Debates of Nov. 22nd, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

That is a point of debate.

Colleagues, I would ask for a bit of decorum. The debate is getting pretty heated here.

The hon. member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is Friday afternoon, and we are all a little tired.

I agree with my colleague on this. It would be nice to know how many trees have been planted. I remember the ad campaign about planting two billion trees. It was quite a big campaign. I do not know how many have been planted so far, but it is a fraction of that. It is ridiculous.

My Conservative friends talk a lot about common sense. They want to fix the budget and all that. I know of two areas where the government could make cuts. According to a study by the IMF, the International Monetary Fund—not Greenpeace, not Equiterre—Canada gave oil companies $50 billion directly and indirectly in 2022. I see that as an opportunity to cut spending. That money could be used to build social housing.

Does my colleague agree that the government should cut that $50 billion?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yes, Canada does need to build an awful lot of housing. We have our own ideas about that as well.

However, the topic of discussion today is actually the sustainability development fund. If the member was listening to my speech, he heard that this is where we could be investing and making our processes more efficient to provide fuels to the world in a way that actually addresses the climate and addresses greenhouse gas emissions. Now, this would not be forever. That is actually a practical, common-sense approach that would enrich Canada rather than bankrupting it while being able to fund the transition to even greener fuels. Instead we have a tax. That is the plan, and that is the plan the Conservatives say no to; we will axe the tax, and we will fund sustainable technologies in the future.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to correct the record: No, we do not have enough trees, and no, the Liberals have not planted what they promised.

Getting back to the debate at hand, as I said before, the fact is that the Conservative Party voted unanimously against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Its former leader said that the crisis of MMIWG was not on his radar.

I want to let everybody, and certainly first nations across Canada, know something. On the claim to have this deep concern for indigenous peoples, the Conservative Party leader, who is on the record fundraising with residential school denialists, does not care about first nations people.

I know the member has spent a great deal of time on food security issues, and I want to honour his work on this. With his many years of work around food security, does he support his party's plan to cut the school food program and his party's move to vote against my bill for a guaranteed livable basic income?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there are several things I do support. I have spent time in food security, and I support food security for Canadians and indeed for all peoples of the world. I am trying to remember what the other question was.

I support my colleagues who have done great work with the indigenous files as well, and the next government will actually have bold and innovative plans to deal with reconciliation with our first nations.

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

The hon. member for Winnipeg Centre on a point of order.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I just want to remind the member that nobody owns indigenous people. We have risen in the House on several occasions to remind members not to call us “our” indigenous people. We are not pets.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we stand with our colleagues.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will bring this back to what we are debating here today and SDTC having 186 instances of, basically, fraud.

The Auditor General conducted this audit. It is absolutely incredible where there are these conflict of interest, which came out of this audit. I am wondering if the member could speak to just how excessive this is. Any amount of conflict of interest, one, two or three instances, is enough, but we have 186. We also know, as part of that, that the Auditor General did not audit all of the contracts. The Auditor General only audited approximately half of them, so it could potentially be even higher.

I am wondering if the member could speak to the incredible amount there is and how important this is. The lengths that the government has gone to protect this and not bring out all of the documents unredacted is just absolutely unprecedented.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yes, there were 186. I think the fear is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, once all of the documents are have been provided. I have been fortunate in my life to be part of several different organizations. What really, truly, is a fact, is that the culture of an organization often comes from the leadership shown at the top. There are 186 conflicts of interest here. I did not have time today, and I even cut about four pages out of my speech, but I did do two previous interventions when I began to list the litany of conflicts and corruptions from the government in the past.

Why is this? It is almost like Canadians have become immune to Liberal corruption. I think that we will find out that they are not immune when we do finally get to an election. What I wanted to say is that the example gets set at the top.

The Prime Minister is the first prime minister who has been convicted twice for ethics violations. Is that what is causing the almost permissive ability for his ministers to go, one after another, to commit the same kinds of acts?

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

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that the member might want to check the ethical challenges that the leader of the Conservative Party had while he was in government, when there was a lot more corruption, power hunger and so forth. It continues today when we see the leader of the Conservative Party, I would suggest, being in borderline contempt, in this multi-million dollar game that they continue to play at taxpayers' expense, which is all for his personal self interest as opposed to Canadians' interests.

