Debates of Nov. 5th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague and I have both been municipal mayors in the past, and the documents and transparency are critical in municipal government. It is very open and transparent.

In this particular case, and the member may have been referring to it, we just asked for the documents to be produced so that we can move them to the next stage. People often say that we should take it to committee. However, we must take it to committee with the full documents, because if it goes to committee without the full documents, it will not work.

Does my hon. colleague have an opinion about why the full documents need to go to committee?

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague, a former mayor himself, for the question. The situation here is that we were in week three or four, whatever it was, and the Liberals' line of argument was that we should send this to committee. Of course they want to send it to committee. Canadians should know that this is all part of their grand scheme to keep things covered up. Committee is a great place to go to bury things and try to keep things covered.

The fact of the matter is that we are not interested in playing the Liberal cover-up game. We are interested in full disclosure, full sunlight, openness and transparency by default, which is what they promised and have never delivered.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the motion we are debating is to send this to committee. The member is saying that the Liberal members suddenly decided they wanted to send this to committee. I do not even know if the member knows where he is right now. What is he even talking about?

More importantly, I want to go back to the previous exchange that I had with him. The member said all the Conservatives want to do is produce the documents, and they do not care what the RCMP does with them. He makes it sound all innocent. If he listened to what I actually said, the RCMP commissioner said the RCMP cannot do anything with information that is obtained in this fashion, because it is unprecedented. This is not a manner in which it can collect, gather and use evidence.

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that display is precisely what Canadians are sick and tired of after nine years of a smug Liberal government that is not open and transparent by default. In fact, the Liberals' constant message is that they know best. They will tell us what we should think and do. They say to just ignore the Conservatives and the will of this place; the Liberals know best. That is the real message. I hope Canadians see that. It is smug, arrogant and typically Liberal. Their time is up. We need solutions in this country, and here we are stuck trying to clean up their mess. They should just hand over the documents, and then we can move on.

[Fraser Tolmie, Conservative, Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I know Halloween is over, but it does seem to be a night of mayors, and for the Liberal Party, it seems to be a nightmare.

While my colleague was sharing his speech, it was interesting. It brought me back to a time when we talked about accountability in the council chambers and how everything was transparent; people could see what was going on. We have not seen that with the government, and we have seen corruption to the core. It starts at the top.

Could the member give perspective on the difference between seeing a council and seeing the Liberal government in operation? Why are we dealing with this at a time such as this?

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan was a legendary mayor in his own right, and he is absolutely right. There is example after example. Unfortunately, I only had 20 minutes to speak, so I could not give every example of Liberal corruption over the last nine years, but it goes on and on and on. The cover-ups are piling on top of each other, over and over again, because the government is about staying in power and protecting itself. It does not care what the people say in the House. This place represents the people. The people have spoken and it does not care.

It is arrogance. It is corruption. The Liberals will do anything they can to protect themselves and stay in power.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening intently to what the member has said. When it comes to the Conservative motion and these documents, the Conservatives scream out that they want to see everything. However, when it comes to foreign interference, when it comes to getting a security clearance and when Canadian lives are at stake and at risk because of foreign actors, the leader of the Conservative opposition says that he does not want to hear or see anything. He will not get a security clearance. He will not see what the risks are to his own caucus and to Canadians.

Does the member not see the screaming hypocrisy of that position?

[Scott Aitchison, Conservative, Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will tell members about screaming hypocrisy. It is in the fact that the Liberals could release the names. The leader of the official opposition has said to the Prime Minister very clearly to show us the names. He can release the names; he can go ahead and do it. If there is something we need to hear, they can tell us, but they will not do that because that is not a good political game.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is truly a privilege to stand here on behalf of the wonderful people of Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

When we talk about privilege, we must remember that our work here representing our constituents is an honour, not an entitlement. Privilege is something that we as parliamentarians have inherited through the centuries to ensure that we can speak and exercise our roles as grantors of supply and legislators. It is something entrusted to us, and we must ensure that when it comes time for a new generation of parliamentarians, it is in the same condition or better than when we received it. Canadians sent us here with the expectation that we will carry out these duties with respect and integrity.

