Debates of Nov. 22nd, 2024

Finance

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Minister of Environment and Climate Change]

Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to making life more affordable for Canadians.

Therefore, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2) and on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, I would like to table, in both official languages, the draft legislative proposals to implement tax relief for all Canadians and a rebate for Canadian workers that will put more money in the pockets of Canadian families so they can focus on the things that matter to them.

The House resumed from November 21 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

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to continue this debate.

The reason I went into politics was, of course, the desire to make the world a better place but, above all, I wanted to bring to an end to the previous Liberal government, which deceived Canadians with the sponsorship scandal. Everyone back home was outraged.

After that, Canada picked itself up, tightened its belt and balanced the budget. However, today, in the devastating aftermath of a Liberal government, the situation is once again critical.

By trying to play nice, the Bloc Québécois made us miss the chance to have an election this fall, when the NDP finally had the courage of its convictions and tore up the agreement that had served it well and kept this illegitimate government in office to the detriment of Canadians.

Just when we thought we had seen it all, here we are, holding the Prime Minister's nose to the grindstone to get to the bottom of what happened with the green slush fund. This government will do anything to get around the rules of ethics. It even found a way to use the environment to fool Canadians. That is proof that nothing will ever stop this government.

As usual, when caught with their hands in the cookie jar, this government and its Prime Minister give us as little information as possible. What bothers me the most is that they never suffer any consequences. Canadians are the ones paying the price, with their hard-earned money and at the expense of their safety and security.

Despite everything, I am convinced that with hope and action, we can recover from the disaster the Liberals have left behind after nine years in power. Young people are our greatest hope. I am confident that young people have learned something from all the Liberal dirty dealings and that they will vote to bring home common sense.

Speaking of young people, I was pleased to learn this week that my riding, Lévis—Lotbinière, has the lowest child poverty rate in the country. We ranked first in Canada, according to the Campaign 2000 report, with a child poverty rate of 5.1%. That is something to be proud of.

Our young people have good values and the courage of their convictions, and our next Conservative government is going to make sure that their trust is never broken. Under our leader, Canadians can rest assured that the days of cronyism and back-scratching in return for cheques, special treatment or undeserved positions are over.

The pendulum is swinging back for the benefit of the people of Lévis—Lotbinière, Canadians, and the future of my seven grandchildren. That makes me very happy. We always believed it would happen, and here we are, on the threshold of a future government with integrity, a government that values transparency and is not about to hide things from Canadians. As an eternal optimist, I believe that the green fund scandal will give undecided voters the push they need to make the only obvious choice. At long last, we are going to elect a Conservative government that has the interests of Canadians at heart. Canadians can rest assured that no one in our government is going to pull a fast one on them. A Conservative government is not going to talk of division. Instead, it is going to work to bring Canadians closer together again, one day at a time, because the challenge will be difficult. We will have to clean up the disastrous Liberal mess, build housing, make our streets safer, and get the machinery of government working the way it should again.

Again, I invite my colleagues across the way to hand over the unredacted documents to the police. It is very simple. It is not complicated. It is an order of the House. This is not about referring the matter to committee, but about submitting the documents to the House; nothing could be simpler. It is called transparency.

I sincerely hope that I will never have to address this topic in the House again and that the Liberals will see the light and obey the Speaker's order, as they should have done a long time ago. It is absolutely mind-boggling to see how indifferent the Liberals are about the shenanigans at Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Despite the long hours of debate, the government keeps ignoring the legitimate concerns of the House and is just brushing off the substance of the scandal. The police should have everything they need to get to the bottom of things. For the police to have both hands on the wheel, they need to have the unredacted documents.

Canadians' trust is at stake because this scandal involves the mismanagement of the taxes Canadians have paid. When their taxes are squandered and handed out to cronies, as was the case with the green fund, they feel less inclined to pay them. Only a Conservative government will manage public funds responsibly and be accountable for its spending.

Some people today are afraid of a recession. Others argue that we are already there but that demographic growth is masking this reality. Unemployment is rising at a rate not seen since the 1970s, indicating that the economic situation is not as rosy as other numbers might suggest. While GDP is rising, GDP per capita has fallen over the past year.

