Debates of Nov. 25th, 2024

The House resumed from November 22 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

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

Mr. Speaker, in this debate about the slush fund corruption, the Liberals are always trying to distract with something else. The latest distraction is the two-month temporary tax trick, which everybody knows will not address the root issues facing Canadians.

Could the member comment on that, please?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is a government that uses band-aids solutions. It has no real solutions to anything. It does it, as we call it, death by a thousand cuts. The people who are supposed to benefit the most from these measures, like seniors and people with disabilities, are left out. Funnily enough, when Canadians cannot even put food on their table, or cannot even afford to buy groceries because they are so expensive, the government gives them money it thinks they need to buy toys, or to buy liquor or to go to a restaurant. That is a joke. The government does not want to bring forward any real solutions. The NDP-Liberal government has to go.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Mr. Speaker, what advice would the member give the current government?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Mr. Speaker, axe the carbon tax and call an election as soon as possible. That is what Canadians want. That is what Canadians are expecting us to do.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with the leave of the House, I am going to take a moment, as a parliamentarian and as a Canadian, to address what happened this weekend.

We saw an out-of-control mob take over the streets of one of the country's biggest cities. We saw people openly and proudly spewing hatred, spreading violence and thumbing their noses at the values that every single parliamentarian in this place holds dear. They were burning cars, injuring police officers and chanting slogans like the final solution was coming.

I do not know what kind of Canada this is, but it is certainly not one that I recognize. I know many Canadians feel exactly the same way after watching that.

The Prime Minister's go-to response after an incident like this one is to say that this is not Canada. However, we have to reckon with the fact that this is very much Canada. This is, of course, after he sided with the outrageous decision of the International Criminal Court drawing a false equivalency between a Liberal democracy and a terrorist organization that attacked that Liberal democracy last year, which emboldened the very supporters who took to the streets to almost burn down a city. Our country is no longer a haven for law and order, for truth and justice, for peace and for the freedom we used to have.

Instead of talking about all of this, we are still here after two months of demanding the documents in this place, demanding that the Liberals turn over the documents to the police. Instead of debating the very real issues and the consequences to Canadians that happened, the violence that poured out into the streets over the last number of evenings, and days if someone was on the campus of Concordia University, we are still talking about this.

We have become a nation where the rights of bigots and violent rioters trump the rights of freedom of religion and, sadly, of personal safety. This is something that I never thought I would say on the floor of the House. We have become a nation where the grievances of a small, petty, lawless minority govern the lives of a larger law-abiding majority. We have become a nation where we have lost the ability to put a stop to even the most despicable behaviour.

Instead, day after day in the House, we demand the same thing from the same government that refuses the same order. Day after day, we are asking the government to release the documents instead of talking about the issues with which Canadians are seized. This is a nation where it is no longer extraordinary to wake up to read that another synagogue has been firebombed, or that another Jewish business was vandalized, or that another bomb threat was made at a Jewish school or that gunshots flew through the windows.

Kids as young as 17, 18 and 19 are being arrested for crimes. Children in our country are being turned against one another, blinded by our ability to teach even the most basic tenets of respect and critical thinking, with the woke academics pushing DEI ahead of introspective thought and their unions that have become a bastion of ideological drivel that has now become dangerous and has spilled out into our streets. Hate crimes in our country have more than doubled over nine years.

Instead, we are still talking about a document production order two months later in the House, documents that the Speaker told the government to produce, documents that the Speaker told the government to turn over to the RCMP. That is the natural consequence of a Prime Minister and a government that cannot even utter the most basic condemnation of radical and extremist behaviour in the country, who send one group of MPs to say something to one community and a different group of MPs to say the exact opposite to another community. Those days are over.

That is how it works in the Prime Minister's Canada, but that is not how it works in Canada. I will say one thing, because we have talked about it in the House and, most recently, from comments from the government House leader. Bouncy castles, hot tubs, outdoor barbecues and a protest blocking several blocks in a single city honking equals a national emergency, frozen bank accounts and prosecutions. However, rioting, targeting, harassing, intimidating the Jewish community for more than a year; torching cars, shooting synagogues and schools; calling for violence, murder, death; and celebrating actual terrorists carrying flags of terrorist organizations for over a year in our country equates to “peaceful protests” encouraged by members of the House. That is shameful and every single Canadian sees it now.