Throughout my public service as a city councillor and now as a member of Parliament, I have consistently strived to maintain what I call the public trust. That is to say, in our conduct within our public institutions, we act as trustees of sorts. We may have legitimate disagreements about how best to pursue the public interest through reason, reflection, discussion and debates, but the heart of any decision must be centred on protecting the collective trust of the people we serve. People in positions of leadership make a point of carrying out duties that will maintain or enhance the trust in our system as much as possible. Unfortunately, what we have seen with Sustainable Development Technology Canada and its green slush fund falls far short of that standard.

Ultimately, it comes down to what kind of country we wish to see and believe in. It could be a country where hard work and sacrifice earn a powerful paycheque, where a citizen can afford nutritious food, gas and a home in a safe neighbourhood, and where they can raise a family, perhaps build a business or retire with dignity. However, it could be a country where hard work and sacrifice are viewed as something for lesser mortals, where family and high-corporate or political connections assure success rather than a better idea, a mousetrap or a hustle, where an economy of gatekeepers is made for and managed by the gatekeeping class and those seeking to join it, and where merit and hard work are undervalued in light of who someone knows and what they can do with their position of authority.

The latter description of country is corrosive, and it harms the previous version. It is not the kind of Canada I want to see for my children. However, here is where these two conflicting visions have collided.

Today, we have a Canada where over two million hard-working working-class people and those with lower incomes are lining up at food banks to feed themselves, while a rogue Crown corporation, appointed by the NDP-Liberal government, puts itself first in line for its own interests, not for the Canadians who are suffering the worst of our own made-in-Canada, GDP-per-head recession. In the past eight out of nine quarters, Canadians have seen their purchasing power eroded. We are seeing the NDP-Liberal government, which brags that it is the most activist government ever, leave people to watch their dollar erode and our country's productivity erode. Those so-called progressives should be mindful of what U.S. economist Paul Krugman warned: “productivity isn't everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything.” That remark, after eight back-to-back quarters of a declining GDP per head, should act as a cold shower for all members of this place.

We have young people who are working multiple jobs only to find themselves locked out of the dream of home ownership, seniors who would prefer to volunteer at food banks, not line up at them, and families that use metal detectors to look for disposable needles and drug paraphernalia on their children's soccer field. They scratch their heads asking, “What has happened in this country?”

The member of Parliament for Carleton has said that he wants to restore the promise of Canada. His mission is to bring back the country we knew and still love. He wants to put hard work and merit as a first principle for getting ahead in this country. However, the member of Papineau, who is the Prime Minister, has essentially enabled the well-connected to get ahead, despite all of his talk about inclusiveness, at the expense of everyone else.

We have been debating this privilege motion for months. If we only listened to Liberal ministers or their parliamentary secretaries, those at home might think there is nothing to worry about. However, many Canadians are asking why this debate continues.

Let us review what we know. Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, was founded in 2001 to provide taxpayer-funded support to green technology companies that were looking to be commercialized.

The foundation has received $1 billion of taxpayer money since this Liberal government was elected. Investigations by parliamentary committees found that, over a five-year period reviewed by the Auditor General, 82% of the funding transactions approved by the board of directors involved conflicts of interest.

Let me say that again: 82% of the funding transactions approved by the board of directors involved conflicts of interest. According to the Auditor General, that is $330 million of taxpayer money that was given to companies whose board members were in a conflict of interest when they voted to allocate the funds.

These figures can be alarming. Many Canadians get mad when they learn how much money was involved here. It gets worse. The Auditor General also found that the board of directors approved $59 million in additional projects that were outside the foundation's mandate, breaking the SDTC contribution agreements and Canada's conflict of interest laws.

Let us not forget that the Auditor General wrote:

We found that the foundation awarded funding to 10 ineligible projects of 58 we examined. These 10 projects were awarded $59 million even though they did not meet key requirements set out in the contribution agreements between the government and the foundation.

Let us stop for a moment. In my riding, I have had constituents who, through no fault of their own, were overpaid CERB. In those situations, CRA clawed back every single dollar of overpayment. I have also had citizens who were deemed ineligible for CERB funding after the fact, and they found every single dollar clawed back. What will happen to these ineligible projects at SDTC? Will these people have that money clawed back as well, or is it different when it comes to Liberal insiders pocketing tax dollars they are not eligible for? Do members of the Liberal government think that is right? It would be one set of rules for someone who received CERB payments they were not eligible for and a different set of rules for ineligible insiders cashing in on SDTC funding they were not eligible for.

