Madam Speaker, it is really interesting to be here debating this privilege motion, which first came to the House on September 26. Nearly two months ago, we first started having this conversation when the Speaker ruled on a matter of privilege and found that the privileges of the House had, in fact, been breached.
There was a point in time, many years ago, when I was studying political science as a very keen young student, that breaches of privilege were exceptionally rare. I remember going through the books and studying this when I was a brand new member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. I read through the various rulings of different Speakers over the years, and it was something that was very uncommon. However, it seems that, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, there is a new privilege being breached just about every week. It seems that there is a new scandal every day. We are not talking about small scandals.
One challenge Conservatives have is that we are not talking about a small amount of money; we are talking about nearly $400 million that the Auditor General found was misspent by the NDP-Liberal government and that went to Liberal insiders. In fact, based on what the Auditor General was able to find, the green slush fund gave $58 million to 10 projects that were ineligible and could not demonstrate an environmental benefit or the development of green technology. This is not a one-off. It is a pretty large amount, but according to the Liberals, there was nothing to see here. Then there was $334 million and 186 cases of projects for which the board members themselves held conflicts of interest. Therefore, the people who were deciding where the money got spent decided to give $334 million to themselves and their friends. Worse than that, there were some projects that were both ineligible and in conflict. That is a special kind of failure, to be able to do both at once. However, after nine years under the NDP-Liberals, it seems as though that is business as usual.
Canadians are struggling. One in four parents is skipping meals and going without food to make sure that their children have food. One in five children in this country is now living in poverty. We have the highest increase in child poverty that we have seen, with year over year increases, after nine years of these guys being in charge. Canadians are sitting there wondering when the end will be in sight.
The interesting piece is this: We have been sitting here for nearly two months debating why the government is so afraid of what will be found that it refuses to give the documents to the RCMP. We are not saying we need to tell the RCMP what to do with the documents; all that was decided was that government documents need to go to the RCMP. If it finds something wrong, it can then do something. The government is so afraid of the RCMP seeing these documents that it has stonewalled Parliament, ground this place to a virtual halt and prevented important pieces of legislation from going forward. This is all for the sake of protecting Liberal insiders. Members should let that sink in. Instead of giving over the documents, the government would rather that we have conversations and debates, day in and day out, for almost two months, on whether a privilege has been breached; we know it has because the Speaker, in fact, ruled that a breach took place.
The government is so afraid of the RCMP seeing these documents that it continues to filibuster this motion. In fact, the last time I got up to speak to this, I had the statistics for the number of words that had been spoken by the parliamentary secretary from Winnipeg, who cannot help himself. It seems that, at every opportunity, he gives another 20-minute speech and gets another 10 minutes of Qs and As. On top of that, at every opportunity, when there is a speaker, he makes sure that he is the very first person to ask questions. In fact, I would be surprised if he had not asked questions on every single speech that was given. There might be a few where he has not.
This just goes to show the lengths the government is willing to go to in order to protect Liberal insiders. Canadians deserve to have this information. The challenge with the green slush fund is that it seems as though we find a new layer to this onion of scandal every few weeks. We have found cases in which companies such as Cycle Capital, which just happened to have the Minister of Environment work for it before, got money. I am sure that is a total coincidence and that is totally A-okay, even though the Minister of Environment still has shares in that very company. That should probably be a bit of a red flag.
We have also spent the last month learning about a variety of different scandals of the Parliament. In fact, should the government finally decide that enough is enough, that it will release the documents so that we can move on to the important business of Parliament, we will then have the next privilege debate on the business partner of the member for Edmonton Centre, Stephen Anderson. We will then have a conversation about that privilege and the lack of answers that he provided when he came to committee.
This is part of a troubling pattern here. The fact that we had someone come to the bar of the House of Commons in this session should be a pretty alarming space. At this point, under the NDP-Liberals over the last nine years, this is what we see.
