottom of the issue, expose all the facts and provide all the evidence. We have collaborated very effectively with the Auditor General, the Ethics Commissioner and the RCMP. If they have any requests for documents, obviously our government is committed to working with all of those independent experts.

Why would we have ordered all the independent reviews, taken all the actions I have mentioned and studied the issue at a committee over and over again? We have been willing to do all those things. What we are not willing to do is compromise the independence of the Auditor General, the RCMP and our judicial system in Canada. That is clearly a red line that we do not want to cross. We do not want to set a precedent of trampling on Canadians' charter rights.

The Environment

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a great honour to rise, but particularly now because I believe I am the last speaker this evening. I am happy to bring it home tonight. It is an honour and privilege.

I do have a very serious topic to raise, and I am hoping I can have a serious discussion with my colleague on the other side. This serious issue is one that has been brought forward by several first nations. The way the story unfolds is sad if not tragic. It revolves around a dock called euphemistically the “big dock”, in northern Alberta. It is in a northern community, surrounded by first nations including the Chipewyan people.

The dock is a community hub. It is where people go for a walk on a nice summer day in northern Alberta. It is where children, including of course indigenous children, swim and play. It is where a young couple might go for a walk to talk about the day and to enjoy each other's company.

In this picturesque surrounding there is trouble, though, and here is the challenge. Recently, just this year actually, the indigenous communities contracted an environmental firm to look at the water in and around the dock to see what the condition of it was. What it found was extremely troubling: The water was contaminated with above-legal limits of toxins, including arsenic, mercury, iron and hydrocarbons. Many of these are carcinogens that can and do cause cancer in people. Keep in mind that young couples, fishers and indigenous children swim in this contaminated water.

Of course, that in itself is extremely troubling, but let us add a couple more facts. The dock is owned by the federal government, by Transport Canada. The really difficult and challenging part is that, according to the consultant's report, Transport Canada knew about the contamination in 2017.

I do not think it is for me to speak for first nations, so I am just going to reiterate to the member what is being asked. Remember, the member is answering not just to me; he is answering also to first nations and indigenous people, so I am hoping the member will not take take this as an opportunity to pontificate about various Liberal accomplishments or other things and that he will answer the requests of the chiefs.

First, they want to meet with the Minister of Transport. Second, they want the dock repaired and brought up to code. They of course want the site remediated, meaning the removal of the toxins. They want to dredge a canal to the channel to Lake Athabasca for boat access. They want a temporary dock, further testing to be conducted along the waterfront and for any and all documents to be made available.

I will add that I did ask at the transport committee, and received unanimous consent, to get all documents and correspondence relating to the big dock from Transport Canada, but we still, nearly a month later, have not received a single document. As the Prime Minister said, and quite frankly I agree with him, there is no relationship more important for the federal government than that with the first nations, so I am hoping we get a substantive response.