This phenomenon demonstrates the failures of the Liberal government's economic policies, as it struggles to provide services and a solid economy, despite all its uncontrolled spending at the expense of future generations. This is economic vandalism. To make a comparison, it is distressing to see that Canada's GDP growth rate has not kept pace with that of our neighbours to the south for the past nine years.

Along with the economic slump comes thinly veiled corruption. The indifference to their situation is causing young people across the country to turn their backs on the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois. These ideology-focused parties, with their lack of vision, are preventing young adults from envisaging a normal future ahead. The Liberals have turned this country into a testing lab for all kinds of experiments without giving a second thought to their potentially devastating effects. I am referring to the legalization of drugs, the carbon tax, the tax distortion resulting from the tax on capital gains, and out-of-control immigration. The list is long.

“Hard to the left”, say the Liberals, swept along by the NDP. However, by constantly turning in the same direction, they end up turning in circles. The carbon tax puts Canadian businesses at a disadvantage by penalizing hard-working entrepreneurs at every step of the production chain. Then it penalizes Canadian consumers, especially the ones struggling to make ends meet.

As if that were not enough, while the entire industry is at a disadvantage compared to our neighbours to the south. The Americans have been reaping the benefits of all the growth we have been losing since 2015. The Prime Minister of Canada is the best job creation minister that an American president could hope for.

Canadian businesses are grappling with arbitrary discrimination, as evidenced by the green fund scandal. In other words, under the Liberals, everyone has been penalized except Liberal cronies, who are entitled to receive grants even if their companies do not meet the proper criteria. Liberal patronage is throwing money out the window. It is also a waste of money to fund programs like the housing accelerator fund, which has cost Canadians $4 billion without a single housing unit to show for it in a year and a half.

In Halifax, housing starts dropped by 75%, compared to October 2023, whereas in Kelowna they dropped by 87%. The same thing is happening in Ottawa, Quebec City and Toronto, where housing starts dropped by 42%, 37% and 33% respectively. This is a far cry from the Conservatives' common-sense proposals to eliminate the GST on the construction of housing, which would stimulate the construction of 30,000 additional housing units per year in Canada.

By combining this with other measures, we will encourage the creation of housing, not bureaucracy, like the Liberal programs do.

Today 70% of Canadians recognize that it has become impossible to be a homeowner. An entire generation is losing hope to achieve something that used to be the norm. Statistics show that 59% of Canadians and 75% of renters have to sacrifice essential needs such as food, clothing and education to be able to pay their rent or their mortgage.

More and more, Canadians are being forced to stretch their basic necessities budget so they can afford a roof over their heads when they go to sleep. While everything costs more and there is an unprecedented housing shortage, the Liberals manage to run record deficits. This is where we see that they are not short on money but on competence. The lack of seriousness of this government is so blatant we could not make it up. That is why Canadians are begging us to trigger an election as soon as possible.

However, the Liberals are still obstructing the work of the House by refusing to hand over the documents to the police. While the Liberal game of hide-and-seek continues, crime is skyrocketing across the country, particularly in the big cities, but also in the regions. I myself had the misfortune of learning that street gangs are preying on high school students in Lévis, in my riding. This situation has become all too common in Liberal Canada, where judicial laxness reigns and impunity is growing, compromising the health of our children.

The good news is that things were not always like this in Canada, and things will no longer be like this when the Conservatives are back on the other side of the House axing the tax, building the homes, fixing the budget and stopping the crime.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food]

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of sitting on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. My colleague seems to think that the police need the House to hand over certain documents. I wonder whether he is familiar with the term “search warrant”. I will read the definition for him so he understands. “A search warrant is a written order from a judge or justice of the peace. This order gives the police the right to search your home and take certain items that they find.”

The police do not need the House to hand over documents. The police will do their job. Let us let the police do their job. The commissioner wrote a letter to our committee on July 25, and the official opposition party is well aware of that. The Conservatives are misusing the House. They are filibustering so that we cannot introduce new legislation. That is what today is all about. This has nothing to do with SDTC.

When will they stop obstructing the House?

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

Mr. Speaker, the House asked the government to hand over unredacted documents. If the police had the unredacted documents, maybe they would have turned them over. The police have the documents redacted by the government. The House's order is to hand over the unredacted documents to the police to get to the bottom of the problem.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. I agree in part with many of his statements. I definitely agree that the Liberal Party is inherently corrupt, secretive and wasteful with public funds.

