Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise again in the House. It has been over a month that the House of Commons has been paralyzed. The Liberals are not able to advance a single piece of legislation in the House; quite frankly, I am not complaining about that part, after the last nine years and a lot of things they have done. The number one question that remains in my mind as I begin my comments today is this: What are they hiding? What damning information about their unethical conduct, when it comes to the $400-million green slush fund, is so bad they are willing to shut down the regular business of Parliament to avoid the RCMP having all of the documents, unredacted, so it can complete a criminal investigation into the Liberal government's green slush fund?
I am speaking again and we are refusing to back down to the Liberals' demand that we push this over to a parliamentary committee to study and think about it, not to hand the documents over but to debate whether they have to or not. It makes one wonder why they are willing to give up a month of time for their own agenda to hide and cover up from the RCMP getting full access to vet all the documents. It is important to remind Canadians, as Conservatives have been doing, of the magnitude and severity of the unethical and inappropriate behaviour and use of taxpayers' money that the Liberal-appointed insiders gave themselves with this fund.
The Auditor General, whose office is independent of the work we do in the House of Commons, came out with a stunning report. This was the first report, because there was a second, more in-depth report, that was required for Canadians to understand just how corrupt this program was. The report found that $59 million of this program was awarded to projects and companies that were ineligible to receive it. The worst part of all of this was the 186 cases where conflicts of interest existed. What do we mean by that? That comes to $330 million in funds awarded in cases where directors, appointed by the Liberals to this green slush fund board, who were approving their own projects, were not recusing themselves and were giving to themselves or to other directors' projects, 186 times.
Here is the thing: This is a problem of the current Liberal government, which has been propped up by the NDP for several years since we have known about this behaviour and corruption. This is a Liberal-induced problem.
SDTC was a federal program created back in 2001, when Jean Chrétien was prime minister. The program operated under a Liberal government and under nine years of a Conservative government, during which time the Auditor General found no such shoddy business and corruption. It was only in 2017, when the current Liberal government started changing the chair and appointing its own members to the board, that these serious problems and the misuse of taxpayer money started.
There are so many parts I find asinine and insane when it comes to this issue and scandal. To be clear, the Liberals brush this off and say we should take it to a committee and think about it there. They are not at all serious about tackling this problem.
I want to go back to my time in municipal politics. I had the honour of serving in the local level of government for 12 years in the Township of North Dundas: four years as a councillor and eight years as mayor for the township and a member of SDG Counties council, where I had the honour of serving for two years, two terms, as the warden of SDG.
In the oath we take at the municipal level, we commit to declaring any pecuniary interests, which basically means conflicts of interest. For municipal politicians, staff and everyone, this was the number one thing in any orientation. At the beginning of every term when we were elected to office, at conferences, at best practices seminars and at meetings with our legal counsel and others, we were constantly reminded of the need to declare a conflict of interest.
We have an Ethics Commissioner here in Ottawa who goes through members and individuals appointed to boards; this is basic Board Governance 101. We cannot, or should not, sit on a board that advances our financial interests directly, our pecuniary interest. All these terms are explained right at the outset. For the individuals and the Liberal insiders, this is not their first day on the job. It may have been on the board, but they knew what they were doing the day they got in here.
With this board, they go back and forth on approving, 186 times, projects that were a conflict of interest. Again, these are where the voting members of the green slush fund are directors of the businesses and companies applying for money. This was not just one or two times where, oops, sorry, they forgot, they had a busy meeting that day and forgot to recuse themselves. It happened 186 times.
I went through the Auditor General's report. There is just the insanity of all of this; they knew better. This was not a case of, whoops, they did not take the training. Anybody who is on a board in governance, any of the names that are mentioned, where they are directors of these private companies, know the rules. It is ingrained in somebody. They knew the rules; they did not care. They got themselves in an incestuous circle of Liberal insiders, and they did it 186 times, for 330 million dollars' worth of projects approved where this was there.
We can go through the Auditor General's report; it lists the cases in exhibit 6.4. Exhibit 6.4 goes through the 90 cases of conflict of interest. In this case, and as part of it here, it is worth $76 million.
March 29, 2021, was a pretty busy day at that board. It was not just one conflict of interest here or there. The chair, Annette Verschuren, voted to approve $100,000 with a conflict of interest on that meeting date. There is another one on the same day, where she was on another company and gave it $100,000. In the same meeting, NPower, another company, got seed money of $100,000.