What is happening now is a hallmark of the government, a government that has held this place up for two months without turning over documents in this latest scandal of $400 million tax dollars and 186 conflicts of interest broken. There are ministers who cannot keep their jobs because they have misled the Canadian public and the House about their identity. The government has come to that. It has become a hallmark of the Prime Minister's leadership, which has divided Canadians based on every discernible characteristic, of race, religion, gender, age, wealth, vaccine status, and the list goes on and on.

What happens when the same Prime Minister systematically attacks the pillars of our country, whether it is our criminal justice system, our charter of freedoms, even our national symbols? He took Terry Fox out of the passport and replaced it with a squirrel. He allowed those who got the passport to take their citizenship ceremony on Zoom. That is a shame. We should have known this, because he told everybody that Canada was a “post-national state” with “no core identity”.

It is what happens when the cornerstone of a Liberal government's agenda is to open our borders and let in terrorists and lawbreakers with no background checks, then call anybody who questions it a racist. Frankly, this weekend has shown everybody that Canadians are tired of it. They are tired of the government. They are tired of it holding up the debate in the House without handing over the documents that the Speaker told it to hand over. Canadians deserve to know where the $400 million in tax dollars went.

The Prime Minister and the Liberal government have made our country a playground for foreign interference, for division, for people who hate us to come here, and they have rolled out the welcome mat. Then what did the Prime Minister do? He left us in the cold. The chants of death to Jews grew louder in front of synagogues. He ignores calls for safety and security. As his threats to communities got more intense, he ignored and silenced the voices in his own caucus, voices that are supposed to be the ones speaking out, the voices that are supposed to be standing up for their communities, that are supposed to have a seat at the table. He has shoved them out of the room and does not listen to them anymore.

As the masked mob took over the streets of Montreal, the Prime Minister decided it would be better to spend the night dancing. My question is this. When was he told and after he was told, did he stay there? Why did it take him an entire day, until 12 o'clock the next day, to utter even the most basic condemnation of what happened in his own city that night?

This is a country that welcomed generations of people from around the world, gave them shelter from persecution, and now we see that in our streets. This is a country that used to stand up for our allies and for values around the world. This was a country that wherever people came from, whoever they were, they could come here, become a Canadian and be proud of it. We are not that country anymore. It breaks my heart to see it and I am sure it breaks the heart of every Canadian to see and witness what happened this weekend.

Glossing over the clear problems and pretending they do not exist, as the Prime Minister does, is no way to run a country. It is no way to even run a Parliament. He certainly has not acquiesced to that demand we are still here for today.

When someone has the courage to stand and say that what is happening here is wrong, that they refuse to stand by it because they love what is being destroyed, that is a country worth living in. This is the kind of leadership and courage we need. That courage is growing. It is not only growing with me, but with Canadians right across the country, from all stripes, from coast to coast. They want the country they used to know back. Canadians have had enough of the virtue signalling, the holier-than-thou preaching, the lawlessness, the out-of-control crime, the free drugs and the chaos in our streets.

Canadians just want to go to work, raise a family and be able to afford a decent home in a safe neighbourhood. They want to do that without being told how to think by some out-of-touch politician in Ottawa. Canadians just want to wake up from this woke nightmare and bring back the Canada we used to know. These are not the Canadians that we find occupying the streets of Montreal, rioting violently. They are not the ones camping out on the front lawn of a university campus for months at a time or engaging in terrorist cosplay weekend after weekend.

They are the Canadians we find on a shop floor, in a small business along Main Street, in legion halls, in town squares and in communities everywhere. They might be quiet, but they are the real heart of our country. They are going to have a champion when we elect a common-sense national majority Conservative government. We are going to deliver a country that is finally respected on the world stage and does not make headlines with what is happening in our streets.

With that, I want to transition to the topic that has brought us here, day after day, over the last two months. For me, it is the third time in just a few weeks that I have made one simple request of the Liberal government, which is to release the documents. The Liberals could end this today, right now. I suspect that this is exactly what every member of the Conservative caucus has said, day in and day out. It is what we will say today to hold the government to account, to make sure that it hands over the documents and tells Canadian taxpayers exactly where it spent that tax money.

The House and every single Canadian taxpayer deserve to know how much money was wasted, just how the government wasted it and exactly who got rich. The evidence has been missing for months. Now the Liberals will stop at nothing to continue to keep up the secret that has had us here for week after week and now month after month as they fight tooth and nail to hide the paper trail.