When is the Conservative Party going to recognize that the motion before the House is for this issue to be brought over to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs? The Conservatives have refused to allow that to happen. Rather, they want to filibuster, for weeks and weeks now, at a substantial cost to all Canadians.

When does the game stop?

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North used the word “contempt”.

[An hon. member]

Borderline contempt.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, he said, “borderline contempt”. Even Richard Nixon turned over the tapes, and then he resigned. Is that why we are not seeing the documents? Is that why the government is standing in contempt of Parliament and of the Speaker's office?

The government needs to turn over the documents.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague. Earlier, I heard him say how important it is to move away from coal and toward other types of energy. I found that very interesting. Not so long ago, when we were examining Bill C-33 in committee, I moved an amendment to the bill. This amendment sought to ban the export of thermal coal in order to help fight climate change. However, the member's Conservative colleagues voted against my amendment.

I would like to know whether the member will take his colleagues to task and tell them to change their minds.

[Dave Epp, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when we talk about coal, we have to be very careful about whether we are talking about metallurgical coal or thermal coal. They are two different entities. Metallurgical coal goes into the production of steel. We need steel. Ideally, we would be making more Canadian steel. As I said in my speech, the progression of technologies through the densification of energy and their resultant lesser, more benign environmental effects are things this party does and will always support.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for your service today. It gives me an opportunity to practice my French, one of the two official languages of my country of birth, Lebanon. Today is Lebanese independence day. I want to take this opportunity to say to my birth country and the people of Lebanon that I hope for an end to the war that has been going on there for two months now.

It is raining today in Ottawa, and it being almost the end of November, we can perhaps be thankful that what we are getting on this gray day is rain and not snow. At this time of year, with the weather just above the freezing point, snow does not last very long as snow. It is quickly turned into slush. As Wikipedia tells us, “Slush, also called slush ice, is a slurry mixture of small ice crystals...and liquid water. In the natural environment, slush forms when ice or snow melts or during mixed precipitation. This often mixes with dirt and other pollutants on the surface, resulting in a gray or muddy brown color.”

Strangely, Wikipedia makes no mention of green slush, though I suppose we could make green slush by adding a little food colouring. If we did, it would still be slush, which “often goes through multiple freeze/thaw cycles before being able to completely drain and disappear.”

The Liberals are desperately hoping someone or something will make their green slush fund drain and disappear. For that to happen, though, they have to be willing to accede to the will of this House and produce the documents that were requested in unredacted form. I understand they do not want to do that.

The Auditor General uncovered many instances of apparent corruption. Releasing the documents would allow us to determine whether there were more. One would think a government that was honest would want to do that. Failing to release the documents makes it look like the Liberals have something to hide. Maybe it is the Prime Minister. Maybe it is one or more of the ministers. Where there is the smell of corruption, it seems safe to say there is corruption somewhere. We have the smell. What is making the stink? What might the corruption look like?

One of the supposedly shining lights in the Liberal plan to fight climate change was Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, a foundation the Liberals created to fund new clean technologies. Their desire was to tackle climate change through Canadian innovation.

It was a good goal and well intentioned. It looked like a good idea. Who could argue against this concept? We all understand the need to fight climate change, and Canadians should be world leaders in developing new technology. We have the know-how, but those with the brain power sometimes need help bringing their ideas to fruition. However, what this great turned into, apparently, was a Liberal slush fund.

Merriam-Webster provides us with three definitions for what constitutes a slush fund. It can be, “a fund raised from the sale of refuse to obtain small luxuries or pleasures for a warship's crew”. Certainly, when the Liberals are involved, there is a lot of refuse. However, I doubt if anyone would be willing to pay for their excrement, so we should turn to the other definitions.

A slush fund can also be “a fund for bribing public officials or carrying on corruptive propaganda”. I think this hits closer to the mark, though the public officials appear to be unelected party insiders.

One could say it was used for corruptive propaganda, though. The Liberals talked about climate change and the great things that would be done by SDTC. It turns out the Liberals' plan to fight climate change was anchored in the idea of giving money to their friends. No wonder they do not want to release the documents that will show the full extent of their corruption.

Merriam-Webster's final definition of a slush fund also seems appropriate: “an unregulated fund often used for illicit purposes”. Certainly, no member opposite could really believe it is right to reward Liberal insiders with million-dollar contracts without public scrutiny. Do they believe the public is being served by this conflict of interest? Are they so self-righteous that they believe the means justify the ends as long as they are Liberal ends? Apparently they do or they would stop this sham and release the documents. They would rather tie up the House than do the right thing.

