Debates of Nov. 6th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, here we are again discussing this privilege motion dealing with Liberal corruption at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC. For those watching at home who are asking why we are here, the answer is simple: The Liberal government simply refuses to comply with an order from the House to produce unredacted documents in regard to the $400-million green slush fund scandal at SDTC.

These documents would allow the RCMP to investigate the corruption of the Liberal insiders at SDTC, and despite a clear majority of MPs in the House voting to compel the government to release the documents, the government simply refuses to comply with the order of the House made by the democratically elected citizens of this country. Even the Prime Minister's Speaker agrees with us.

In September, the Speaker ruled, “The House has the undoubted right to order the production of any and all documents—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member for Waterloo is rising on a point of order.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Madam Speaker, I regret interrupting the member, and I apologize for it. It was already determined in the House that, when the Speaker is elected, they do not belong to the government or the opposition. The Speaker represents all members in this place. The member should—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I appreciate the hon. member's point of order. I want to remind members that, when a Speaker is elected, the Speaker is impartial and does not belong to a party.

The hon. member for Red Deer—Lacombe.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, let me rephrase.

We agree with the Speaker when he said, “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.” As such, I ask this again: Why are we here? We are here to hold this government accountable for its mess, corruption and wrongdoings. What would this motion do? The House is simply asking for these documents so that they can be turned over and scrutinized, not only by the RCMP, but by members of Parliament, because it is our privilege and our right to do so.

Nothing in our motion calls for the RCMP to conduct any type of investigation, and this is not an abnormal request, as the House enjoys the absolute and unfettered power to order the production of documents, which is not limited by any statute whatsoever. These powers are rooted in the very fabric of this House, having been enshrined in the Constitution Act of 1867 and the Parliament of Canada Act.

Here is a quick refresher on the role of Sustainable Development Technology Canada and why it is being investigated for corruption. SDTC is a federally funded non-profit founded in 2001. It was set up to approve and disburse funds to clean-tech companies. The latest mandate for the agency was to disburse $1 billion over five years ending in 2025-26. Let us call this disbursement the “green slush fund”. The wording of “slush fund” is deliberate. A slush fund is a reserve of money used for illicit purposes, usually pertaining to political bribery, and this is no exaggeration.

Doug McConnachie, the assistant deputy minister at Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and the whistle-blower who would expose the grift said that what happened at SDTC was “almost a sponsorship-scandal level kind of giveaway.” The sponsorship scandal, if members remember, is what eventually brought down the previous Liberal government of prime ministers Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien. It should be noted that both scandals share certain similarities. Both involved Liberal Party insiders and firms profiting from hard-earned dollars of taxpayers through the diversion of funds from existing government programs created by Liberal governments.

Let us dig into the anatomy of a scandal. Coincidentally, 2015 was when we had our new government, this Liberal government. In 2015, the mastermind of the operation, Leah Lawrence, was hired to be the CEO of Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Under her direction, SDTC essentially turned into this green slush fund for her and her friends. Rather than funding green tech firms in a fair and transparent manner, she decided to use the fund to top up the companies of her and her friends. A key player in covering up her behaviour was her partner in crime, Annette Verschuren, who was appointed chair of the board.

Annette used her position to protect Leah. Not wanting to miss out on the fund, the entire board then also partook in the scam. To compound these issues, subcontractors on projects were often affiliated with the CEO. Clearly in the wrong, the board members tried to cover their tracks by contracting an outside legal opinion saying it was okay to fund their own companies with the bonus money. This outside opinion was from Ed Vandenberg. He is a paid SDTC member.

There is no lack of salacious details to add in. I just cannot make this stuff up. It is truly stranger than fiction. If anyone is wondering what the government did when it found out about these issues, the answer is nothing. Just like the arrive scam app, this government's SDTC board fleeced taxpayers, and instead of reprimanding and firing these individuals, the Liberals ignored the issue and tried to cover up this abuse of taxpayer dollars.