It is said that the third time is the charm, but I am not feeling particularly hopeful today, in terms of getting the documents. We have seen the extent to which the government will try to cover this up, day after day, with thousands of redacted documents. The government is relying on the furthest extent of its power to keep information secret.

We can let that sink in. For everybody watching at home, I say that the Liberals have paused Parliament. They have thrown sand in the gears of every single one of their agenda items, in every single way that they claim to be helping Canadians. Every piece of legislation, every motion, everything has come to a grinding halt because the Liberals have a secret; they are keeping that secret from Canadians.

If only the Liberal government would tell us what is behind the black lines on those pieces of paper and hand over the missing documents, this crisis of Parliament would be over in just one minute. It is that simple. If the government had nothing to hide behind those black lines and those missing documents, then it should not be such a problem. It would tell us what it is withholding in terms of information. Again, the Liberals are willing to put their spending plans on hold. All their fiscal estimates and every piece of legislation are on the line. This behaviour is nothing short of crazy and paranoid, if anybody is watching this. What are they hiding?

After nine years of the Liberal government, there is a culture of corruption in Ottawa, and everybody now sees it. It is a culture that leads those at the top to think that they are immune from accountability, that they can reward their well-connected insider friends at the expense of everyone else. It leads them to think that the rights of Canadians and of Parliament do not really matter. However, these rights do matter. The government is certainly not immune from accountability. We will make sure of that, just as every opposition has done for hundreds of years in this system.

While Canadians are certainly taking notice of the matter at hand today, they are also paying close attention to another matter, or should I say to someone else. Our old friend, the other Randy, is a guy made up by a minister of the Crown in an effort to weave a web of lies around fraudulent business activity. It is another example of just how out of touch and out of control the Liberal government has become.

Let us recap the saga. It was against the law for anyone conducting government business to carry on with their business activities. That should be obvious; that was a blatant conflict of interest, similar to the 186 conflicts of interest that we are talking about today. However, the former minister of employment seems to have contravened those rules, and messages showed up of conversations between partners at the minister's old firm and a certain Randy. Those messages clearly showed that the minister was breaking the laws that he had sworn to uphold, but the former minister insists that it was not him; it was a different Randy, but he just could not tell us Randy's last name or even who Randy was. All the records show that there was nobody else at the firm with the first name Randy, so who is the other Randy? I do not know.

The story does not stop there. While he was sitting around the cabinet table, the former minister's old company got tens of thousands of tax dollars, which is something that was reported at least two months after the required disclosure deadline. However, it gets better. As a part of these contracts and a part of the marketing efforts of, I suspect, the company that the other Randy was engaged in, the former minister's company branded itself as 100% indigenous owned, meaning that the former minister was indigenous. He publicly reaffirmed his claim to have indigenous heritage or bloodlines several times. The Liberal Party itself took advantage of that too and included him in a list of indigenous MPs. Now we know that none of that was true. It was a farce from start to finish. The former minister not only misled Canadians but also perpetuated a very long series of injustices against indigenous communities and stole from them. He stole resources meant to help indigenous people in order to benefit and enrich himself.

We tried to get answers about all of this; again, the Liberals and their henchmen did everything possible to stand in the way of accountability. Minister after minister, with a mic in their face, said they had confidence in him. However, from his own business partners, we had radio silence. Their numbers were disconnected, and their emails were deactivated; the business partners were nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, ministers in the current government said that they had full confidence in the minister, just a day before he decided that he was going to step aside to clear his name. The former minister magically got his business partners to disappear and somehow convinced his own cabinet colleagues that he still had the confidence of Canadians, after misleading this place over and over again.

Any one of these things would have gotten any minister fired. I was here as a staff person when a $16 orange juice would have gotten someone fired as a minister. Today, we are seeing the refusal to hand over documents and turn over documents to the police as ordered by the House. This is not only a breach of parliamentary privilege but also part of a long series of events and a culture of corruption that have become hallmarks of the Liberal government and of Ottawa. It is very unfortunate, and we will stand here day after day and month after month and demand accountability from the government on the other Randy, on the minister of the Crown, on these documents and on every other scandal that is unravelling at the feet of the current government.