However, I would like him to explain some things about his party, since he can answer for his party's actions. He was a member here when one of his cabinet colleagues, Tony Clement, diverted $50 million in public funds in his own riding. That is some serious misconduct, and it was condemned by the Auditor General at the time. What is more, Tony Clement was not just any minister. He was the president of the Treasury Board, which is responsible for managing and overseeing the administration of all federal public spending.

I would like my colleague to explain to me in concrete terms why Quebeckers should trust a Conservative Party that displayed no transparency and mismanaged public funds when it was in power.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to talk about Canada's economic action plan, which was created by the previous Conservative government following the 2008 economic crisis.

We decided to invest in the work of Canadians and in projects that made a big difference for communities. Rather than giving money directly to Canadians, to avoid high unemployment, we gave money to initiatives intended to get Canadians working, which enabled our country to fare better than all the other G20 countries. Canada was number one. Just a few months after Canada's economic action plan was implemented, the Canadian dollar was at $1.10 relative to the U.S. dollar. We were doing better than our neighbours to the south. Now, we are lagging behind. We are last in both the G7 and the G20. The Canadian dollar is barely worth 70¢. That is the difference between investing to get Canadians working and giving people money to mitigate inflation.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Lévis—Lotbinière for his speech and, of course, his experience. We just heard the member's response explaining what the Conservative government did to deliver concrete results rather than smoke and mirrors. In his experience, since he has been in the House since 2006, making him the longest-serving Quebec Conservative MP in Canadian history—I hope he will correct me if I am off by a few days—can he tell us if he has ever seen a government refuse to obey an order of the House?

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

Mr. Speaker, it really sets a precedent in the House for the government to refuse to provide documents, or rather for it to hide documents, since we can hardly even call it a refusal at this point, because it is afraid of what is going to come out as a result of the investigation into these documents. We are in the final days, perhaps the final months, of this Liberal government.

Canadians are eager for an election to be called as soon as possible.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, during my colleague's speech, which started yesterday, the Minister of Environment rose today to table the details of an announcement that the government made. When we look at the details, we see that nearly $6 billion is being added to Canada's national debt. The surplus that the government promised in 2015 is nowhere to be seen. We know that there will be a bit of tax relief for Canadians, but it is for only two months. The government is using sleight of hand to hoodwink Canadians and taxpayers.

I would like my colleague to elaborate on yesterday's announcement, now that we have some details. What does the future hold for Canadians? We know that the carbon tax is going to be hiked again by $15 a tonne on April 1. I would like my colleague to elaborate on that.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

Although I commend my colleague's efforts to ask questions about a presentation the minister made this morning, we are currently debating the matter regarding SDTC. This morning's presentation and the question have nothing to do with what the House is seized with at the moment.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

The Chair has some flexibility. I think this generally fits in this debate.

The hon. member for Lévis—Lotbinière.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was part of a panel on Radio-Canada this morning along with members of the other parties. I clearly said that these measures are very misguided. Let me explain.

The parents of my little Octave, who is eight months old, will enjoy paying less GST on diapers. However, little Octave is going to be facing a shitload of debt for the rest of his life, because that $6 billion is not going to be paid off in five, 10, 20 or 100 years. Every 20 years, that $6 billion is going to turn into $12 billion, then $24 billion, then $48 billion. Octave is going to be paying for the rest of his life for a government initiative from 2024.

Imagine little Octave, my 8-month-old grandson, being forced to bear the burden of this debt.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

Before we move on to questions and comments, I would like to remind all members about the importance of choosing the words they use in the House very carefully.

The hon. member for Joliette.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, to continue on the same topic, it is clear that the Liberal Party is trailing in the polls, so it is desperate. It is going into debt to send people cheques right before an election. They might actually receive the cheques in the first week of the election campaign.

As some members might recall, Stephen Harper tried the same strategy in 2015, sending cheques to families in the summer right before an election was called, and we know how that turned out.

Does my hon. colleague think this is a proven electoral strategy that works?