It is not like the government was not warned. In fact, the whistle-blower referred to the initial investigation as a “whitewash”. The whistle-blowers reached out to both the government and the Privy Council Office, and despite warnings, the SDTC management team and board of directors remained in place months later. This must have been disheartening, yet, despite their claims falling on deaf ears, the eventual result was an inquiry into the matter conducted by Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton. The report confirmed that the whistle-blower complaints were actually valid and factual. Not only did the report confirm the multiple instances of corruption, but it also stated the government ignored these findings and continued to fund the organization despite being warned of the board's behaviour.

Sadly, this is not new behaviour, and it is part of a larger pattern. Over the past nine years, the government has exhibited a flagrant disregard for transparency and the rule of law.

Since the Prime Minister was elected, Canada has slid down the Transparency International Canada corruption perceptions index. Back in 2015, Canada placed as the ninth-least corrupt country in the world, with a score of 83 points, and we were improving. We can then fast-forward to 2022, when Canada was stuck in a tie for 14th place, with a score of 74 points. This is a loss of almost 10 percentage points.

In 2022, Transparency International Canada executive director James Cohen stated, “The problem of money-laundering in Canada and other corruption scandals have been headline news in recent years dragging down the perception of Canada as a clean country. This year’s disappointing results show the need to take concrete action to restore Canada’s reputation.” Those are not exactly glowing words, and they certainly confirm what Conservatives have been saying all along. Suffice it to say that the government did nothing to rectify this perception of corruption in Canada. This is corruption that it has created and condoned; it is damaging our international reputation.

Is it even a surprise that we have fallen so low? Since 2015, the volume of scandals has grown from a steady stream into a powerful torrent, starting with the cash for access scandal. That worked its way up to the infamous SNC-Lavalin corruption cover-up, blackface, the WE Charity, the Mark Norman affair, arrive scam, the Winnipeg lab documents and foreign interference from state actors, such as China, India, Iran and Russia. The list of major scandals under the direction of the Prime Minister is too long for a 20-minute speech.

Of the sickening levels of graft at SDTC, one of the whistle-blowers had this to say:

The true failure of the situation stands at the feet of our current government, whose decision to protect wrongdoers and cover up their findings over the last 12 months is a serious indictment of how our democratic systems and institutions are being corrupted by political interference. It should never have taken two years for the issues to reach this point. What should have been a straightforward process turned into a bureaucratic nightmare that allowed SDTC to continue wasting millions of dollars and abusing countless employees over the last year.

Let us remember that, earlier on in my speech, I said that it was a $1-billion fund. Of that $1 billion, almost half of it, $400 million, is what is in question in terms of being handed out inappropriately. The whistle-blowers also claimed, “[T]he current government is more interested in protecting themselves and protecting the situation from being a public nightmare. They would rather protect wrongdoers and financial mismanagement than have to deal with a situation like SDTC in the public sphere.” It is a cover-up. That is why we are here. The Liberal government does not want to be honest or transparent even now, when it is in direct contravention of an order to produce documents that was passed by a majority of MPs in this place.

Clearly, the government knew of the scandal and tried to hide it. It is really a testament to the moral integrity of whistle-blowers that we have this information in front of us today, and I thank them for it. For years, they had to toil in what they referred to as a “toxic” work environment, a place of work with high turnover and a culture in which loyalties were constantly tested by petty executives.

What is the scale of the scandal? On June 13, my colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets requested a breakdown of the approved funding by the SDTC board. The Auditor General found that government officials sent nearly $400 million in taxpayer funds to their own companies through inappropriately awarded contracts. In doing so, to quote myself, Blaine Calkins, they were responsible for “not one, not two, not 10, not 50, not 100 but 186 conflicts of interest.” That is truly an extraordinary number.

The government may try to deflect and say that SDTC is an arm's-length organization, but this is not true either, really. Another major finding of the Auditor General's investigation was that there were several severe lapses in the governance standards. It was only after the Prime Minister's hand-picked Liberal board members were appointed that this fund began voting for absurd amounts of taxpayer dollars for itself and hid its corrupt funnelling to board members' very own companies. In fact, the organization received a clean bill of health in 2017, before these corrupt board members were actually appointed.