This is probably the worst part of it: Liberals themselves are now sounding the alarm bells. I am sure that members remember the former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was actually indigenous. Here is what she had to say: “A Prime Minister committed to true reconciliation would have removed [the minister] from Cabinet long ago. Instead we get to watch white people play ancestry wheel of fortune.” The Prime Minister fired his first indigenous attorney general but kept the fake-indigenous employment minister. Just as Jody Wilson-Raybould said, it is extremely “shameful and extremely destructive”.

It is extremely shameful and destructive that we still stand here, day after day, month after month, with exactly the same demand for the Liberals' accountability to Parliament, to Canadians and to every single taxpayer. They should know exactly where that $400 million went, which friends were enriched and what happened in the 186 conflicts of interest that are still at the Liberals' feet. Day after day, we will demand this again.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as all Canadians did, I sat there on Friday night and saw what was going on in my hometown of Montreal. I was absolutely disgusted by the display of a lawless mob that was destroying such a beautiful city. In fact, it is happening right across the country, and it is escalating. Canadians are becoming increasingly concerned about this escalation.

What would my hon. colleague say we should do about it?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the very basic thing that any government can do about this is to signal that it is wrong, but we cannot expect even that from the current government. The Prime Minister danced the night away and waited until noon the next day to say anything about the lawless behaviour in his own city. The very start of this should be at least a condemnation and should be to make sure that these rioters face the full extent of the law. They are not peaceful protesters. There is a very clear line between protest in this country and lawless mob behaviour, and that line was crossed on Friday night and on many other weekends in this country, when people feel unsafe in their own communities. There is terrorist cosplay; flags of terrorist organizations are flying in neighbourhoods where Jewish communities live. Any government would say that is unacceptable, but leadership would say that it is absolutely unacceptable and that those people should be arrested.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Québécois has also condemned the acts of violence that occurred during Friday's protests. I would like to know what my colleague thinks about the Bloc Québécois's bill that seeks to do away with the religious exemption for hate speech. For example, criminal charges cannot be laid if religious-based incitement to hatred or hate speech occurs as part of a protest like the one we saw.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is not going to like what I say about this, but we have been entirely consistent that the solution to bad speech is not necessarily to stop speech. That is what we have seen from the Liberals with Bill C-11, Bill C-63 and, to some extent, Bill C-18. The solution is both more speech and having the consequences in place to actually arrest people who break the law. There are plenty of laws that currently exist in our Criminal Code that have been broken time after time and that would create more civil rest in this country rather than the unrest, the rioting and the behaviour that we have been seeing in the streets. I do not think the solution is stopping Canadians from having their point of view; it is stopping the lawbreakers from breaking the law.

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what we are here for specifically is the privilege motion, as she spoke about, and how it involved a minister who has since stepped down. However, the green slush fund, the whole scandal and the redacted documents involve another sitting minister, the Minister of Environment, who is still part of cabinet and the Prime Minister's close inner circle.

The member just gave a great speech. Canadians are wondering why this gridlock in Parliament has been occurring for the last couple of months. It is very serious; we have sitting members of the cabinet, of the government, still sitting in their chairs and making decisions on behalf of Canadians. How important is it that we finally get to see these unredacted documents and really get to the bottom of this problem?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is important that any Canadian and any taxpayer sees where their tax money is going, which is exactly what this Parliament and what an opposition is here to do. It is very important that the government complies with an order that the Speaker made to the House, which is to turn over those documents to police to see if there is any wrongdoing.

Let us go back for a second. The Prime Minister cannot possibly say anything to his ministers who have violated ethics rules as he himself has broken ethics rules. Members of his cabinet who still sit in his cabinet are found to have broken the ethics law, a number of ministers, some who have hired their best friends and others who have hired friends of family. Of course, there is a culture of corruption within the cabinet. It does not start with the minister who stepped down, and it does not end with the environment minister, but it starts with the Prime Minister. The reason he cannot tell anybody they are doing anything wrong is that he has been in the wrong so many times.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member would comment further on the explosion of hate that is happening in this country, particularly directed at the Jewish community, with the open display of terrorist symbols and the lack of action or condemnation from the Liberal government. We are seeing unprecedented hatred directed toward the Jewish community in our country, and the response from the government has been absolutely abysmal.

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have spoken about this many times in the House. The reason I have spoken about it so many times is that it is not only the people I represent in Thornhill but communities right across the country who are reaching out in hopes that somebody is listening to their plight.