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

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative government adjusted the amount allocated for family allowances. That is not the same as sending $250 to 16 million Canadians right before an election. If sending 16 million Canadians $250 is not electioneering, there is only one thing left for the Liberals to do, and that is to give every family a fridge.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it seems that the Conservatives are jealous or opposed to a tax cut. There will not be an election this spring. We do not need an election to cut taxes.

I would like to know whether my hon. colleague will have the courage to stand up to his leader and support our measures, because he could support Canadians now.

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

Mr. Speaker, it would really not be difficult to vote against giving $250 to a person who earns $150,000 a year. If two people with that income live in the same household, they will get $500, when their household income is $300,000 a year. Meanwhile, a single mother who earns $45,000 will get only $250. This is a really poorly targeted measure.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise today on behalf of my constituents of London—Fanshawe. I am always proud to represent them. Every day I come to this place eager to work and create solutions and programs that will help my constituents. That is what they expect from me. Each person in London—Fanshawe depends on me to be honest, to act with integrity to the best of my ability, to improve this country, to expand upon the social programs and services upon which they depend, to help them and to address the issues they are struggling with.

Many of my constituents are worried about the cost of living, about feeding, clothing and housing their families, about their jobs, about their quality of life, about their health care and about their pensions. They worry about their families and friends down the street. Many worry about friends and families all around the world who want to come to Canada to share in the idea of what Canada is. Many of my constituents are terrified for their loved ones around the world, in Ukraine, in Sudan, in Gaza and in Lebanon. People in my area, in my community, are terrified. As a G7 country, they look to our government, expecting us to show leadership on the world stage to fight for a more just world.

I have spoken in this place often about how proud I am of the supports that New Democrats have gotten for Londoners and Canadians. The provision of dental care is actively helping so many in London—Fanshawe. Seniors have told me that they are relieved, because after having spent years of living in pain, they have the ability to get their teeth fixed. Also, with pharmacare, the provision of free diabetes medications and devices and free contraceptives will save millions of people millions of dollars. I am proud that I can be part of those supports, and many other New Democrats have negotiated them with the government for the people. New Democrats did that. We used our time here not to promote ourselves but for others.

I am frustrated beyond belief, because despite my being elected to help navigate these issues with my constituents, I am here today having to talk about the greed and corruption of the government. In the last month or so, I have been disappointed every day, because we keep coming back to a Conservative filibuster and a Liberal cover-up, and we continue to listen to Liberals and Conservatives compete over how bad they are. Every day in this place, Conservatives talk about how bad and how scandalous the Liberals are, and the Liberals in return talk about how bad and how scandalous the Conservatives are. Guess what. Both are terrible; they are both scandal-ridden. Here is a news flash: Each party, whether it is the Liberals or the Conservatives, has not used the power they have been given by their constituents for all of their constituents.

What so many members in this place do not seem to understand is that this place, Parliament, this access to power, is not about them. I am not here for them; I am here for the people who do not directly sit in this chamber and who do not represent billion-dollar interests or individuals who hoard the wealth and power of this nation for themselves. For the majority of their time in power since Confederation, these two parties have worked to undermine working people. They have worked to ensure that this system only benefits them and their closest friends, friends who already hold a great deal of power but are determined to never lose it.

Up until this point, I did not want to enter this debate, but after weeks of listening to Conservative after Conservative and the member for Winnipeg North, I could not take it anymore. We are debating this issue of integrity again, or lack thereof, and I have entered the fray. I cannot imagine how many hours have been spent in the House over decades debating Liberal and Conservative scandals.

Under Stephen Harper, where many of today's Conservatives cut their teeth, including the current Conservative leader, we saw the other place stuffed with party insiders who treated the public purse as theirs. They lined their pockets, only to have the Prime Minister's Office try to cover it up. In 2011, the Conservatives used robocalls to mislead voters away from the polls to try cheating their way into a majority government.

We saw the member for Peterborough—Kawartha's predecessor, Dean Del Mastro, carried away in handcuffs for breaking election laws to cheat and hold on to power. We saw Peter Penashue take illegal campaign donations and be forced out of cabinet. We saw Max Bernier, the Conservative leader's colleague at that time, forced out as the foreign affairs minister when he left classified NATO documents lying around. We saw the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka's predecessor take $50 million out of the public purse to flood his constituency with gazebos and expansions under the guise of the G8. We saw the Auditor General's investigation showing that they refused to keep a paper trail.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am not sure if we have quorum.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I will ask the clerk to count the members present.