Another interesting tidbit about the green slush fund is that the Minister of Environment served as a strategic adviser for a venture capital firm called Cycle Capital from 2009 to 2018, prior to his appointment to cabinet. The founder and owner of Cycle Capital sat on the same SDTC board that voted for Cycle Capital investments to receive a significant amount of funding. Will the Minister of Environment state if he still holds shares in Cycle Capital, and if so, how much has he stood to gain from these illicit investments?

If people are still not convinced of the need for these documents, please consider the words of our whistle-blower, who told the public accounts committee, “Just as I was always confident that the Auditor General would confirm the financial mismanagement at SDTC, I remain equally confident that the RCMP will substantiate the criminal activities that occurred within the organization.” Those are not our words. Clearly, the whistle-blower believes this work is important, and we, as Conservatives, stand in solidarity with them.

In summary, we on the Conservative bench just want the government to turn over the SDTC green slush fund documents so that those responsible can be held accountable and taxpayers can know where their money went. Hopefully, we can recover some of those tax dollars for them.

SDTC's board was appointed by the government, and it was informed of the conflicts of interest held by the executives it chose, yet the government did not act for years. Because of this, we are saddled with another corruption scandal. The Auditor General's investigation has uncovered that $400 million in SDTC funding was awarded to projects in which board members were conflicted during the five-year audit period.

That sum of money is nothing to laugh at, especially at a time when so many Canadians are struggling with everyday bills and affordability. These are funds that could have gone into building infrastructure, feeding the needy, tackling crime and dealing with the housing crisis that plagues our nation. Instead, the NDP-Liberal coalition government has paralyzed Parliament and made it impossible to address the serious issues facing Canadians.

It is time for the Prime Minister to take accountability and provide the documents outlining the conflicts of interest in the green slush fund. It is equally true that the MP for Saint-Maurice—Champlain, the minister of industry, should have done a better job of monitoring SDTC. The blame lies squarely at the feet of the Prime Minister and that minister.

I would like to leave members with a thought before I complete my speech. The Prime Minister once said, “One of the most important things in any leader or in any successful approach is to focus on connecting with people and really listening to them.” It sounds like something he would say. I will just say to the Prime Minister that, if he will not release the documents, will he at least take stock of his own words and listen to the voice of Canadians, the great multitudes who are fed up with the corruption? They are telling him that it is time.

Taxes are up, costs are up, crime is up and his time is up. It is time to heed the call of Canadians and put Canada on a path for a carbon tax election. Let us get to it .

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

Madam Speaker, let me be perfectly clear that the Conservatives are playing a multi-million dollar political game that is full of misinformation and completely off the topic of the motion the Conservatives brought forward.

What we are witnessing is the leader of the Conservative Party virtually using a contempt attitude toward the functionality of the chamber, which highlights the fact that he was the parliamentary secretary to the only prime minister, Stephen Harper, who has been held in contempt of Parliament.

The games are continuing today when we still see the leader of the Conservative Party refusing to get the security clearance. Why is that? What is in the background of the leader of the Conservative Party that he is so scared to get the security clearance? We know he is hiding something. What is he hiding, and why will the Conservative Party not stop the multi-million dollar game it is playing and get down to telling Canadians why the leader of the Conservative Party is so scared to tell Canadians about his past?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am not sure, but I am pretty sure that the tinfoil hat being worn by the parliamentary secretary could still pull up analog television.

This is about $400 million that has been misappropriated and used inappropriately. The House has spoken. The House has said that the government is to produce the documents related to the green slush fund at SDTC. If the parliamentary secretary wants to do something useful, wants to do something constructive and wants to get his government's agenda back on track, he should listen to the will of the elected members of Parliament, of the House, who have said that we want these documents in the form where they are not redacted, full disclosure, tabled before the House.

As soon as he does that, this will end, and they can carry on with their destructive agenda, which they have done for the last nine years.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Madam Speaker, we all want to have these documents to be able to do a complete analysis of the situation and make recommendations to improve the process. It is part of our job to request these documents to hold the government accountable, not to us, but to the public and the money it entrusts to us to manage.