There have been firebombings into businesses, gunshots into schools and riots on a weekly basis in cities across the country. People have been made to feel unsafe in their neighbourhoods. Instead of even the weakest condemnation, it is actually worse; government members have inflamed it with their rhetoric. We have the member for York Centre, a minister of this Crown, who held hands with a literal terrorist, a man who is in the 19th year of his four-year term and has a martyr's fund that rewards terrorists for killing people who fight from her own riding. We have a pretend envoy on issues of anti-Semitism who speaks out against the Prime Minister and says all the right things in the community but does not have a seat at the table and is, frankly, ignored.

The community looks at the government and wonders, “What the heck happened?” This used to be a government that stood for moral clarity, on the right side of history and to protect a community, but this government is nowhere to be found. It is a shame for everybody who is watching, and not only the Jewish community but every freedom-loving, law-abiding Canadian who sees this.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank our Conservative deputy leader, the member for Thornhill, for an excellent summary of the corruption, the lack of accountability, the violation of people's charter rights, etc. I know that when common-sense Conservatives become government, we have a plan that is going to stop the crime on our streets and address some of the lack of accountability. Could the member elaborate on that plan?

[Melissa Lantsman, Conservative, Thornhill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we see chaos all over the country; one sees it no matter where one is, where one lives or in what city. There are two million people eating from a food bank; the price of a home has doubled; crime, chaos, drugs and disorder flow through our streets freely; and the government is nowhere to be found on any of these issues. In fact, the Liberals would rather hold up Parliament by refusing to hand over documents for two months when they see the crisis.

The Prime Minister has made admissions in the last month of the failure of his own agenda, be it on housing, immigration or food costs. The only thing left is that he has not said his carbon tax is an abject failure, but it is time now for him to make that admission on the carbon tax, scrap the carbon tax and call a carbon tax election so Canadians can get rid of these guys.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from Thornhill, the deputy leader of our party, for her passionate statement today about what happened in Montreal on Friday night.

I recall that in the days after October 7, I went to the Am Shalom synagogue in south Barrie. I was there participating in a service that was directed by the rabbi, which involved many community members and community leaders. We could sense by their anguish over what happened on October 7 just how deeply and profoundly this terrorist attack by the terrorist organization Hamas had on the Jewish people I represent in Barrie—Innisfil. I remember making a speech to the congregation and telling them that as elected officials it was our responsibility to keep our community safe, not just the Jewish community but all communities across this country. There was concern about not just what happened but what potentially could happen in this country. For the better part of two years now, we have been seeing this play itself out on the streets.

I watched, like many Canadians did on Friday night, not necessarily on mainstream media, because there was not much coverage about what happened in Montreal on mainstream media, but on social media, this lawless mob trashing and destroying while intimidating Jewish Canadians. I, for one, as a member of Parliament and a Canadian citizen, was disgusted by what I saw in my hometown of Montreal. It was disgusting. Enough is enough. It is time for leadership. It is time for moral clarity. It is time to not have a leader who is feckless and timid in his approach, who says one thing to one group and says another thing to another group. I can tell my colleagues that many Canadians are feeling this way. They have seen what has gone on.

Lawless mobs have been pervading our streets for the last two years. That escalated on Friday night in Montreal. We also saw it over the weekend in Toronto, where terrorist sympathizers were going to Jewish communities and taunting them right near their homes. We cannot stand for that. We should not stand for that. We need to do something about it. It is unbelievable that this is going on in this country. It is not just partisans on the right and partisans on the left who are saying this. There are always going to be partisans. Normal people are saying this now. They are saying enough is enough. They want a return to normalcy and decency in this country. That takes leadership.

Canada used to be a place where we allowed those who were persecuted to come into our country. Those who were persecuted for faith-based reasons, for their sexual orientation, for being from the wrong tribe or whatever used to come to this country to flee persecution. Now we are allowing the persecutors into this country. Those very people the persecuted were fleeing from are the people who have been allowed by the government into this country to do what they are doing to it right now, to create chaos, to intimidate and to bring the grievances of other nations to our nation. Instead of standing under one flag, the Canadian flag, they are standing under the flags of the grievances they brought to this country. That is wrong.

We are Canadian. We stand for what is right. We have moral values. We protect those who are vulnerable and keep them free from intimidation. This is pervading our streets right now and it has to stop. It is only going to stop when solid leadership with some moral clarity is shown in this country and the rule of law is applied equally in this country. This is a shame.

