Mr. Speaker, we are two months into the longest privilege debate in House of Commons history and Canadian history. It has been two months of Liberals running from accountability after the Speaker's ruling, in agreement with the opposition parties, that the government must produce the documents. Of course, it is a constitutional power that we have in the House: The House can compel the order of documents, persons or papers. This was ruled, but the Liberals have been working very hard for two months to avoid their real obligation to the House. They are working to circumvent their constitutional obligation after a ruling in the House to bring forward documents on a $400-million green slush fund.
Of course, we know that it was 400 million taxpayer dollars that Liberal-appointed board members used to enrich themselves. In fact, there were 186 conflicts of interest over a number of years by those Liberal-appointed board members. This was happening every other day at this board; members would vote on how this money would be spent for their own financial benefit. The Liberals are withholding all the documents from this. They have provided some that have been redacted, but they have not released all of them. They have not provided them unredacted. We are saying that they need to provide them to the police.
This is such a significant scandal: $400 million. Far less has brought down Liberal governments before for their scandals and corruption, but $400 million is not nothing. The last time I spoke in the House, I talked about how 400 million taxpayer dollars, which individuals voted to enrich themselves with, represents about 22,000 Canadian families working an entire year and paying federal income tax. They did this just to afford $400 million going to Liberal insiders.
We have ordered the documents. The Liberals refuse to give them. For two months, the House has largely been at a standstill. Again, it is the longest privilege debate in Canadian history, so that just raises the question of what they are hiding in there. It must be really bad for them to forgo anything else, and I will talk about some of the things that the NDP has allowed the government to get away with.
For two whole months, no government bills have been passed or really debated. This is a minority parliament; we could be in an election at any time. Time is of the essence if the Liberal government wants to accomplish anything in its dying days. However, for two months of that waning time, the government has been running from this accountability. It is very obvious. It is very clear that there is something serious in those documents, as we suspect. I think the Liberal corruption in this likely runs far, far deeper. Why else would they allow two months of none of their initiatives going forward? There is no other logical explanation for this.
I think what we are looking at is quite serious. Of course, we have seen a lot of this kind of behaviour over the last number of years: The Liberals prorogued Parliament to avoid scandals and called an election to avoid production of the Winnipeg lab documents. Members will remember that. In the middle of a pandemic, the Liberals called the most divisive election in recent memory, in which the Liberal Prime Minister pitted vaccinated Canadian against unvaccinated Canadian. They called that election to avoid releasing the Winnipeg lab documents, which involved two scientists connected to the People's Liberation Army in China.
In fact, for the first time in a century, an individual was brought to the bar to get the documents. However, the government fought hard to make sure they did not come to light. The Liberals called an election to avoid what was in them.
Of course the prorogation was in the midst of the WE Charity scandal, when they were looking to provide a billion dollars to what really amounted to quite a slimy organization: the WE Charity. It was also a sycophant for the Liberal Prime Minister's family. The government was promoting them and paying them to be in various speaking engagements and podcasts. It was really something.
We have seen this before: proroguing to avoid accountability and calling an election to avoid production of documents. Maybe one of those two things is coming. How far will the Liberals go to avoid having the RCMP look at these documents? Again, these are just the ones that we know about, which is not to say there are not many more conflicts of interest. However, after looking over just a portion of the billion-dollar green slush fund, the Auditor General was able to find conflicts 186 times. Every other day, Liberal-appointed board members were voting for taxpayer dollars to further enrich themselves. It is actually unbelievable how many people in this country had to work all year away from their families and had to pay federal income tax for $400 million to be used to enrich Liberal insiders in conflicts of interest. It is quite shocking, and I just think that spending two whole months avoiding this, sacrificing their own agenda in the Liberals' waning days of government, means it must be really bad. There is no other explanation.
If we look at the Liberals' green initiatives over nine years, it is quite something. If we really peel back the layers, we find that they claim to have spent $100 billion on climate change, but there are no meaningful results whatsoever. It is a shocking number. In fact, a news article on the environment commissioner's 2023 fall report said, “The report painted a grim picture of emission reductions in Canada over the past 20 years, saying that the only significant drops in emissions came during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, which had little to do with emissions reduction policy.” Therefore, in the midst of the pandemic, when we were all forced to stay home for weeks, not drive, not travel, not do anything, not really leave our houses or see anybody, was when emissions dropped. There was no other meaningful emissions drop in this country since the Liberals have been in office. In fact, the environment commissioner said, “Canada is the only G7 country that has not achieved any emissions reductions since 1990”. Wow, we have spend $100 billion and had no results.
The Office of the Auditor General reported that “Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the Paris Agreement was signed, making it the worst performing of all G7 nations since the 2015 Conference of the Parties in Paris, France.” That was in 2021. Therefore, we are seeing all this money just flying out the door.
