Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak to the motion again today.
I would like to note with interest that the Leader of the Opposition just made an excellent request for an emergency debate. I am glad it was granted, and we look forward to talking more about the dual threats of both the Liberal economic plan, which is a disaster, and the proposed 25% tariffs that President-elect Trump has proposed. That dual threat really is something we need to be very concerned about, and I am glad we will continue to talk about it later tonight.
What the House is seized with now is a motion and a matter that have been before the House for quite some time. That is because the government refuses to obey a lawful order of the House to turn over documents regarding the very concerning scandal surrounding Sustainable Development Technology Canada's giving government contracts to Liberal insiders. The Auditor General found very troubling evidence that this was done
Millions of dollars were given to Liberal insiders, sometimes for zero work. Money was simply transferred from hard-working taxpayers to the government coffers and into the pockets of Liberal insiders. This is what we are here to talk about.
I want to go back to the original motion that started the whole thing in June. On June 10, the motion proposed by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle and seconded by the member for South Shore—St. Margarets stated:
That the House order the government, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) and the Auditor General of Canada each to deposit with the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel, within 30 days of the adoption of this order, the following documents, created or dated since January 1, 2017, which are in its or her possession, custody or control:
(a) all files, documents, briefing notes, memoranda, e-mails or any other correspondence exchanged among government officials regarding SDTC;
(b) contribution and funding agreements to which SDTC is a party;
(c) records detailing financial information of companies in which past or present directors or officers of SDTC had ownership, management or other financial interests;
(d) SDTC conflict of interest declarations;
(e) minutes of SDTC's Board of Directors and Project Review Committee;
(f) all briefing notes, memoranda, e-mails or any other correspondence exchanged between SDTC directors and SDTC management; and
(g) in the case of the Auditor General of Canada, any other document, not described in paragraphs (a) to (f), upon which she relied in preparing her Report 6—Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which was laid upon the table on Tuesday, June 4, 2024;
provided that,
(h) the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel shall promptly thereafter notify the Speaker whether each entity produced documents as ordered, and the Speaker, in turn, shall forthwith inform the House of the notice of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel but, if the House stands adjourned, the Speaker shall lay the notice upon the table pursuant to Standing Order 32(1); and
(i) the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel shall provide forthwith any documents received by him, pursuant to this order, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The question was put on the main motion, as amended, and it was agreed to on the following division: yeas 174 and nays 148. The House voted on the motion and agreed on June 10 that we would request the documents, which the government, the Auditor General and SDTC have in their possession, and that those documents would be turned over to the RCMP. Therefore a lawful order for the production of papers was received.
The problem has become that the Liberal government believes it is above and can ignore that lawful order of the House of Commons. Even though the House has made it very clear what its intentions are and what it requires of the government, in a lawful order, the government has decided it is above it. Liberals have decided they can ignore the demand of the House of Commons because they believe their government, their Prime Minister's Office and their Privy Council Office know better than the House of Commons. That is not how it works.
The Speaker himself ruled that the government had violated the privileges of the House in refusing to acknowledge, accept and obey a lawful order of the House. The government is in breach of our privileges. It is a prima facie case that the government has breached the privileges of every member of Parliament and the House, because it is not up to the Prime Minister to determine which lawful motions he ignores or accepts. As the Speaker said very clearly in his ruling:
The procedural precedents and authorities are abundantly clear. The House has the undoubted right to order the production of any and all documents from any entity or individual it deems necessary to carry out its duties. Moreover, these powers are a settled matter, at least as far as the House is concerned.
He went on to quote Speaker Milliken, who said, “procedural authorities are categorical in repeatedly asserting the powers of the House in ordering the production of documents. No exceptions are made for any category of government documents”.
The government has tried to invent its own reasons and to create exceptions where there are none. The House is the only entity that can grant exceptions, yet for months now the government has refused to turn over the documents. I wonder why. We know it is because the government has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar once again; Liberal Party insiders have rewarded themselves with taxpayer money.
The Auditor General found that the government had turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. A recording of a senior civil servant slammed the outright incompetence of the government, which gave 390 million dollars' worth of contracts inappropriately.
This is not made up by a member of the House or a media source; The Auditor General found that SDTC gave $58 million to 10 ineligible projects that, on occasions, could not demonstrate an environmental benefit or development of green technology. In other words, $58 million went to 10 contracts that had nothing to do with SDTC and did not fulfill its mandates.
Board members held a conflict of interest in $334 million over 186 cases. The Auditor General did not look at the whole program; she just took a sampling of it and found 186 cases in which the government had allowed board members who held a conflict of interest to get a total of $334 million, of which $58 million went to projects without ensuring that contribution agreement terms were met. The best part is that some of the projects were both ineligible and conflicted, so they had the double whammy.
The Auditor General made it clear that the blame for the scandal falls very clearly on the Prime Minister and his Minister of Industry, who did not sufficiently monitor the contracts given to Liberal insiders.
The matter was brought up as soon as the House returned from the summer recess, because the government had failed during the summer recess to meet the requirements of the House. They were not suggestions, a good idea, a guideline or a time frame. The exact times, the deadlines, were outright ignored in some cases.
