Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise and speak on the concurrence motion for the 37th report from the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
I will be splitting my time with the member for Brantford—Brant.
This report states the following: “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.” This report is short and straight to the point. This practice of double-dipping by public servants is obviously unethical and should not be allowed to occur. Unfortunately, this Liberal government allows this practice across all departments.
I would like to begin by giving some context to this report and how it came about.
During our study of the arrive scam scandal, we uncovered a number of issues in the contracting of this app, not the least of which was the case of a government contractor being allowed to simultaneously work as a public servant. David Yeo, CEO of Dalian, was caught double-dipping. In fact, the day that he started as a public servant at the Department of National Defence, his company signed a big contract with that same department. His own signature was on the contract, and no one raised any issues. Under this government, this is seen as perfectly acceptable, just business as usual.
Now, while scandalous, this was just one case, and it could have just been the one that slipped through the cracks. However, when members dug into this situation, when we asked the government to advise the committee on how many public servants were simultaneously working as government contractors, we were shocked to find out that dozens of public servants have been allowed to do the very same thing. In other words, it has become commonplace.
Most Canadians would look at this and see the obvious conflict of interest in being both a public servant and a government contractor, but not the Liberals. As I said, it is business as usual to allow double-dipping; after all, we have seen sitting cabinet ministers who have been found guilty of ethics violations and many cases of Liberal insiders getting sweetheart deals in government contracts.
Currently, the House is seized with a privilege motion, calling on the government to provide the House with unredacted documents in the case of SDTC. More specifically, the current Liberal environment minister, who used to work for Cycle Capital as a lobbyist, still holds shares in this company, one of the largest beneficiaries of this fund that had insider access to funding to businesses it was invested in. We need look no further than the latest scandal with the member for Edmonton Centre, former minister of employment, who was forced to resign after months of controversy surrounding his medical supply business, GHI. More specifically, it is a company that falsely claimed to be an indigenous company in order to access funding that was set aside as part of an indigenous procurement program. So, is it any wonder that the practice of allowing public servants to bid and be awarded government contracts simultaneously is allowed to continue? Within this context, it is obvious why Conservatives feel the need to press this issue.
It is a fact that the government has grown the public service massively, but instead of having these tens of thousands of public servants do the work in-house, this government is outsourcing the work and, in some cases, paying public servants as government contractors to do the work at an inflated price. The practice of outsourcing is contributing to the massive costs of this Liberal government. The government must take immediate steps to crack down on double-dipping. It must address its failure to rein in this practice and take real action against it. Unfortunately, there is little hope of seeing this Liberal government take meaningful action. Even if it decides to implement new rules, we know that it will likely not enforce them, rendering them ineffective.
I would like to quote what Roch Huppé said about the arrive scam scandal, when he appeared at committee, which touches on this issue:
Canadians expect the Government of Canada to be well managed. They also expect their government to have the rules and controls in place for the sound management of their tax dollars. Audits like the one performed by the Auditor General of Canada on ArriveCAN are important instruments to ensure that those expectations continue to be met.
The findings of the Auditor General are clear and sobering. Requirements and good management practices were not followed. As the Auditor General has noted several times, the rules were there, but compliance was not.
He went on to say:
Again, as the Auditor General has noted, we do not believe that more rules are the answer. Procurement is already complex enough. Rather, this issue serves as a clear reminder that departments and agencies need to ensure that they are placing the utmost importance on ensuring that procurements are fair, open and transparent and withstand the closest public scrutiny.
This gets to the heart of the matter. The answer to these issues is not to add more rules that the government will not enforce. It is simply to enforce the rules that are already in place. We do not need the government making more rules to help its insider friends. We just need a government that is willing to enforce the rules and to find and address corruption. For example, we saw this when the President of the Treasury Board proclaimed that the government would now make sure that contractors actually fulfilled the contract before paying them. This was already a rule, just one that the government was not enforcing.
Another example of a pre-existing rule, which the government reinstated, was that it would now first determine if work could be done in-house before outsourcing it. This rule could have stopped the practice of double-dipping from ever becoming an issue, but the government failed to enforce it. The issue behind the report we are discussing today is this: We have a government that is failing to fulfill its role and to enforce the rules that it has in place, which are meant to ensure fairness and transparency in the procurement process and to fight corruption. The Liberals were not actively seeking to address double-dipping and shut it down. They waited until it became a big scandal and then only did the bare minimum to address the issues. Once the attention waned, it could return to business as usual.
Canadians deserve a government that is committed to accountability. We need a government that cares enough to seek out corruption and snuff it out before it can become widespread. We need a government that will enforce the rules that are already in place. Unfortunately, we have members of the government who are trying to pass the time until they can get their pensions and check out. They are more concerned with pushing the election date back a week than dealing with corruption, which they have allowed to fester throughout the public service.
This report is really a no-brainer and should have support from all parties. However, given the way the Liberals continue to dig in their heels when it comes to being transparent and accountable, we will likely not get any resolution to this issue from the corrupt Liberal government. We need a change in government in order to implement accountability across the government bureaucracy and ensure that Canadians are getting good value for money.