In fact, the Liberals brought forward something called the net-zero accelerator fund, but what I found interesting about this is that they proposed $8 billion, and billions are just nothing to Liberals. It does not matter how long and how hard Canadians had to work to produce all those federal income taxes; whatever, they are going to spend billions as though it were chump change in the bottom of their pockets. Therefore, there was $8 billion put towards this net-zero accelerator fund, and what is really interesting about this is that they found there was no accountability for the money to reduce emissions. They are just throwing billions of dollars to various companies with no measurables. There is nothing to show the public, such as that the government gave companies money, they committed to help lower emissions in one regard and the government is holding them accountable to that commitment for giving their companies billions of dollars from the taxpayer.
The same lack of accountability is seen across government departments. In fact, the Liberal government makes all of these big financial announcements, and it does not matter that we have doubled the national debt from half a trillion to well over a trillion dollars in nine years. The debt of almost 150 years of prime ministers combined was done in less than nine years by the Liberal government. The Liberals talk about all these billions, yet there do not seem to be any measurables. It is like a ribbon cutting in announcing all these billions, and then that is all they have to do. It is not really about what the actual impact of those dollars is. It is as if they think success is measured by how much money they spend, not by the outcome it produces. That is what we are seeing with a lot of this so-called green spending.
In some cases, the government did not know whether the accelerator fund would lead to any emissions reduction. In fact, at the environment committee, the environment commissioner gave the following testimony: “We also found that the department did not always know to what extent GHG emissions had been reduced by those companies that took part in the [net-zero accelerator] initiative, or whether the funding provided would lead to reduced emissions.” Again, how could the Liberals disregard the hard work it took for Canadians to provide that money to the federal government and just throw it out the window with no follow-through, over and over again?
It is not just on the greenhouse gas emissions that we are not seeing any meaningful action, despite nearly $100 billion spent, according to the Liberals; it is also in all different departments. In fact, we can look at the economics of this country, and all the billions. Again, the Liberals measure success by how much money they are spending and not on the outcome. If we look at the outcomes, what have we seen? We have one in five children in Canada living in poverty. The Salvation Army reported that one in four parents is cutting back on their own food intake because they cannot afford enough for all of their family. They are eating less so that their children can eat. This is supposed to be a G7 country, one of the wealthiest countries on earth. We are the second-largest geography on earth. We are blessed with natural resources that almost every other country would envy. We have an educated, hard-working, kind population, yet we have one in four parents cutting back on their own food intake, one in five children living in poverty and two million people visiting a food bank every month. Actual breadlines have returned after nine years of the Liberal government.
It is just unbelievable what we are seeing, yet the government has spent so much money, with the promise at every single announcement that it was going to make the difference. It has just made things worse. What has the government spent on housing? Was it $80 billion? Housing prices and rental prices have doubled in the nine years that the Liberals have been in power, despite $80 billion spent on housing. All that taxpayer hard work was spent on housing, only for housing to double in cost. Actually, rent has more than doubled now.
What is it, two-thirds, of millennials who will never be able to afford a home? The hallmark of Canadian freedom and prosperity was the promise that somebody could work hard, get married, have a family, buy a house and retire in dignity, things that were true for generations because of the hard work of the earlier generations in this country, built on their blood, sweat and tears. It was the promise of Canada to provide prosperity. Now, two-thirds of our young people, despite the fact that they are the most educated generation in history and are hard-working, with big dreams, will never be able to afford a piece of property.
Canada's geography is the second-largest on earth. We have trees that abound. We have all the materials we need and all the space required to build homes, and there has been $80 billion of so-called investment from the Liberals, yet housing prices have doubled. The dream of home ownership has evaporated for two-thirds of my generation after nine years of the Liberal government.
All this says nothing of the crime and the dysfunction in our criminal justice system. There has been a 50% increase in violent crime, a 116% increase in gun crime and a 75% increase in sexual assault, of which we know the vast majority affects women. At every opportunity, the government pats itself on the back for its feminist policy, yet in nine years there has been a 75% increase in sexual assaults in this country and a 120% increase in sexual violations against children in this country. The government has brought forward subsequent pieces of justice legislation that have had a serious influence and have resulted in a lot of the crime.
We have heard from police associations across the country and from premiers of every political stripe, who are saying that bail reform is needed in this country. That is what we hear time and time again, yet nothing happens. The government brought forward a measly seven-page bill that received royal assent over year ago now. It obviously had zero effect.
People are still being shot and killed by people who are out on bail and who have been out on bail, probation and parole their whole life. Somehow they were just let out on bail again with a promise that they would obey the rules for the first time in their life, and yet they have proven to be a danger to society over and over again. It is madness.