I was raised in a country that believes in honour. I have always known the importance of doing the right thing, the honourable thing. A person is judged by their actions, by whether they do the right thing, and not just when it is convenient. To act incorrectly and be less than honourable brings shame on a person, their family, their friends and their nation. A person would rather die than act shamefully.

Apparently, this is not true in Canada anymore, as we see from the government. When I look across the aisle and see the faces of the Liberal members, I have to ask whether their sense of honour is gone. Each and every one of them, I am sure, came to this House wanting to do the right thing for the good of the country. Somehow, they have lost their sense of honour and are taking part in shameful acts. They are complicit in a cover-up. They are aiding and abetting possible criminal activity. They are disrespecting the will of the House of Commons and the order of the Speaker.

They sit there and do not even feel shame. If they did, they would come into the chamber with paper bags over their heads to conceal their faces from the people of Canada, whose trust they have betrayed. It saddens me to see them, those people who once had the ideal of serving the country, and see how far they have fallen. They have lost their honour and shamed not only themselves and their families but the constituents they were elected to serve. The longer they continue this cover-up, the more shameful their actions become.

There is a way out of this, of course. The Liberals can regain their lost honour. They can tell the Prime Minister and the ministers to stop the cover-up, do the right thing and release the documents. Somehow, though it saddens me to say it, I do not see the members opposite having the courage to do that, which is why we have to debate the motion before us today.

It is important the people of Canada know that the government is trying to conceal wrongdoing. The $400 million may seem insignificant to the Liberal government that has, in nine years, more than doubled Canada's national debt and is handing out such sums to the Liberal insiders. Violating the rules is apparently business as usual for the Liberals. It is not business as usual for the Canadian people who are being carbon-taxed to death. It is not business as usual for the record number of people visiting Canada's food banks each month. With that money, how many people could we feed? Canadians are appalled that money that was supposed to fight climate change was instead used to line Liberal pockets. The Liberals cannot deny it.

The corruption was so bad they had to shut down their green slush fund. I do not think any member there will deny what I am saying. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister explained the Liberals' new climate strategy. Canadians who are worried about feeding their children are being short-sighted, he says. Apparently, he thinks it is morally selfish to be concerned about feeding their children, better they should starve to death for the good of the planet. It is easy to take the moral high road when he was born into privilege and the only food bank he has ever seen was as a visiting politician. That is not the real world most Canadians experience.

It is more important that we in the House show Canadians there is still honour in this land, and that graft, greed and corruption will not be rewarded. Politicians at any level of government should not be allowed to hide corruption and wasteful spending. It seems to me that for those who are inviting mob rules, the day will come when the people will say they have had enough with politicians who do not understand that their role is to serve, not to reward their friends.

The member for Calgary Rocky Ridge has proposed what I see as a reasonable subamendment to the amendment to the amended motion. It takes into account the possibility, however remote it may seem, that the government fully complies with the order from the Speaker of June 10. If the Liberals were to do this, if they were to show respect for the Speaker and the House, there would be no need to refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Adopting this subamendment could save the committee time in the unlikely event the Liberals decide to do the right thing.

When will the Liberals realize they have no right to overrule the Speaker and the will of the House? The Prime Minister has expressed his admiration for the way dictatorships can get things done, so it is understandable that he wishes to ignore those who do not see things his way. Someone needs to tell him that no matter how much he wishes it was, Canada is not a dictatorship. He and his party are supposed to respect the rule of the law, even if they do not like it. Maybe, given his famous math skills about balancing budgets and small deficits, and his unwillingness to think about fiscal policy, the Prime Minister has become confused.

The Prime Minister knows the Auditor General found that some SDTC contracts involved conflicts of interest involving Liberal appointees and their friends, but maybe he thinks it was only one or two incidents, nothing to get excited about; surely the people of Canada will not be concerned about one or two incidents.

However, it was not one or two; it was 186 incidents of corruption. That is not a mistake, someone forgetting to recuse themself once or twice, not realizing that there was a conflict. It is a systematic failure, one that has cost taxpayers $400 million so far.

