Mr. Speaker, I move that the 37th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Friday, March 22, be concurred in.
I will be sharing my time.
I think colleagues know about my general fondness for poetry, so as I move this motion with respect to Liberal corruption and double-dipping, I thought I might elevate the conversation by briefly reflecting in verse on last week's events:
He sought to increase his fee
By pretending that he was Cree
What an obscene joke
Shared an address with coke
Wait, not Cree, but Métis
What a corrupt and insane notion
He sure caused quite a commotion
Edmonton Centre is fired
Calgary Skyview may be hired
Could we see a porch pirate promotion?
For his false indigenous boast
The minister now is toast
Texts regarding the other Randy
Now that sure was handy
Calgary eyes a minister for Canada post
Will this scandal cause a prime ministerial shift?
Or will he just run off to watch Taylor Swift?
We need a new direction
And a carbon tax election
To end this corruption and grift.
It is great to see colleagues from all parties applauding that verse.
We are debating concurrence with respect to the 37th report of the public accounts committee, a very short report that puts forward a very simple proposition. It says, “That the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to prohibit any government employee from simultaneously working as an external contractor.”
It is really incredible that this even needs to be discussed, because the whole point of contracting out work is that the expertise or the ability to do the work does not exist within the public service. Conceptually, the argument is that if we do not have someone inside of the public service who can do a particular job, maybe there is a case for contracting out to an external company to do the work. Maybe there is some logic to that. However, we found that there are cases where the public service is contracting out to somebody who is also a public servant, which is incredible. The government will say it does not have expertise internally, so it goes outside of government to contract with an external company, and that company is owned and operated by someone who is inside the public service. It obviously makes no sense.
We found out that David Yeo, benefiting from the arrive scam scandal contracts, was, according to his LinkedIn page, simultaneously a government employee and a government contractor. We asked him at committee how it was that, according to his LinkedIn page, which is not exactly a private source so someone could have checked it, he was simultaneously a government employee and an external contractor, and that this did not line up with the timelines that he presented to the committee. He said that LinkedIn was not an authoritative source, except that it was his own LinkedIn page, which he controls. We therefore had this contractor and government employee telling us we could not really believe the things he wrote on his own LinkedIn page.
It was in the context of testimony from David Yeo at the public accounts committee and revelations by public servants that we heard this is actually allowed. According to the rules of the Liberal government, someone can simultaneously be an outside contractor and a government employee. I put forward what I think was a common-sense motion to say that the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to prohibit this. There is no need to contract out the work if there is somebody inside of government who can already do that work. Opposition parties do not always agree, of course, but all three opposition parties thought this was common sense. However, the Liberal members on the public accounts committee voted against the motion. They said, “Wait a second; we are not so sure now ”, and they voted against it.
Now will be the chance for all members of the Liberal caucus to vote on double-dipping. Should we allow people who are government employees to simultaneously be outside contractors to the government, or should we end this practice so that we are contracting out as little as possible? Certainly, we should not be contracting out to people who are already in. This absurd practice of double-dipping should end. That is why we put forward this motion. It has the support of a majority of the House, and I hope to see it pass today. We will see how the Liberals vote when they have the chance.
We found more recently that double-dipping is not just a phenomenon that involves lower-level folks. These are still insiders in a substantial sense, but are at a lower level within the pecking order, folks like David Yeo. We also found out that the former minister of employment, the member for Edmonton Centre, not only had double identities, but was involved in double-dipping. He owned a company that was bidding on contracts with the federal government while also being a minister in the government. He has a company, Global Health Imports, that according to text messages he was directing while in cabinet. He was a minister of the Crown, and he owned and directed a company that was bidding on work from the government that he was a part of. He was making a generous salary from the taxpayer as a cabinet minister and was also double-dipping through this pandemic profiteering company.
This is a company, as members will recall, that falsely claimed to be indigenous-owned. The former minister himself made all kinds of contradictory claims, finally admitting that it was not true that he had any kind of indigenous identity. However, in the process, the Liberal Party claimed that he was indigenous, and his company claimed to be indigenous-owned based on claims he had made and claims the Liberal Party had made on his behalf. This false information was put forward to try to allow this company, owned by a minister of the Crown, to double-dip and benefit from contracts that came from the government. It is really unbelievable the extent to which the former minister went in misrepresenting his identity and to which the Liberal Party supported him by misrepresenting his identity, and he has continued to benefit from his ownership of Global Health Imports.
It is important to emphasize for the House that this scandal is not over. The minister has now left cabinet and has said that he would like the opportunity to defend himself and respond to the allegations. That is great. I think he should have the opportunity to come to committee and testify and answer important questions, because we certainly need to get to the bottom of what happened here. However, the company he owns is still eligible for government contracts in spite of the fact that we now know, as the minister has admitted, that the claims made by Global Health Imports that it was Indigenous-owned were totally false. Despite knowing that this was an instance of indigenous identity fraud, that company continues to be eligible to bid for government contracts.
It is, frankly, disgusting that the Liberal government does not take the growing problem of indigenous identity fraud seriously. It is very serious, and does not just apply to procurement. Having engaged with many indigenous leaders on this issue over the last few months, I know there is a broad-based concern about indigenous identity fraud. People who are not indigenous, often elite insiders seeking more power and benefit for themselves, pretend to be indigenous in order to gain some kind of advantage. It could be access to academic opportunities, access to platforms and recognition, or any number of things. In this case, we are talking about access to government procurement, which are opportunities that were supposed to be aside for indigenous entrepreneurs. However, now we have people pretending to be indigenous who are not indigenous trying to steal those opportunities. The minister's company did this.
Although the minister is out of cabinet, he remains a member of the Liberal caucus and his company continues to be eligible for these contracts, so the double-dipping persists. It is time to end double-dipping, end the corrupt grift that has gone on under the government and stop the member for Edmonton Centre's company Global Health Imports from double-dipping and bidding on government contracts. It is time to have a new government that stands for the interests of everyday Canadians.