On March 10, 2022, a board member on the green slush fund, who also had a company in a conflict of interest, voted to give his company $5 million of taxpayers' money. There are 90 examples that go through the magnitude of the conflicts of interest and the corruption. I make the argument here that Canadians are rightly frustrated. This is not accidental. This is not some sort of circumstance where, whoops, they did not know the rules. They knew exactly what they were doing.
I am drawing my opinion here in the chamber. What has the House said? A majority of members said, earlier this year, through a motion, that the RCMP must have all the documents, unredacted. At the end of the day, they do not get into a case where, based on the information we have and were given, we determined X. The majority of the House said to make sure, to not give an implication or an opinion and to give it the documents for it to do its full criminal investigation, something it confirmed is under way.
Why is this important? For many reasons, it is just a simple matter of fact: All the information must be given for a full investigation; no stone must be left unturned.
Let us go back and remember the Liberal government and its record from just a couple of years ago. On the SNC-Lavalin scandal the Prime Minister found himself in, it was the RCMP saying that, based on the information it had, it would not proceed to lay charges. It is interesting.
They were not given all the information. Cabinet confidants and the Prime Minister blocked certain information from going to the RCMP for a full investigation. We can talk about a conflict of interest there. Parliament has the right to pass the motion, to have it enforced and to have the government comply with it. Parliament reigns supreme and is paramount, and the Speaker's ruling made exactly that clear.
Liberals have tried to change their excuse over the course of the last month about five times, throwing whatever they can at the wall and hoping an argument sticks. Nothing has yet. Canadians want the RCMP to have the full information and to do a full criminal investigation. We do not want another conclusion such as that we had only a couple of years ago under the Prime Minister, when the RCMP did not have the information it needed.
Another part that is important here is actually talking about that past pattern of behaviour. We talk about ethics violations, bad behaviour, not following the rules and only admitting fault after they are caught and found guilty of those ethics violations. There have been several in the past nine years under the government. The Minister of Public Safety was found in violation of ethics laws. A couple of years ago, the Minister of International Trade was as well. Just last week, the Liberal-appointed CBC president was found guilty of breaking ethics laws and fined.
We can believe it or not and say it is not so, but who is the one leading the pack? The Prime Minister himself was found guilty of breaking ethics laws twice. There is a pattern of behaviour that Canadians are getting tired of. When the government came in, back in 2015, it was “open by default” and would have “sunny ways”. It was going to change the way things were done in Ottawa. It changed them, all right, and not for the better.
Liberals are so desperate to avoid accountability and transparency, to avoid complying with what the majority of the House of Commons has said, which to give up all the documents for a full criminal investigation, where no stone is left unturned. They are now so closed by default that they are closing their own business for the last month to avoid all of this. Again, we talk about a pattern of behaviour. A key thing for a government is maintaining trust with Canadians.
I have spoken about the SNC-Lavalin scandal. The WE Charity scandal was another massive ethical challenge and corruption issue, with Liberals working with Liberal insiders to benefit them. At the time, they said it was all about youth during the pandemic. However, it was all about benefiting their friends, and they were caught for that. They talked about “open by default” but then did not follow through.
For the Winnipeg lab documents, there was a Speaker's ruling as well: Over years and years, the government refused to provide full access to all documents so that Canadians can see exactly what the government knew when it knew it and, in the case of what we know, what it did not do to protect our national security and the Canadian people. Again, this broke trust in a major way.
Now, Liberals are advancing and trying to keep the NDP-Liberal coalition alive. We found this out last week, when it was revealed that the NDP was given special access to the Prime Minister's Office and Privy Council Office, in proposing a bill to change Canada's elections laws. The bill is not about adding advance poll dates. It is not about closing loopholes and foreign interference; gaps still exist. It is about moving back the election date by just a week. It so just happens that many NDP and Liberal MPs, who will lose their pension by a day, will have their pension guaranteed. They know they are going to be defeated in the next election.
It is on record. The NDP said that the legislation was part of its deal to keep the coalition intact. It was not to keep it intact because Canadians want it to do that. It was the opposite. It is desperate to avoid Canadians having their say in a carbon tax election.
Now we know why the deal was made. It was not for advance polls, not for any of the other technical measures, but to protect the pensions of the soon-to-be defeated.