People deserve to feel safe in this country. They deserve to ride public transit without the threat of being stabbed by someone who is out on bail. They deserve to have their car in their own driveway and know that it is going to be there in the morning. It used to be like that in Canada. There used to be a time when we were not concerned about things like this. It just seems to be getting worse.
Thousands of homeless encampments have popped up all across the country, which is of course a clear indicator of the poverty and the economic vandalism that are a result of bad government decisions from the Liberals for nine years. There is a lot of dysfunction, and the crime is a big deal.
In the last 13 months, there has been protest after protest, certainly as a result of the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 in Israel, when hundreds of people were taken hostage; well over a thousand people were brutally and barbarically murdered; women were viciously and violently raped, tortured and killed; children were burned alive and shot; and elderly people were abused, beaten up and killed.
I remember seeing some of the videos. I will never in my life get the images out of my head of the barbaric nature of the attack. I have seen what has happened in our streets subsequently and I have heard the words that have been spoken about our Jewish community. There has been mayhem and a targeting of Jewish businesses.
It has escalated to such a point now that there were riots in Montreal the other day, where someone was caught on camera yelling that “the final solution” for the Jewish people “is coming”. This was in Canada in 2024. That is what is happening in this country. That is what has been permitted to transpire over the last number of years.
Jewish Canadians do not feel safe in their own country, in Canada, in 2024, they do not feel safe to identify themselves. They do not feel safe in their businesses. There have been protests at their seniors care homes. Their synagogues have been lit on fire and vandalized. Their children's schools have been shot up.
Jewish members of Parliament have to be under around-the-clock security. They are in fear of their lives just for standing up for Jewish Canadians and their principles on Israel. Threats to their lives have happened. What has there been from Parliament? There has not been any action on it. There have not been any firm stances taken by the Liberal government in the 13 months since the attack.
The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security of Canada is tasked with dealing with public safety and national security issues. Jewish Canadians, representing less than 1% of the population, are the most-targeted population in this country, particularly in the last 13 months, and nothing has transpired at the public safety and national security committee.
Liberals have stopped motions or tried to water them down every single step of the way. We can watch the footage. Conservatives have repeatedly tried to bring the issue forward at the public safety committee. What has been happening to Jewish Canadians in this country as a result of what happened on October 7, 2023 is obviously an issue of national significance about public safety and national security.
If we do not think that some of the most vile elements of the protesters have been emboldened by the fact that Hamas applauded a Liberal government decision to side with them, and that it has had an impact, we are deluding ourselves. There are serious problems in this country across the board. Jewish Canadians have been worse off by far in the last 13 months, and yet the Standing Committee of Public Safety and National Security of Canada refuses to have a concrete look at this issue specifically.
I have not even mentioned the multiple thwarted terrorist plots against the Jewish community. There have been two, maybe three, just in the past year, targeting one community just for being Jewish. In December 2023, there was a rally on Parliament Hill in support of releasing the hostages. The Leader of the Opposition was there and the deputy leader of the opposition, who is Jewish, was there. A number of other members were there; in fact two Liberal members of Parliament were there.
Apparently unbeknownst to attendees, since no one found out about it publicly until 10 months after the fact, there were two terrorist-affiliated young people, teenagers, who had been deeply involved in plotting a bomb attack on the rally on Parliament Hill. A bomb attack was planned on the heart of our democracy, targeting Jewish Canadians for being Jewish, right here on Parliament Hill.
Does the public safety and national security committee of Canada really not think that is something we should be looking into? How is it acceptable that the committee tasked with the issue, out of all committees, does not think it is a priority to focus specifically on the threat of anti-Semitism, the terrorist plots and extreme violence that have been escalating toward the Jewish people? The public safety and national security committee is not doing its duty.
Conservatives will continue to push, because we believe that what has been happening is completely and wholly unacceptable. We feel that the government has not taken it seriously and has not sent a very clear message to the vile people who are calling for “the final solution” for the Jewish people. Where is the robust response? Where is the solidarity with Jewish Canadians and their families in Israel, who obviously have the right to defend themselves in the face of the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust?
I recently spoke to CJPAC about the issues. Two women came to me afterward, and they were quite emotional. Again, it is 13 months after the attack happened. They were grown professional women, but I could tell they were having a tough time. They told me that since that day, they feel so alone. Jewish Canadians in Canada feel alone, as if the government had abandoned them, turned its back on their families in Israel, turned its back on their needs and on the fact that there are terrorist-affiliated people in this country trying to bomb them to smithereens and massacre them.
I am vice-chair of the public safety committee, and the Liberals will not allow us to focus on the issue. What kind of signal does that send to people who want to do harm to Jewish Canadians? Shame on the Liberals at committee for doing that. We should be studying the issue and we should be studying it now. Conservatives are going to continue to stand up for Jewish Canadians at the committee, and we are not going to stop.