And the count having been taken:

[The Speaker, Liberal, Greg Fergus]

I thank the hon. member for Sarnia—Lambton. I am reassured that we do have quorum in the House.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Sarnia—Lambton for ensuring that there are many people in the House to listen to me. I also know the Conservatives were probably trying to cut down on my list of all the Conservative scandals. However, I am going to keep going.

The Conservative international aid minister was held in contempt when he lied about defunding Kairos and charities. The government was held in contempt for lying about the F-35 fighter jet program. The Conservative defence minister took a military Cormorant search and rescue helicopter for a joyride. Those helicopters are used for necessary rescue missions of Canadians.

Finally, the Conservative government refused to produce documents underpinning its so-called tough-on-crime legislation after a motion passed by a majority vote in Parliament, which is ironic. That is the same situation we are in today, in which the government did not respect the authority of Parliament, and that was because it knew what those documents would show, which was that Conservatives wanted to throw the book at youth or our fellow Canadians trapped in the cycle of poverty and petty crime while covering up for their white-collar crimes and corruption during their time in Parliament.

Canadians finally got sick of watching Conservatives cut our community services to fill their pockets. They threw them to the curb and elected Liberals, but the Liberal government has been no better. When SNC-Lavalin was caught bribing the Libyan government, the Prime Minister tried interfering to save his powerful buddies. When Canadians were making sacrifices to make it through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Liberals tried ramming through their convoluted program to refuse students relief while lining the pockets of the PM's friends, the Kielburgers.

The Prime Minister set up cash for access fundraisers in which the wealthiest and most powerful in Canada could pay the maximum amount legally allowed to have off-the-record face time with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister promised to be Canada's first environmentalist government and then bought a pipeline.

The Liberal government is once again accused of corruption, scandal and misspending. In this case, this time, it concerns the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund, which was established in 2001. It was afforded over $1 billion in 2021 to be delivered over a five-year period. Through an Auditor General report and a spot audit of this fund, 90 cases of conflicts of interest were identified, totalling about $80 million of taxpayers' money. The question was raised of whether the people who were making decisions to allocate those funds, who were all appointed by the Liberal government, were actually giving it to companies that they themselves controlled or that were connected to them in some way. This would seem to be a significant conflict of interest.

According to the Auditor General, the projects that were approved and did receive millions of dollars of taxpayers' funds overstated the environmental benefits that actually came to pass. In fact, over the past six years, SDTC approved over 225 projects, worth about $836 million. Although the Auditor General did only a spot audit on a sampling of this, 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. I am shocked that a fund worth almost a billion dollars was running with such a significant lack of oversight by the Liberal minister, who was supposed to make sure that those funds were spent in accordance with the authorization of Parliament.

The Ethics Commissioner is now investigating the former chair of SDTC, who approved two grants greater than $200,000 to a private firm that she herself directed. She did not recuse herself. She participated in the decision of SDTC to approve the grant. That case is being investigated as we speak. This is important. I agree with all my NDP colleagues and all parliamentarians that this is horrible and that we have to condemn this kind of wasteful spending and scandalous corruption.

The official opposition has put forward a motion demanding documents from the government so we can get to the bottom of it, as is Parliament's right. The New Democrats joined with the official opposition, supported that request and demanded production of documents to the House so that Parliament can exercise its constitutional duty to scrutinize spending of government and hold it accountable. The Liberals, at first, did not want to deliver those documents, but the will of Parliament is supreme. Certainly, New Democrats demand that transparency and accountability occur. The government was prepared to produce the documents to the House, but it wanted to redact them to some degree.

Sometimes, the redaction of documents is legitimate, such as for national security reasons or to protect sensitive information. However, in this case, it is hard to know the reasoning for the redactions without further context. I worry that the government sometimes wants to redact information that it should not, but Parliament has yet to receive the documents, redacted or not. The official opposition members then decided they wanted all the unredacted documents to go to the RCMP.