I am hearing from my community of Barrie—Innisfil. I was out all weekend and heard what is going on. I heard the concern among many people, not just Jewish Canadians but people from other backgrounds and Canadians who were born here, saying enough is enough. They want a return to normalcy and decency in this country and a change of government. In many people's views right now, the only way we are going to return to a sense of normalcy and decency is if we have a change of government, because the government has proven time after time that it is not concerned about doing the right thing. It is not concerned about protecting those who are facing fear and intimidation in our communities right across the country. The government's only concern is in protecting itself politically and making sure it does whatever it has to do to stay in power, no matter what the cost or how it impacts communities across this country, whether Jewish or other communities. It has to stop, and it cannot stop soon enough.

A lot of European and eastern bloc people tell me the same thing. As much as I am hearing from those who fled persecution about how we are allowing the persecutors into this country, eastern bloc people come to me all the time, wave their finger and say, “This happened in my country. It is why I left my country. Do not let what happened to my country happen in this country.” What do they mean by that? It is a different perspective, but it is the rise of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, the incremental loss of rights and freedoms, and control of the media that many of these people fled to come to this country so they would never have to experience it again in their lives and, better yet, so their children would never have to experience it. However, we are seeing it time and time again.

The corruption, the cronyism, all the same things that people fled from in eastern bloc countries, are pervading our institutions here in Canada. Enough is enough. It is time to return to a sense of morality, decency and normalcy in this country because Canadians have had it. Normal people have had it, too. When I say “normal”, I mean people who do not pay much attention to politics. They go about their lives, trying to provide for their families, not just now but for future generations as well. They see everything that is going on. They see the lawless mobs on the street, the corruption, the debt and the deficit. They see the fact that their children, many of whom are 30 or 35, are unable to buy a house or afford rent and so still live in their basement. They see the cost of groceries. They see the cost of everything escalating, the necessities of life becoming unaffordable. Those normal people right now are saying something is not right. Something is wrong and they are feeling it.

Single moms are worried about mortgages that are due for renewal. There are a million mortgages due for renewal in this country in 2025, some as much as 30% to 40% more in renewal costs. How are people going to afford that? How are they going to afford to keep their homes? That is what is bothering single moms right now. That is what is bothering moms. If we start ripping that security blanket away from those families, we have a recipe for disaster in this country. Many of those normal people are rising up now and saying enough is enough.

They are looking at alternatives. They are looking at alternative governments that will make their lives more affordable, that will get homes built and fix the budget, the $1.34 trillion in debt we have right now. More importantly, they are looking to alternative governments in this country to stop the crime and chaos in our communities, where violent crime, gun crime and extortion have skyrocketed. It was not like this in 2015. We did not see the type of criminal activity and drug crime happening across the country that we are seeing right now.

I say that normal people are rising up and are saying something is broken and something is not right, and they are right, because we have the statistics to prove it. We do not even need statistics; just look at the news. Every day in Toronto, there are shootings. Extortion, car thefts and drug overdoses are happening right across the country. What people want is a government that is going to allow for safer communities to happen.

The bail system is broken in this country; police associations right across the country are talking about it right now. They are compiling statistics, and I know they are going to come out with them soon, about the fact that the bail system is so broken in this country. It is so broken that officers who are on the front line, whose lives are in danger as a result of the broken bail system, know that if they arrest somebody in the morning for a serious offence, in all likelihood they are going to be out in the afternoon, allowed to walk the streets freely. That is what is concerning normal people right now.

I was at a Nigerian event on Saturday night. Friends of mine in the Nigerian Barrie—Innisfil community, and I spoke to many of them when I was there, said that crime is the number one issue of concern within their community. They came to Canada to flee from the situations they are now facing in this country. In many cases, the people who were persecuting are the ones who are here; the people who were doing the crime in other countries are here now doing the exact same thing in this country. It has to stop. Enough is enough.

I want to talk about the issue at hand, which is the SDTC scandal. It is my third time rising on it. We have been dealing with it for two months. The Speaker's order was to have the government send the documents unredacted. We know, for example, that 11,000 documents still exist within the justice department. We know from the parliamentary law clerk that they have not been submitted to Parliament at this point.

What is in the documents? What is it that the government is hiding that it would seize Parliament on the issue of privilege for so many months? There has to be a hell of a lot of information in there that the government is worried about.