They keep making these arguments that we cannot direct the RCMP. No one is directing the RCMP. In fact, it is really interesting. There was a company in my riding, a corporation, and they found that there was suspected fraud at their place of business. They assembled all the documents that would help the RCMP in conducting the investigation and provided them to the RCMP; that way, the RCMP could do its job and determine whether there was fraud.
That is precisely what Conservatives are asking to have happen. We are simply asking for the government to not redact information. Frankly, if we cannot trust the RCMP, who can we trust? If Liberals are so concerned about privacy and the RCMP having this information, a whole other series of questions should be asked. The reality of this is that we are asking the government to do its job. We have been able to identify, through a variety of different pieces, that over $400 million was found to be ineligible or that was in conflict. These pieces include the Auditor General, who is a trustworthy source, not some random, anonymous person. That is a large amount of money. That is more money than most Canadians could imagine.
This is part of the issue: The Liberals continue to sit here and say that they do not believe this should happen. They will cite the same person over and over again, giving all these reasons that they do not think we should release this documentation to the RCMP. Here is the difference between what they are trying to say and what the reality is: The Government of Canada is effectively the employer here. It is government money; it is taxpayer money. We owe it to taxpayers to make sure we are getting to the bottom of this.
If things are not right, we need to investigate this. We need to have the RCMP investigate; it is the organization that has been tasked with getting to the bottom of fraud and a variety of other crimes. We trust the RCMP to deal with a variety of things and keep law and order in our country.
After nine years under the NDP-Liberals, we see rampant crime. We see rampant chaos on our streets. We saw Montreal devolve into a space that was hard to even understand this weekend. There were literally people protesting on the streets of Montreal in anti-Semitic ways, and it took until the next afternoon for the Prime Minister to even condemn those actions. In my opinion, that is very reprehensible. He was busy. He had pre-existing commitments. However, most people can do two things at once. I can chew gum and walk at the same time, and when I have family commitments or different kinds of commitments and something pressing comes up, my phone is never very far away.
I am capable of approving or putting out a statement in real time, effectively, or as close to it as possible, with the exception being if I am on an airplane. However, we know the Prime Minister was not on an airplane and had access to the Internet, so the delay is questionable at best. This is part of the Liberals' track record. They have become so accustomed to scandals that it does not even seem they are concerned about this. I am sure the Liberal members will give answers saying they are concerned about these scandals.
I am going to give a bit of a reminder of the scandals. There was the Prime Minister's cash-for-access scandal, when he invited wealthy people to come and he broke multiple ethics rules. Then the Prime Minister went to the Aga Khan's island, taking a gift of a charter flight, which is against the rules. He is the very first prime minister in Canadian history to actually break the ethics rules. The Liberals are kind of okay with breaking the rules and skirting around things.
Then there were all of the challenges surrounding the Prime Minister's trip to India in 2018 and some of the cultural appropriation, to be fairly vague. I think many Canadians saw the pictures and had some serious concerns as to whether he was a serious prime minister or not. I was an MLA at the time, and I know a lot of my constituents were starting to question and have very serious concerns: “Is this guy serious?” Very quickly, as things have gone through, they have realized that if he is serious, that is even scarier.
Next there was the SNC-Lavalin scandal, which was the second ethics violation. The Prime Minister politically interfered with the Attorney General, a strong indigenous woman, Jody Wilson-Raybould, and effectively fired her, trying to protect SNC-Lavalin and save jobs in Quebec. The company was charged with fraud and corruption and sent $48 million to the Libyan government between 2001 and 2011. Eventually, the end of that was that Wilson-Raybould, a strong indigenous woman, was thrown out of caucus and is no longer a member of Parliament, but the Liberals are okay with that because they had to protect the Prime Minister.