This is a refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the House when it comes to demanding the production of papers. Sometimes the Liberals just said no. Other times, in their infinite wisdom, they said that we cannot see some of the information, and they blacked it all out so the relevant information was not not included. At still other times they ignored the deadlines or were late, and those sorts of things.
In other words, they showed contempt for the House and continue to show contempt for the House. We could go on to other matters today if the government released the documents, as ordered by the House. This is not a suggestion. This is not just from the official opposition. The majority of the members of the House of Commons, 174 members, have demanded this, as is our right as members of Parliament. It is very clearly laid out that we have individual privileges and rights as members, but the House has collective rights as well, and a key one is demanding the production of papers. The government might not like it. It might like to retroactively say that the motion was not in order, but it does not get to make that decision. The House alone decides. The House has decided, and the government continues to ignore the House.
We are now approaching December. We have the threat of a 25% tariff on our doorstep. We have plummeting standards of living for Canadians vis-à-vis our American neighbours. Food prices are up 35%, gas prices are up 50%, rent is up 33% and mortgage payments are up 73% after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government. There is a crisis out there, but the government refuses to comply with the demands of the Speaker, refuses to comply with the demands of the House and continues to hold up the House's business. It refuses to acknowledge, accept and comply with the House order. Until the Liberals does that, we will continue to debate this motion. We will continue to discuss and demand that the rights and privileges of the House are respected. The Prime Minister does not get to simply overrule the rights, privileges and will of the elected House of Commons.
It comes back to this: Who do we serve? We serve the people who sent us here. I serve the people of Chilliwack—Hope. I do not serve the member for Carleton, and members of Parliament opposite should not serve the Prime Minister. They should serve their constituents. They should remember that unless they sit in the first two rows, their job is to hold the government accountable, just as it is our job.
Many of the members who get up every day to defend this nonsense are not even members of the government; they are members of the caucus that holds government. They have a duty to hold the government to account, and they fail in that duty every day they defend a Prime Minister overruling the rights, privileges and lawful motions of the House of Commons.
This is not the first time they have done it. When the Winnipeg lab scandal came to the fore just before the last election, the government took the House of Commons and the the predecessor to the Speaker to court. The Liberals refused to accept a motion. They refused to accept a Speaker's ruling, and they basically told the Speaker they would see him in court. They would not obey the House order and would not accept the vote of members of Parliament, who are sent here to represent their constituents.
That is how this is supposed to work. We represent our constituencies. We represent our constituents. There is no higher power in the land than the House of Commons, not the Prime Minister, not the PCO, not the bureaucracy. They do not get to decide when the House has already made a decision.
For months, the government has refused to accept a lawful motion of the House. That should be concerning to all members and all Canadians, because while in this case the Liberals might not like what the motion says, might quibble with what will happen with the documents and might try to hide behind the fig leaf of technicality, what they do when they undermine the supremacy of the House, the rights and privileges of the House, is they give license to a future prime minister to do it again.
If the Liberals say they will not accept the rights and privileges of the House of Commons and the motions it passes, a future prime minister will simply give the back of his hand to the House and decide that he or she alone knows better. We do not have that kind of system. The Prime Minister is supposed to be the servant of the House, not its master, and for too long the Prime Minister has believed that he is above members of Parliament on both his side and this side. We have seen the evidence of that, with dozens of his own members wishing he would take a walk in the snow. It snowed a bit today, so hope springs eternal, but we know what the Prime Minister thinks of his own caucus. Certainly, we know what he thinks of the motion that has been passed.
What are the Liberals protecting? Why have they gone to such lengths that for three months they have held up the work of the House by refusing to obey an order of the House? It must be pretty bad. Those documents must be worse than the $58 million going to 10 projects for Liberal insiders and the $334 million of questionable projects going to board of director members with conflicts of interest.
We know that the Minister of Environment has been implicated in this as well, having lobbied for a project while he was outside of cabinet and having received benefits while he was in cabinet. That is the record of the government. The Liberals are hiding the documents after saying that they would have the most open and transparent government in history. The only thing open is the chequebooks for Liberal insiders.
It is like an open bar if someone is a Liberal insider. They get access to government contracts. One member, one of whose names I could say because he has another name, has resigned from cabinet finally after fighting it. It is the member for Edmonton Centre. We saw what he was willing to do to get his hands on government money from his Liberal friends.
We are calling once again on the government to respect Parliament, to respect the vote that was held in Parliament in June, to respect the ruling of the Speaker that was issued in September and to respect the months of debate that have been happening in the House. It is clear that we will not go quietly into the night. We will not let this be shuffled off to some committee where the government can get its allies in the other parties to quietly bury it, as happens every day in the House when Conservatives bring forward motions. Behind closed doors at committee, they are quietly shuffled off and voted down or watered down.
This has to be decided here, because the vote happened here and the Speaker's ruling happened here. This can all go away if the government simply listens to the will of Parliament and respects its rights and privileges. We need to get back to the work that we have been called here to do. We believe that the government is imperiling our economy. We need to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the deficit, fix the budget and stop the crime. Those are our priorities, but our number one priority is ensuring that the House is respected, that the Speaker is respected, that Parliament is respected and that the government does the right thing and the lawful thing. It must turn over the documents today so we can get back to doing the people's business.