The government needs to just release the documents. The standoff can end tomorrow and we can get on with the business of the country. The Speaker ruled that the supremacy of Parliament was paramount and that the documents had to be turned over to Parliament, but they have not been up to this point.

This is not the first scandal there has been. SDTC is just the tip of the iceberg. If we go through a list of some of the scandals, there was the cash for access scandal. There was the SNC-Lavalin affair. I invite anybody to just search Google and pull up the Liberal scandals since 2015. There is a whole list of them.

There was the ArriveCAN scandal. There were the sole-source contracts; many sole-source contracts were issued throughout the course of the pandemic, and subsequently through the ArriveCAN app; we know there is $90 million on that one. It could be much greater than the figure that the Auditor General has discussed. There is the WE Charity scandal, with $900 million that was going to the Prime Minister's friends.

The former minister of international development gave a sole-source contract, breaching ethics violations and ethics contraventions, to her friend Amanda Alvaro. Also, the minister's sister-in-law was appointed as the interim ethics commissioner for just a few days. Of course, there have been other scandals, such as the Winnipeg lab scandal.

In each one of the scandals, the government has basically tied the hands of Parliament, and it has tried to cover up many of them, where many of the Liberals' insider-connected friends and cronies have enriched themselves as a result of sole-sourced contracts, other government contracts and the latest one, with $400 million to the SDTC board. Board members contravened conflict of interest guidelines 183 times and enriched themselves with 400 million dollars' worth of contracts.

It is absurd. It is almost laughable that the government is spending so much political capital trying to cover this up and trying not to give the information to Parliament that it rightly deserves. It is not laughable; it is actually sad that we are in this situation.

I want to go back to August 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when we started seeing a diminishment and decline in democracy. One of the first pieces of legislation that came out after the pandemic was to basically seize control of the spending power of this place, to give the Liberals, I think it was in Bill C-2, the opportunity to spend whatever they wanted on the pandemic without Parliament's approval.

Shortly after that, many sole-source contracts came in and were given to Liberal-connected insiders and cronies. In August 2020, I stood up and spoke about the situation going on. At that time, we had heard about Frank Baylis and the ventilator contract, which was $300 million of sole-source contracts, and there were others.

I remember quoting Warren Kinsella, who is a former Liberal strategist who was chief of staff to former prime minister Jean Chrétien. Kinsella used a word that is in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, about what the government was all about. In fact he wrote an article entitled “When You Become What You Came to Change”, in which he talked about the word “kleptocracy”.

Kleptocracy is when the leaders of a nation use the availability of resources they have, either through the treasury or by other means, to not just enrich themselves but also to enrich those who are within their close, inner circle. In his article he said, “It's in the dictionary.... The Merriam-Webster people define it as ‘government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed.’”

It was important at that time, and I would argue that it is equally important at this time, because it is the reason why these types of scandals are so profoundly scandalous. The allegations are that insiders and connected insiders sought to enrich themselves during this very difficult period Canadians are going through: the cost of the necessities of life such as groceries, mortgages and all of the things Canadians are struggling with, not just cost of living but also housing attainability and affordability.

Nevertheless, well-connected insiders and cronies are using their relationships and their benefits to enrich themselves during these times. The problem, which Mr. Kinsella spoke about, and I would agree with him, is that the people who are governed are losing their home, their job and their future while the Prime Minister and his friends are taking off like bandits. They are enriching themselves.

I asked a question to the Commissioner of Lobbying at the ethics committee meeting just a couple of weeks ago. There has been an increase in lobbying and lobbyists, going from 7,000 early in the current government to now over 11,000 registered lobbyists, all of whom are coming to Ottawa with cap in hand, their hand out, trying to get as much money as they can for the people they represent, and many of them are very likely Liberal-connected.

Kinsella also said, “That is not merely wrong, it is...evil. It is beyond the pale. Beyond words.” He said that there is a name for what we now have, a government like the Prime Minister's, run by people who seek status and personal gain while the rest of us and the rest of Canadians suffer so greatly, not just economically but also socially, through the division that has been created by the government. Kinsella said it is a kleptocracy, where connected insiders benefit from their role in government at the expense of the people it governs. It is precisely what is going on; we have a kleptocracy.