How do these things happen? How is it that no one raised a red flag? Why is no one in the Liberal government saying we need to claw funds back? Why is it that fairness for everyone does not apply to Liberal insiders?

Let us be clear. The law clearly states that a Governor in Council appointee chosen by the government to oversee taxpayer funds should not personally benefit from their committee role, nor should their family, yet somehow, over five years, the board approved 405 transactions, and the Auditor General, after examining 226, discovered that 186 of them were conflicted, an astonishing 82% totalling $330 million. This begs the question: If the Auditor General were to analyze all 400 transactions, how many more would show similar conflicts? Those 400 transactions represent $832 million in taxpayer money. It appears that appointees selected by the Prime Minister and his cabinet position themselves to profit from this privilege. That is a staggering figure. Some might even call it outrageous.

The Auditor General identified nine directors as the people responsible for these conflicts of interest. That is why the CFO of the industry department told the whistle-blower that this issue was far bigger than the Chrétien government's $42‑million sponsorship scandal. What we are uncovering is just the tip of the iceberg.

I congratulate my colleagues on the committee for their diligent work in shedding light on these matters. Each layer they remove leads to requests for more documents that reveal more disturbing details. The government has consistently obstructed our efforts to obtain these documents, and we know why. Even a preliminary investigation by the Auditor General shows that $390 million was paid out to Liberal insiders.

The Liberals and the Prime Minister are resisting the production order for documents to be submitted to the RCMP. The Prime Minister's office defied the House's order and instructed departments to redact sensitive information, resulting in documents being heavily blacked out or not given at all. What are they hiding? We all know what the Liberals are hiding. I suspect they are hiding further misconduct and misuse of taxpayer funds.

The limited information we have seen, 226 out of 400 transactions, indicates this is just the beginning, amounting to $390 million. Strangely, this does not seem to faze the NDP-Liberal government. It is almost as if the program was deliberately designed to work this way, Liberals benefiting Liberal appointees. This is reminiscent of past scandals, like SNC-Lavalin, where the Prime Minister attempted to exert pressure on then-member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville Jody Wilson-Raybould to protect his wealthy associates. When she refused to comply, our great feminist Prime Minister dismissed her. Similarly, when Dr. Jane Philpott spoke out against this pathetic and shameful treatment, she was also ousted.

This is the track record of our so-called feminist Prime Minister. This is the same Prime Minister who accepted a lavish vacation from the Aga Khan and has repeatedly violated ethical standards. It should come as no surprise that we find ourselves in yet another Liberal scandal involving the protection and enrichment of Liberal insiders, entitled to their entitlements.

Let us also not forget that millions of taxpayer dollars were funnelled to a charity that employed members of the Prime Minister's own family. Did he take responsibility? No, but his friend, Mr. Morneau did. It is funny how that works. It is always someone else who takes his hits. I guess that was a learning experience for the rest of us.

I must express my disappointment at the backbenchers on that side of the House. Sure, the infamous 24 who oppose the Prime Minister's continued premiership, and note I did not refer to it as leadership, have been making the news. Surely, there must be more than 24 who feel their government's stonewalling of this House's production order is out of order. They must be receiving the same calls and emails from constituents that I am.

They should remember that while they sit on the government side, unless they are in cabinet, and it might be stretched to a parliamentary secretary, technically anyone who is not in cabinet is not part of the government. Those MPs work for the Canadians who elected them. Those seats do not belong to the Prime Minister or his prime ministerial office. They belong to the people that those MPs represent.

I encourage them to reflect on why they ran for public office. I doubt any of them imagined that they would spend their time covering for entitled Liberal insiders who have profited from ill-gotten gains. Yet, here we are, debating a motion of privilege because the Prime Minister prioritizes protecting his job and his friends over safeguarding taxpayer money.

Setting aside all the discussions about privacy protection and quotes from former law clerks, it boils down to this: SDTC's board of directors used this Liberal slush fund to get rich, and the Auditor General caught it in the act.

With the help of a whistle-blower, my colleagues discovered even more corruption. The House ordered documents to be produced so that the RCMP could determine whether a criminal investigation is justified. The Liberal government refused to produce the documents, which, according to the Speaker's ruling, constitutes a breach of our privilege. For nearly three months now, instead of working for Canadians, we have been obstructed by a government that is trying to protect a Prime Minister who has clearly been here too long.