We have been asking for these documents for four or five weeks and it seems clear that we will not be getting them. If we do not receive them, that means that the government is not transparent and, as such, we cannot have confidence in it. If this is a foregone conclusion, then we should be proceeding with triggering an election, unless the Conservatives have a secret agenda to keep the government in power until they decide it is time for an election.

The government does not have the confidence of the House. Why does the opposition not trigger an election?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, the intimation that the Conservative Party is somehow propping up and extending the Parliament is simply absurd. We already had two direct motions of non-confidence that were brought forward when we reconvened here in the fall and, if I remember correctly, the member who asked me the question and her political party continue to support the continuation of the Parliament and the continuation of the Liberal government. They did not get what they asked for, so one can only assume that they are people of their word and that they will vote non-confidence at the next opportunity.

Suffice to say, in the meantime, it is our job, and it behooves us all as members of Parliament, to get the root of the matter. The root of the matter is that $400 million of taxpayers' money was inappropriately used at SDTC and the green slush fund. That is money from my constituents' pockets. That is money from her constituents' pockets in Quebec. We deserve to know what those funds are. We have made a direct order as members of Parliament. We have that privilege and that entitlement to do so in the House.

The House has supremacy when it come to the order of the production of documents. It is not the first time that the government has failed to turn these documents over. If people remember correctly, we had the same problem with the Winnipeg lab documents, to the point where somebody was actually summoned before the bar for the first time in 113 years. This is a pattern with the government. It is a problem. We are either going to fold our tent and just buckle and let governments do whatever they want or we are going to stand proud as Canadians and we are going to actually restore the credibility of our nation, restore the credibility of this institution and make sure we actually get the documents that we have asked for as members of Parliament. I encourage her to stand in her place and make sure that she stands firm and that her party stands firm until we get these documents.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Madam Speaker, I like the member. He has been elected and re-elected numerous times. I have appreciated his work, most recently on natural health food products.

The reality is that he knows full well that the NDP and NDP MPs have gotten to the body of the WE Charity scandal, gotten to the bottom of the SNC-Lavalin scandal and are pushing to get to the bottom of the SDTC scandal. That is why we are supporting the motion.

I have asked this question numerous times and not a single Conservative has yet replied and that is with regard to the track record of cover-ups of the Harper regime. We saw massive spending scandals. The ETS scandal was $400 million. The G8 scandal was $1 billion. The Phoenix pay scandal was $2.2 billion. The anti-terrorism funding, where they simply lost the paper trail, was $3.1 billion.

Every single one of those scandals was covered up by the Harper regime. The member was here, so he is fully aware of that. As a former House officer, he is aware as well that this was absolutely inappropriate.

I am just asking for one Conservative member to stand up and say that they are sorry they covered up all of these spending scandals, that they are sorry that they did not allow Canadians to get to the bottom of this, that they used a majority government to basically shut down Parliament.

I am just asking for a single Conservative member to have the integrity to stand up and say that they were wrong.

Will the member do that?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, I was here with the Right Hon. Stephen Harper when he was prime minister of Canada, and I can tell Canadians unequivocally that the Government of Canada has never been run more cleanly and more efficiently. I am proud of the track record of the previous Conservative government. I am going to be even more proud of the track record of a future Conservative government once we end the entitlement, corruption and absolute profligacy of the government, which has doubled our national debt. The amount that we are spending just to service the debt consumes the entirety of the GST alone.

The member who asked the question and his party have propped the government up through the worst parts of that spending and the worst accrual of that debt. We have seen scandal after scandal, including this one. We would not be here right now if it were not for the member, his leader and his party because this Parliament would have ended a long time ago. We are in a dystopian situation right now because the Liberals and the NDP have agreed and conspired to keep this Parliament going well beyond its due date. The member needs to look in the mirror.

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Red Deer—Lacombe for his excellent speech. There was a lot of common sense in there. He read a quote from the Prime Minister about listening, or at least the pretense of listening. He also talked about the whistle-blowers who have come forward, obviously at some risk to themselves and their careers.

If the Prime Minister is not willing to listen to us, should he and his government listen to the whistle-blowers who are bringing forward this information?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Madam Speaker, there were numerous protections that we brought forward in the previous Conservative administration, starting with the Federal Accountability Act, which created opportunities for various officers of Parliament. We would not even know some of these things if it were not for the hard work done through the Federal Accountability Act. It was the first piece of legislation that Stephen Harper brought forward, Bill C-2, back in 2006, if my memory serves me correctly.