Then there was a series of different illegal election donations to the Liberals over many years followed by the WE Charity scandal. I think this is when a lot of Canadians really started to say, “Okay, enough is enough. You have got to be joking.” The Prime Minister chose WE Charity for a $912-million contract. He had family ties to the charity through his mother, brother and now ex-wife, who did a variety of paid speaking roles for it. The Prime Minister's mom earned a total of $250,000 for 28 speaking events, his brother was paid $32,000 for eight events and his ex-wife also made a variety of appearances. The Prime Minister did not step aside from the cabinet table for discussions on granting the contract to the charity. The crazy part is that after all the scrutiny, the government changed directions and WE Charity was no longer responsible for the contract, but this was after spending a large amount of Canadians' dollars on a scheme without proper oversight.
Then, because those scandals are not enough, we have the arrive scam, where the government paid GC Strategies 118 contracts, worth over $107 million, to a two-person company. We have had a variety of different organizations and people say this was an app that probably could have been designed in a weekend for about $80,000, but it was the NDP-Liberal government so why not waste money? Kristian Firth of GC Strategies was called to the bar of the House of Commons for refusing to answer questions at committee. It was the first time that had happened since 1913.
It was kind of cool to be in a historic space and see that process unfold, from a very academic space, but for the sake of transparency and access to Canadians, it is exceptionally troubling that we are in a space where these kinds of things keep happening. The Prime Minister's answer is that it is someone else's fault, that we have experienced it differently or that we have all learned a lesson. It cannot ever be his fault because he refuses to take accountability for any action.
With the member for Edmonton Centre, it took weeks of scandal after scandal being uncovered, and he was not fired. He stepped aside; there was a mutual decision between him and the Prime Minister. In fact, the day before this mutual decision was made, the Prime Minister defended him outside of this country. Part of the problem is there is no ministerial accountability anymore after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government. There is no accountability by the Prime Minister or the government after nine years of the NDP-Liberals. They act like it is their money to spend and Canadians should be grateful they are giving them small amounts of their money back.
They are bribing Canadians with a variety of different pieces, including the newest piece of sprinkling their money back to them with this weird two-month pause on GST for a small number of things, but it will not count on everything. This is part of the challenge. It applies to chocolates. If people go to a company like Loblaws and buy a chocolate basket during that two-month period of time, that will be GST exempt, but if they go to a chocolate boutique that specializes in chocolates and buy a chocolate basket, it probably will not be GST-exempt, from the information we have.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has already said this is problematic. Having grown up in a small-business family and after talking to a number of small business owners, I know their point-of-service systems do not allow for quick changes. Yes, many businesses are now digital, so this might not be a bureaucratic nightmare for all businesses, but for small businesses that do not have an electronic point-of-service system, this will be very difficult. It will put a lot of work back on them. This is what the NDP-Liberals do.
They do not want to solve the problem. The solution would be quite simply to axe the carbon tax on everything for everyone for good. That would lower the price of groceries, home heating, fuel and food. That would lower the price of just about everything, but no, they would rather their tax scheme of a carbon tax that is all economic pain and no environmental gain continue to hurt Canadians and then sprinkle little amounts of money back to them.
They are giving a GST exemption on Christmas trees, but their GST exemption is only going to start on December 14. Most people already have their Christmas trees purchased by December 14, so I am not quite sure who this is going to help. I am sure there will be a few, but I am really nervous about not knowing all the details on this. The devil is in the details. Will this end up meaning that a whole bunch of Canadians will delay all of their Christmas and holiday shopping until once this GST vacation is in place, therefore making it really difficult for businesses that are already struggling because of out-of-control spending by the government and the crippling carbon tax that makes keeping the lights on more difficult for small businesses? Will they have a harder time and end up having their sales in a shorter window, making the customer experience more difficult and their overall experience less enjoyable?
These are the realities. After nine years, the NDP-Liberals have lost the plot. They have lost the ability to realize that the decisions they make, and that continuing to block good documents from going to the RCMP unredacted, are going to hurt Canadians. Eventually, this information is going to come out. The question is whether they are going to wait until after the next election or do the right thing, get Parliament back to work and release the documents unredacted.