One day, hopefully soon, Canadians will return to the polls to decide who will lead this great country. Will they choose a party and a leader who have shown a lack of respect for hard-earned tax dollars, a deficit of ethics and limited moral backbone, a government that has enriched its friends while doubling housing costs, sent two million Canadians to food banks, and allowed crime and public disorder to rise, or will they choose a common-sense government led by the hon. member for Carleton, one that will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budgets and stop the crime? I believe Canadians will make the right choice. I look forward to that day.

Before I end my comments, I just want to recite one more time the importance of this particular debate. It is about this place that we work in, the public trust that we have been asked to hold. I am not asking for Liberal, NDP, Bloc or Green members to agree with me. We can fight all those battles. We can discuss and debate the ideas about how best to serve the public interest. However, that public trust means that we have to view this place as being worthy so that when we discuss our work in Parliament, we can say a majority of the House decided to force the government to bring forward documents and the government followed that order, the same as a court order would be in any other circumstance.

This is Parliament. These are the rules that we have inherited. This is the chamber that we have all sought and given so much to be here so that so we can represent our constituents. Let us ensure that when we give the torch to the next generation of parliamentarians, they can look us in the eye and say this is as good as or better than when we found it. We cannot allow this privilege to be something we can fritter away. This is something that we need to press the government on. Government members themselves, who are not part of the cabinet, should be impressing upon their own Prime Minister and his cabinet just to open it up. Let these things come forward and then we can move to other discussions. However, right now, to allow the Liberal government just to pass on this, that it will not comply with something that has been ordered, is wrong.

We have a duty to this place to make sure that those orders mean something and to force the government to start honouring the traditions of this great country and the Westminster system that has served it so well.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think one of the concerns I have heard expressed is about the supremacy of Parliament itself, that when Parliament makes an order, with the Speaker directly making the order, it is our own business. The supremacy of Parliament is at stake here, in following what we believe should be done within our own Parliament, the House of Commons.

I would like to have my colleague's opinion on this particular point.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this gives me an opportunity to rail a little bit about the Trudeau Sr.'s use of the charter to essentially Americanize our system and to remove some of the supremacy of Parliament. I do not believe the trust that was given to those members of Parliament at that time was honoured because, essentially, the supremacy of Parliament when it comes to certain elements of law-making is no longer supreme. I accept that the Supreme Court exists and can rule on the constitutionality of said laws under the charter. I respect that.

What I will also say is that it means more so than ever that over matters under our own jurisdiction, specifically a production order on the government, that the government should not believe that it exists upon itself. In our system it is brought from us, the legislative branch, to the executive branch. They are tied at the hip for a reason. A government cannot start spending without honouring the Parliament as a whole around it.

I think that we have to show that when we do a production order, we mean business. The government should respect that, absolutely, along the lines of supremacy of Parliament. Absolutely, in our business, this is something the government should believe is sacrosanct. I encourage all members of this place to tell the government to start acting like it.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is not our first rodeo on this issue of the government refusing to hand over documents. Last year, when we had the McKinsey scandal, the operations committee passed a unanimous decision for the government to turn over all the documents, both from McKinsey but also from all the departments related to McKinsey.

McKinsey, as many people realize, is probably one of the most abhorrent consulting companies in the world, responsible for horrors in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but also the opioid crisis in North America, especially in the States. Funnily enough, McKinsey complied with the order. Every single document McKinsey had, it turned over. The government actually refused; 19 departments refused to hand over documents.

We did find one document, though, from the government to McKinsey advising it not to turn over documents that Parliament ordered. I want to ask my colleague, what does he think when a company as abhorrent as McKinsey will follow the rule of Parliament but the Liberal government does not?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question touches on a number of things. The commitment to a rule of law means it is not up to the judgment of the men and women who are in positions of authority to ultimately decide whether a case is right or it is wrong. That is decided by laws, as they are laid out.

In this place, the government serves the House of Commons, and when a majority of the House of Commons asks for a production order, it is expected to be followed. The member made the point about public trust, that essential element where people look to comply with their democratic institutions because they see it is in the part of the bigger picture, even if in some cases, as he pointed out, this particular company created all sorts of new structures to game the incentives of the market.