This is where it gets a little confusing. The government has refused to do that, saying that although Parliament has the right to these documents, it is unprecedented to demand the production of documents to a third party. There is also an issue of whether the police forces, in this case the RCMP, might have its investigation compromised by having documents produced to it in that way.

I believe I am a reasonable person, although others might disagree. A reasonable person who has their constituents' best interests at heart and who respects Parliament and our democratic institutions would say it is fair enough that there is some doubt about referring these documents to a third party. In that case, let us have the documents come before Parliament, as is its right, to ensure that the Speaker's ruling is followed.

After six weeks, here we are still in a filibuster. Instead of responsibly doing what the Speaker directed and sending these documents to the procedure and House affairs committee, of which I am a member, so we can do our job and investigate this motion, we are instead sitting through a Conservative filibuster and a Liberal cover-up again. On top of everything else that most Canadians would shake their heads about, this filibuster is costing taxpayers millions of dollars. We are not doing the work we were sent here to do.

In London—Fanshawe last week, people were forcibly evicted from their homes because a greedy corporate landlord renovicted them. People were torn from their homes and from their community. We are not talking about that.

Two weeks ago, I sat with families who cried as they told me that they could not get their families out of Sudan. The government refuses to fulfill the promises it made to create special measures within the immigration system. We are not debating that.

Over a month ago, I spoke to constituents working in key community and public organizations that deal with mental health, addictions, housing, women's safety, the youth justice system and many more areas. They told me how difficult it is because they are not making a livable wage. Even though they love the work they do and the people they serve, they cannot make ends meet. They are worried that the federal and provincial governments do not value them or their clients. We are not debating that.

These are the issues of the people in my riding; they need to be debated in this place and need to be solved. They sent me here to deal with them. They want to know how we can make sure everyone has a secure, affordable and decent place to live. They want to be able to feed their families and build vibrant communities. People are struggling, and what are we doing? We are being filibustered about scandals and greed.

I will say it again: Both the Liberals and the Conservatives are terrible. Both have terrible records and terrible histories. Both have worked to ensure only that the rich and powerful are made more rich and powerful. Both are mired in histories of scandal, greed, lack of accountability and lack of transparency. They stand in the House and proclaim they are here to defend Canadians; the reality is that they are here because they are desperate either to hold on to power or regain the power they have lost. What they do not understand is that it is not their power.

The Conservatives stand in this place every day and call for an election, and they do it because they simply want that power back. They have a shiny new leader; this time, unlike in 2019 and 2021, they think they can actually win. They have spent a lot of money on advertising. They have rebranded their leader and given him a makeover. They have spent millions of dollars marketing their slogans and catchphrases, selling a leader and a party that will do the same thing Conservatives did last time they were in government.

If Conservatives were truly acting in the best interests of Canadians, they would work in collaboration to make real changes. They would put forward real alternatives. They would not throw out personal insults and contribute to the long list of scandals, the corruption and the waste of millions of taxpayers' dollars in filibusters. If Liberals were truly here for Canadians, they would release the unredacted documents to Parliament and not waste millions of taxpayers' dollars in scandals and corruption.

I will say to Canadians that they can demand more of their politicians. Canadians can make real change. We could have a government that disseminates power and wealth. We could have a government that puts people first and does everything it can to get results for people. New Democrats could be that government.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we know the Conservatives do not have an environmental policy. They are against the price on carbon, ZEV mandates, an emissions cap on oil and gas, a clean fuel standard, a clean electricity standard and even planting trees. Their only platform is to fund green technology. That is all they have.

Does the member detect a hint of irony in the fact that the Conservative climate platform is solely focused on giving grants to businesses for green tech, or in other words, on picking winners and losers?

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do find it extremely ironic that, in all these conversations about Ms. Verschuren as a Liberal insider, she has actually donated quite a lot of funds to the Conservative Party of Canada.

I did reference in my speech that the Conservatives are not putting forward solutions. We see empty slogans with no backing. Slogans are easier to sell. My constituents ask me, “Well, then what?” There is this three-word slogan, and maybe it is a rhyme or it is catchy, but then what? We no longer have governments that consider anything other than the power they are trying to obtain. They also do not look much beyond a political election cycle. Government is supposed to look 10, 15 or even 50 years into the future. The Conservative Party is certainly not doing that.