Only if the documents are released as ordered can we find out whether the problem is bigger than that and the corruption runs deeper. If there is no wrongdoing, what are the Liberals afraid of? The only reason not to comply with the Speaker's order is that they know the real numbers are much worse and the corruption is much more widespread than they have already admitted. No wonder they do not want the police involved.

In not complying with the Speaker's order, the Liberals are paralyzing Parliament, preventing it from doing other important work, not that they are willing to admit it. “It is not our fault” is what we hear. They tell anyone who will listen that it is the fault of the evil opposition that will not allow them to get away with covering up the corruption. They do not know why it has to be so mean to them. We hear that all the time, every day.

Canadians deserve to know the details about who profited from the $400-million scandal. The money did not come out of the pockets of members on the other side. Liberal donors did not offer it as donations. The money came from taxpayers, from people wondering whether they can afford to heat their house this winter and put groceries on the table. For Canadians, $400 is a big deal, but $400 million is beyond their imagination. It is no wonder the Liberals think they can get away with it. They think people will not believe how corrupt they are.

After nine years of the Liberal government, the scandals are too many to list. The Prime Minister leads by example with his multiple ethics violations. It is no wonder so many of his ministers have difficulties determining right from wrong, something we have seen again and again in the past week.

Canadians are sick and tired of the arrogance and the paternalism the Prime Minister and his Liberal government have shown. Apparently, the Liberals know best about everything, and anyone who disagrees with them is just too ignorant to understand. That would explain why the Prime Minister would suggest that Canadian parents should let their children go hungry in the name of serving the planet, even if there is no proof that any of his policies will have any appreciable effect on climate change.

Those of us who live in the real world know it is time for the government to do the right thing. The people living in Liberal fantasyland will continue their efforts to paralyze the House and perpetuate the cover-up. I for one do not believe that participating in a cover-up of the mismanagement of public funds is the honourable thing. I would be ashamed to be part of it.

I ask members opposite to remember the ideals and values they held when they were first elected. Live up to them now and do the right thing. Hand over the documents and end the cover-up.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member mentioned the national debt in his speech. However, the national net debt to GDP in Canada is among the best in the G7 countries. On the deficit to GDP, again, Canada is the best among the G7 countries. In terms of economic growth, the IMF projects that, in 2025, it will be the best among the G7 countries. Today, the Canadian consumer confidence index is at a 30-month high. Inflation, from its peak in June 2022, has come down to 2%, which is at the lower end of the Bank of Canada's preferred target range. The interest rates have been cut four times, and Canada has the best per capita foreign direct investment that we have had.

I would like to ask the hon. member this: Under what economic indicators is Canada lagging behind any of the G7 countries?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, this is the Liberal fantasyland that I was talking about. People cannot be fed reports and papers.

The only documents that Canadians would love for the government to talk about are the documents that it has to release to the House to uncover the scandals. If the hon. member can help me with some of his good colleagues on the other side and push the Prime Minister, the ministers and the rest of the caucus to hand back the documents to show the $400 million in corruption, that would be a more fruitful and better conversation to have. That would be a real help to Canadians.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to wish my colleague a happy Lebanese Independence Day. Of course, it is Lebanese Heritage Month as well. In my city of Edmonton, we have an incredible diasporic community of Lebanese Canadians.

I want to ask the member a question that I know is very important to many of the people in his constituency. Yesterday, the International Criminal Court came forward with arrest warrants for Netanyahu, for some of his cabinet ministers and for members of Hamas.

Now, I have been very clear that I believe in the international justice systems. Canada was one of the architects of the Rome Statute and the international court systems. Could the member say whether he also supports the international justice systems and whether he agrees with the NDP that we should enforce the arrest warrants if Netanyahu and his cabinet ministers come to Canada?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, for some reason the member chose this time to wish me a good Lebanese Independence Day. A week ago, she would not even sympathize with me about what is happening in my home country. The message to the member is to stop—

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member.

The hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona is rising on a point of order.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, according to the Standing Orders, it is not appropriate for members of the House to speak falsehoods. I have been a staunch supporter of the Lebanese community in Canada and around the world. I think the member would definitely know that. I am wondering if he would like to apologize and retract that statement. I would ask that you, Mr. Speaker, insist upon it, please.

[The Acting Speaker, Bloc, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

The Table will look into this and the Chair will address the House if necessary.

The hon. member for Edmonton Manning, to finish his answer.