What I would simply say is that the government needs to start treating the office it has as a position of trust. It needs to start treating this chamber as royally as it deserves because, if we do not, we lessen this institution and we let it down. We let our constituents down. The government must comply. That is what our Constitution says. Parliament is supreme and can make orders to the government, not the other way around.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague touched on something that is really important, which is the trust that people have in their democracy. This particular case is an example of trust and how important it is that taxpayers, our constituents, have a level of trust. This is how we lose this level of trust. We are working to try to re-establish that by what we are asking. My colleague has been here a long and understands what trust is. How important is trust in this particular issue?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in a free and open society, people only make decisions if they know there is certainty. How do we know that when we get out of bed in the morning we are not going to get run over? We trust that the system is going to operate as it should. This is one of the reasons we have representative democracy, where we are not all voting on an app, like perhaps some jurisdictions do. In places like Switzerland, its law allows for direct democracy. That involves too much time and consideration, and many Canadians just want to know that when they elect a member of Parliament, that person is going to come to Ottawa and be powerful, speak up for their interests and make sure they have a government that respects the rule of law, the Constitution and Parliament and those people who are working in it.

We have to respect ourselves, and a big part of that is trust that when someone votes for someone, they are going to be good actors. I am sure the Prime Minister has spoken lots about that, especially in his victory speech in 2015. “Sunny ways”, my friend, sunny ways. Lord Acton said that all politics end in failure.

It does not mean people are failures, it just means the grand visions we have sometimes hit reality. The one thing we should never lose is trust, so let us show trust in the process. Let us get the government to give us the documents so we can properly show the Canadian public we are trustworthy and that our democracy delivers for them.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by recognizing that the member for Winnipeg South Centre used a Yiddish term. I am really pleased that we are using more Yiddish in the chamber.

Will the member join me in kvetching a little and complaining about the government? Almost $400 million was corruptly spent, which is what the documents are related to. What the Auditor General reported was that the figure was based on an incomplete sample of all the projects where the green slush fund board members, in some cases corruptly, directed money to their own companies.

I wonder whether the member could expand on what could possibly have been done if the whole $1 billion had been spent differently. What other projects or initiatives could we have spent on, or what lower taxes or a smaller deficit could we have achieved? I just want to give an expansive opportunity for the member to kvetch with me and complain about Liberal government corruption.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an excellent point, because the Auditor General has publicly said that their office has asked for more funding because under the Liberal government, spending has gone up by unbelievable amounts and has effectively doubled our debt. Canadians may not feel that they are getting better results for it, but more money has sloshed through the system through Parliament, and the Auditor General has felt they could not do as good a job.

The member is 100% right; I think about 40% or fewer of the projects were sampled, and the Auditor General found 282 different cases of conflict of interest or instances where the rules were not followed. I raised the case of ineligible companies receiving funding and getting different treatment than ineligible Canadians when they applied for CERB and had to pay it all back. At the end of the day, there are so many other priorities that could have happened.

The one point I want to home in on is that the whole idea of the Auditor General is that we have a trustworthy source that is non-partisan and that we can all agree on. I really do not understand where backbench members of the Liberal caucus are on this. They should be knocking down the door, saying, “The Auditor General has said something is wrong. What are we doing to fix it?”

Why are they not giving Parliament the documents? Was it incompetence by the minister? Was it just the board itself? We need to have answers.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I like to refer to “Edmonton West Edmonton Mall” as the official name of my riding.

I am very pleased to rise to discuss the privilege motion we have before us, specifically on the green slush fund but on one of the government's many environmental, green scandals. Yes, I did say “scandals”. I am sure a lot of us are wondering, “Scandals, plural?”

Yes, I have scanned through some, and there are five we are looking at right now. There is, of course, the green slush fund. We have the Environment Canada contribution audit scandal. We have the net-zero accelerator scandal. I will get to those later. We also have the government misleading Canadians and the House, repeatedly, on the carbon tax.

Many members, including the Prime Minister, have stood in the House and said the carbon tax was revenue-neutral. In fact, we went back through Hansard and counted 37 times that the Liberals claimed the carbon tax was revenue-neutral. The problem is that the public accounts very clearly stated that $100 million was being diverted to other uses. It is not revenue-neutral, as proven by the public accounts.

We have also heard the government repeatedly say that more money would go back in the pockets of Canadians, yet the Parliamentary Budget Officer has come out and stated very clearly that, because of the effects on the economy and the knock-on costs as the tax goes through the system, Canadians are worse off. Albertans will be worse off by over $750 per family because of the carbon tax.