Part of that work was strengthening protections for whistle-blowers. I think there is even more that we could do now because there is a culture of secrecy and fear in the government. In some cases, I hear these things. We need to make sure that people feel not only encouraged to, but also secure in coming forward with information of wrongdoing in the Government of Canada. We should not have a culture of secrecy.

The Prime Minister spoke of “sunny ways”, “transparency” and sunlight, but we have seen everything but in the last number of years from the government with the amount of money it has spent and the money that has gone out the door. We do not even know about some of the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars that were spent during COVID. There is no traceability or accountability with respect to that.

We need to strengthen whistle-blower protections. I thank the whistle-blowers. If the Prime Minister is not going to listen to the whistle-blowers, maybe he should listen to Canadians. I am sure they are ready to pass judgment on his performance.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The fourth party, the New Democratic Party, has missed 26—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

That is not a point of order. The next time the hon. member rises, he might want to quote the standing order or make reference to the procedure he is wanting to raise.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Foothills has the floor.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate I have to rise to speak to this issue. This could have ended days ago had the Liberal government capitulated and shown the documents. It is obviously very frightened to show Canadians the level of scandal that is in those documents.

What we as parliamentarians are now facing is a Parliament, a House of Commons and a government in complete crisis. The lengths that the Prime Minister and his office will go to cover up this latest scandal is incredible. To basically shut down Parliament and not have any government business happening just to protect their own hide is very disingenuous to the members who are here, as we represent our constituents, and certainly to every Canadian who expects better from their government.

All parliamentarians represent those constituents who elected us, those families in our ridings who put their trust in us to represent them here. It is their privilege that we are demanding be honoured. The Speaker has ruled that the Liberal government should be handing over the documents, to show that Canadians can make that decision for themselves and determine accountability if there is a scandal. It certainly seems the whistle-blowers and others have highlighted $400 million in misappropriated taxpayer funds. Canadians have the right to see those documents. Canadians, who elected us to be here, have the right to make that determination.

What is at stake here is accountability in the House of Commons, where transparency and trust for all of us should be paramount, not just for the government in power. It is wielding that power as a sledgehammer over the House of Commons and over Canadians. I think we all would agree that oversight and transparency in Parliament are paramount to ensure that the trust of Canadians in what we do here is upheld. I certainly do not think that is happening right now, as the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office are refusing to comply with a decision by the Speaker to produce those documents. The government is doing everything it can to hide that from Canadians.

This comes at a time when Canadians are frustrated. They are angry. They are struggling to make ends meet every single day. More than two million Canadians are visiting a food bank in a single month. Food insecurity in Canada is up 111%. Food inflation in Canada is 36% higher than it is in the United States. While Canadians are struggling, the Prime Minister and the Liberal-NDP government are taking Canadians' tax dollars and lining the pockets of their friends and insiders. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of homeless encampments popping up all across Canada. In Alberta, food bank use is up more than 35%. I have heard similar stories right across Canada. We saw a report the other day from Mississauga where food bank use was up 60%.

While Canadians are struggling just to put food on the table, the Liberal government is lining its pockets and the pockets of its friends with the dollars of Canadian taxpayers. The level of this scandal is something many of us have never seen before in Canada. The RCMP commissioner has confirmed that the Prime Minister's hand-picked directors in what we call the green slush fund are already under criminal investigation. Nine green slush fund board appointees have been implicated in funnelling this $400 million to their own companies. The chair of the green slush fund board was hand-picked by the Prime Minister even though he was warned multiple times of a conflict of interest. Once again, the Prime Minister got his own way and did not care about a conflict of interest or the integrity of his government.

The Prime Minister's hand-picked board of directors was funnelling $400 million of taxpayer money to their own companies. That is unbelievable. It did not happen a couple of times; it happened more than 180 times. There was a blatant disregard for conflicts of interest, ethics, integrity and the sanctity of taxpayer dollars. It is one thing, maybe, to do something once or twice, like, “Okay, we made a mistake,” but to say, “Oh, we did it once or twice and we got away with it. Let us just keep going and see how far we can get with this,” and then do it more than 180 times is just unreal.