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

Mr. Speaker, where does one start? There is so much misinformation compacted into 20 minutes, and it is echoed in the social media throughout the country by unethical characters. I will not say from which political party, but there are unethical characters who continue through social media to espouse all sorts of misinformation. First and foremost, let me assure the member that Canada is not broken. Canada, in comparison to any other country in the world is the best country to call home, whether the Conservative Party wants to believe that or not. That is up to them.

What we are supposed to be debating today is a Conservative motion that would have the issue go to the procedure and House affairs committee. That is the ruling of the Speaker. Conservatives can twist and bend it all they want, but that is the ruling. If we want to talk about cowardice and disclosure of information, just take a look at Stephen Harper and his parliamentary secretary, the current leader of the Conservative Party.

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if we want any evidence of just how difficult the situation is for Canadians, I think I pretty much addressed that in the course of my speech, but we just have to ask young people right now who have felt lied to and let down by the Prime Minister after he was elected in 2015. They do not just feel lied to or let down; they feel despondent right now because the hope of a better future has been lost in many ways because of the economic and social policies of the government.

Food bank use has increased to almost 3 million people a month. The good news is that it was not like this before 2015 and it will not be after the next election, which cannot come soon enough from my perspective and from the perspective of many Canadians.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to work alongside the hon. member at the ethics committee. In fact the issue came to the ethics committee, where there were some pretty significant revelations about the nature of the gaps in governance for SDTC, about the inside dealings and about the corruption of board members receiving government money while voting in on their own self-interest.

I know that the hon. member spent some time on city council, as did I, and would have likely some experience with procurement. New Democrats see these things happen. We have certainly dealt with enough scandals at committee. What would the member do to help close the loopholes on governance and procurement to ensure that this type of insider dealing cannot continue to happen?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in many ways, the governance and the rules are already in place, either through the Conflict of Interest Act or through the conflict of interest laws that exist in this country. Primarily, it is the appointments. In the SDTC scandal, many of the appointments to the board of SDTC were made by the current Liberal government.

The problem is, as the hon. member noted, that many of the contracts were issued with the approval of the board, or worse yet, where those individuals who were part of the board did not recuse themselves from the decision-making process. The rules are in place and everybody knows the rules. As parliamentarians, we know the rules. The challenge and the problem is that the people who are put in those positions do not act with the same moral integrity, the same moral high ground, that should be acted upon when they are appointed to positions, and they do not subscribe to the rules that already exist.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, having been involved in riots in the past in my law enforcement career, I can say that what happened in Montreal is certainly an awakening call for Canadians and to how disruptive some of the protests are.

Getting back to SDTC, I wonder whether the member can answer the question as to why the government is reluctant to produce the unredacted documents. Is it because, first of all, only 60% of the files SDTC dealt with have been examined, or is it because the Liberals are just afraid somebody might end up going to jail?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, many Canadians are waking up, especially after what happened in Montreal, but they were aware of the situation of these lawless mobs taking over the streets. I was speaking to the Canadian Association of Retired Persons just a month ago, and the question of why this is happening in this country came up.

On the issue of SDTC, there are 11,000-plus documents that have not been submitted by the justice department to the parliamentary law clerk. I cannot imagine what is in there that would cause the justice department to not provide, as Parliament ordered, and as the Speaker supported, these documents to the parliamentary law clerk. I would love to see the email exchanges that went on between, for example, ISED and the justice department. I think there is a level of criminality and known corruption within those documents that the government does not want Parliament, the Speaker or all Canadians to have a look at because it is damning.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I asked another Conservative colleague a question earlier. I wanted to know what she thought about the Bloc Québécois's bill that seeks to do away with the religious exemption for hate speech. She responded that censorship is not going to solve the problem.

Does that mean that, under a Conservative government, hate speech will be allowed for everyone or will the Conservatives just continue to maintain the special exception for those who engage in religious-based hate speech?

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am an advocate for free speech. We have laws in this country that address the issue of hate speech. If one crosses the line, they should expect to be visited by law enforcement.

I listened to the answer of the hon. member for Thornhill, and I agree with her. Are we going to get to a point, which we would through Bill C-63, but hopefully with a change in government we would not, when we would be starting to censor the freedom of speech of Canadians? I believe, and it is an ideological belief on my part, that free speech is paramount in our democracy. It is paramount in our democratic institutions. If we as a government are restricting that in any way, save and except for what constitutes hate speech as identified in the Criminal Code, then we are doing a disservice to not just our freedoms, but also our institutions.