We have the Parks Canada scandal, under Environment Canada, with the unfortunate issue of Jasper burning. I used to work for a company that had a hotel in Jasper. Unfortunately, a lot of employees are now out of work and also homeless. The government, of course, quickly blamed everything on climate change.

In fact, we have seen in documents that have come out that the government, for years, ignored warnings of a buildup of dead trees, bushes, leaves and other items due to the mountain pine beetle. They ignored it all for political optics. I am going to read from an access to information email from Environment Canada: “At what point do we make the organizational decision to cancel planned prescribed burns in Western Canada? As more and more media articles raise public concern over drought conditions, public and political perception may become more important than actual prescription windows.” Here we have the government stating that perhaps optics are more important than the actual fix we know about, which is clearing the trees and prescribed burns.

Despite so many things to talk about, I only have so much time, so I am going to focus on three. The first is, of course, the green slush fund, which is Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC.

Parliament has ordered documents to be handed over and the Liberals are refusing to hand over those documents, which makes us wonder what they are hiding. What are they hiding that is so bad that the government is allowing weeks and weeks of its legislative agenda to be pushed aside for this debate? Is it that 400 million taxpayer dollars were being funnelled by Liberal insiders to other Liberal insiders? Is it that the Liberal appointees ignored conflict rules 88 times when funnelling this money to Liberal insiders, or is it perhaps the millions given to ineligible recipients?

The Industry Canada contribution agreement, which was the contract, basically, that outlined eligibility and the rules to follow, clearly stated that all conflicts on the board of SDTC had to be reported to the minister.

In committee, we asked former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains about this and there was no answer. It got so bad that we are approaching a privilege motion in the public accounts committee over his refusal to answer. Again, this was right in the contribution contract with Industry Canada. Navdeep Bains or the current minister would have to have been advised of these 88 conflicts of interest, which led to millions, hundreds of millions, of taxpayer dollars going to Liberal insiders or ineligible recipients. Did the ministers know and do nothing, or were the ministers not informed? These documents would tell us, but the Liberals will not.

I have to wonder if these documents further implicate the Minister of Environment. This same minister was financially involved in Cycle Capital, which was a recipient of tens of millions of dollars of the green slush fund. Of course, the founding member of Cycle Capital was on the board of SDTC. The founding member, the minister's partner, Andrée-Lise Méthot, was at the public accounts committee and we asked her about these conflicts. However, she noted that she and the minister barely made any money off of some of these grants.

Think about that. At what point does it become okay to have corruption? Is it if we barely make any money? Are we setting the new bar that it is okay to be corrupt as long as we barely make any money? That question could be answered by the documents and by the government, but it is not.

We further heard from a senior bureaucrat of the Privy Council. The Privy Council, of course, is the Prime Minister's department, in informal terms; it is the department that serves the Prime Minister. This senior bureaucrat from the Privy Council, when we asked about why she had not turned over documents as ordered by Parliament, said that she was refusing to release the documents until she received permission from the former head of the board of SDTC, Annette Verschuren. This is the same Annette Verschuren who was found guilty by the Ethics Commissioner for violating conflict of interest agreements with SDTC grants.

Here we have the Prime Minister's department stating that it needs permission from someone found guilty of violating the ethics code before it will hand over the unredacted documents that Parliament has ordered. We also have the Liberal-appointed chair sending taxpayers' dollars to her own company. Again, the government will not turn over the documents until it receives permission from her, for privacy reasons. Keep in mind that this was the hand-picked chair of Liberal minister Navdeep Bains, who, working outside of the application process, reached out and chose her after the application process for the role had closed. Again, here we have the Liberal government blocking access.

I want to move on to the next green scandal, the net-zero accelerator. Like the expensive Liberal housing accelerator that does not actually build houses, the net-zero accelerator does not actually reduce emissions. The environment commissioner reported that $8 billion for programs was paid out to ineligible companies, most with no plan to reduce emissions. The actual cost to Canadian taxpayers per tonne of reduced emissions was $523. If we think about that, the current carbon tax is working its way up to about $170, and the government paid $523 per tonne of reduced emissions.

The commissioner commented in his report that the money given out was “not part of any coherent...policy on decarbonization”. Of course, it is only $8 billion between friends. He also commented that the vast majority of projects have no written commitment “to reduce a precise amount of emissions”. If only life were so easy that we could give out $8 billion without telling the government what we were going to do with it or what we were going to achieve. Companies awarded billions had not even completed feasibility studies on how they were going to reduce emissions.

The department raided other funding programs to top up funding to the net-zero accelerator because so much money had been committed to these companies that were not eligible and had not provided information on how they were going to reduce emissions. Funding was approved before the Liberals even did due diligence on the applications.

One may ask what some of these companies are that were so deserving of the corporate welfare from taxpayers. One of them is a company called Geely. This is a China-owned car company that builds electric vehicles with forced Uyghur labour. Yes, Canadian taxpayers, through our friends in the Liberal government, are giving it corporate welfare for electric vehicles made in China by forced labour to be brought into the Canadian market. This is the same car company that will be paying 100% higher tariffs on the cars built, subsidized by Canadians, using forced labour and brought into Canada.

However, it gets worse. One would ask how it could get worse. The Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption Prevention states that Geely is a sponsor of war. It continues to help fund the Russian economy by continuing to do business in Russia and paying taxes in Russia. There is an independent Ukrainian agency noting that this company is a sponsor of war, but, what the heck, let us give them taxpayers' money anyway.

There is Stellantis, which is worth a market cap of $55 billion. It has half a billion dollars more on top of all the money it receives for the battery plants. General Motors, worth $70 billion, got $100 million of taxpayers' corporate welfare. Pratt & Whitney, worth $222 billion, almost a quarter of a trillion dollars, got $60 million. All in all, $8 billion was given to companies worth over $900 billion.

I go back to what the environment commissioner said, that the money was given out without due diligence or proof that emissions would be reduced. The environment commissioner stated that the program did not even help the largest emitters in the country, the low-hanging fruit, where we could get the most bang from the buck. We heard the Prime Minister state today that the government was going to go after the oil and gas industry because it was the largest emitter and it would have the easiest path to reduce emissions. We have the environment commissioner noting the same government gave out $8 billion of corporate welfare, but did not even target the largest emitters, where we would get the most bang for the buck.

The funny part of the report, on page 8 for those following at home, is where the environment commissioner notes that the government stated that any project above “$50 million also requires Treasury Board approval, concurrence letters from ministers of other concerned departments, and Cabinet approval, which can be fast-tracked with a letter to the Prime Minister”. Again, billions of dollars were given to companies that were not eligible, but it would have gone through Treasury Board and the minister. The Treasury Board and the minister did not do their jobs.

We would think that somewhere along the line, with $100 million going to General Motors, which is worth $70 billion, someone would have asked if the due diligence had been done and whether it was the right thing to do, but no. In fact, they even had a way to skirt the rules by fast-tracking this money by going right to the Prime Minister. I read in the report that the environment commissioner stated due diligence was not done. Companies received funding even before the project was properly vetted. How much money was given out from taxpayers that was fast-tracked by the Prime Minister so the government could have optics instead of actual action on the environment?

Now I come to the last scandal I want to talk about tonight, which is the Environment Canada contribution audit scandal. This is right from Environment Canada. Its internal auditors put out a report noting problems with the governance and conflict of interest rules, which we have heard about before, as well as weak guidelines on cash management for the grants and contributions given out by Environment Canada.

We would think that Environment Canada would be about helping the environment, but when we look through the report, we would find that were wrong if we thought that. Where did taxpayers' money go from Environment Canada? I will give some great examples.

The Iron Ore Company, which owns Rio Tinto, got $18 million. Today, visitors from the juvenile diabetes research foundation came to our offices. They were looking for $15 million of funding over four years. They believe that they would have a medical breakthrough to cure type 1 diabetes. They are that close; they just need $15 million for four years.

However, where are we spending the money? Eighteen million dollars went to Rio Tinto. Oh, and by the way, it is the same Rio Tinto that got fined half a million dollars by the Quebec government for dumping harmful substances into the Saguenay River. Environment Canada is rewarding companies that have been fined for polluting.

Glencore, worth $53 billion, got $10 million of corporate welfare. This is after pleading guilty to corruption charges. It had to pay a settlement of a billion and a half dollars to the U.S. government, but it had $10 million towards the fine from Canada. Lafarge got $14 million. Guess what Lafarge got in trouble for and what it did with some of the money? It got fined for paying ISIS. Think about that, some of the worst atrocities done by the terrorists in ISIS, which was funded by Lafarge. The company was ordered by the U.S. government to pay a $780-million penalty. It is still operating in Syria right now, by the way. The taxpayers are helping the company through Environment Canada.

Copper Mountain Mine got $3 million, even though its head of security pleaded guilty to murdering indigenous activists. We are rewarding that through Environment Canada. Indigenous activists fighting for the environment were murdered by the company, but the Liberal government, Environment Canada, with its radical environment minister, is sending it corporate welfare.

Oh, there is Stellantis again. It was given $2.5 million. By the way, Stellantis was also fined for emissions cheating in Europe. Again, Environment Canada is giving corporate welfare to a company that was fined for cheating on the environment rules in Europe. Taxpayers are paying their fine, basically. Another one, QuadReal Property Group, was given $2.5 million. The company has been blacklisted in the U.S. for investments in companies in China using forced labour.

Owens Corning was given $2.5 million in taxpayers' money through Environment Canada. It was fined for hazardous waste violations, so there is another big company helping destroy the environment, but the government is giving it taxpayers' money. One of my favourites is that Cornell University has a $15-billion endowment fund, but Environment Canada is funding students in a foreign university instead of funding here.

I want to get back to the issue at hand, which is that the government will not hand over the documents. Michel Bédard, who is the law clerk and appeared at both the public accounts committee and at OGGO, made this statement: “There is no limit to the right of the House of Commons and of its committees to order the production of documents, providing that the documents are available in paper or electronic form and are in Canada.”

This is the crux of the issue. It is very clear that Parliament has the right to order the documents. Committee has demanded them. Parliament has demanded them. The government has given up four or five weeks of its legislative agenda to prevent the documents from coming out. We have to ask what it is hiding.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the information from my colleague, including the details he gave about where taxpayers' money was going and to what dubious causes it might have been sent. However, sending the issue to committee is not what this is about; it is about producing documents because the House has ordered them to be produced, and for no other reason. That is the supremacy of Parliament.

What is the member's opinion on the supremacy of Parliament to control what it needs to do in its own House?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right: Parliament is supreme, and that is the issue here.

We have had department after department come before committee, both in operations committee on the McKinsey scandal and this one. Unelected officials have come to tell us that Parliament is not supreme and that they do not have to obey the law.

We had the PCO, the Privy Council Office, tell us that the information act and the Privacy Act supersede the Constitution and Parliament. We had other departments come and actually lie to committee about why they would not turn over documents. If they are not going to turn over documents and obey the law here, what else are they going to violate the law on?

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I have had a chance to speak to the amendment and the motion before.

I remember, in university, I wrote a paper asking if the Liberal government had lost the legitimacy to govern. I asked if it had lost the trust of Canadians across the country. That was during the ad scam.

Could my colleague tell us how the ad scam scandal that took down the corrupt Chrétien-Martin Liberal government compare? How does the green slush fund scandal compare to ad scam, in size and the dollar amount? Obviously, that was focused a lot in Quebec, and this slush fund scandal is focused across the country.

How much bigger is the green slush fund scandal than the ad scam scandal that took down the Chrétien-Martin government?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in the grand scheme of things, ad scam is peanuts compared to this.

This is about $400 million, funnelled from Liberal insiders to Liberal insiders through the green slush fund. We have clear rules actually stating that, before the money can go, people have to sign off on the contribution agreement; the Minister of Industry has to be informed within one month when there is a conflict. It is right there in writing in the contribution agreement. We also heard from a whistle-blower, who said they came forward and made the minister aware of this scandal, of these conflicts, but no action was taken.

Ad scam was horrible. It brought down the previous Liberal government. This should bring down the current government.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this government should hand over the unredacted documents and be more transparent.

If the Conservatives come to power one day, how do they plan to strengthen transparency to earn Canadians' trust?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. We can do a lot of things to strengthen transparency. A very large one was supporting Bill C-290, by my colleague from the Bloc, on whistle-blower protection. We actually need to reopen that bill and make it stronger so that we are protecting whistle-blowers and not corrupt government officials.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for a wonderful speech. He has even educated me this evening. Maybe he could explain something to Canadians watching tonight.

As I speak to my constituents, they are appalled by what is happening and asking why the government will not release the documents. They feel that, as shareholders of this country, they deserve answers. Could the member please explain to them that, when we have the next election, they need to make sure to vote for the Conservative Party of Canada?