What we have now is the Liberal government, not only defying an order of this House to produce those required documents and turn them over to the RCMP but now obstructing justice by refusing to co-operate with that RCMP investigation. The Liberals are deliberately trying to distract and delay by wanting to send this to committee, wasting more time and more energy instead of giving Canadians the transparency they deserve right now by tabling those documents.

As I said when I spoke to this previously, when my home is robbed, I call the police. I do not ask my neighbours to get together and form a committee to discuss that robbery. That is what Canadians are asking for. The Liberals have robbed Canadians of their tax dollars, and Canadians are asking to call the police for an investigation into the misappropriation and mishandling of their tax dollars. The scale of this corruption is just disgusting, and Canadians are certainly outraged about how the Liberals are taking advantage of their position yet again. It is a story we have heard over and over from the current Liberal government, in particular, of enriching Liberals' friends and the government's insiders.

This Prime Minister has taken scandals, conflicts of interest and abuse of taxpayer money to new heights like no prime minister before. Insiders, bureaucrats and special interest groups have become fabulously wealthy under the current Liberal government, while Canadians are struggling every single day just to put food on the table, put fuel in their car, heat their homes and try to buy that first home. There has been $54 million for arrive scam, $237 million to a former Liberal MP for unused ventilators, $150 million to SNC-Lavalin for unused field hospitals and $12 million for Loblaws to buy new fridges and freezers despite record profits for that retailer.

I am not given enough time to go through every single scandal that the Liberals have endured in their nine years in government. However, I think my colleagues would really like to hear some of the greatest hits. This would make a best-selling K-TEL album. I may be dating myself with K-TEL, but Hit Express was one of the best ones ever, so I am going to give my colleagues my version of Hit Express.

First, we had the Aga Khan scandal. Canada's Ethics Commissioner ruled that the Prime Minister had indeed broken the conflict of interest rules, accepting vacations and gifts and flights from the Aga Khan in 2016. It was the first time in our history that a prime minister had been found to have committed such a transgression. He is the only Prime Minister to be found guilty of fraud and the Prime Minister gave himself consent to break that law that is in the Criminal Code.

Now, we will move to the SNC-Lavalin affair. Former justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, accused her own government and its officials of inappropriately pressuring her to make a decision on the SNC-Lavalin affair to avoid a corruption trial. That affair led to the resignation of the Prime Minister's top aide, Gerald Butts; the minister herself, Ms. Wilson-Raybould; and Michael Wernick, the head of the federal bureaucracy at that time. Former public works minister, Jane Philpott, quit, citing her loss of confidence in the Prime Minister, and that the Prime Minister did indeed politically interfere with his own justice minister to try and save his friends at SNC-Lavalin.

Then, once again, when Canadians were at their most anxious and most stressed in the midst of a pandemic, the Prime Minister found yet another opportunity to try to enrich his friends. When Canadians were struggling, businesses were closing and kids were not in school, the Prime Minister, instead of helping Canadians, found a way to help his friends with the WE Charity scandal, which had previously paid nearly half a million dollars to his close family friends to appear at their events, despite claims to the contrary. However, the Liberals continued to double down with WE, trying to give the charity tens of millions of Canadian taxpayer dollars to run some programs through the pandemic. The Liberals defied the order once again in Parliament and blocked key players at WE from testifying at the ethics committee.

We will go back a bit further to an illegal casino magnate. I don't want people to forget about these, so I want to bring back some blasts from the past. In 2016 and 2017, the Prime Minister participated in fundraising events in Toronto and Vancouver that featured wealthy entrepreneurs. The architect of a heavily armed illegal casino operation in Markham twice had FaceTime calls with the Prime Minister and, surprise, he also has ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Also at those meetings was a Chinese billionaire and member of the Chinese people consultative conference, who made a $1-million donation to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, which was reported in The Globe and Mail.

In 2016, one of several additional scandals, all the way back when one of the Prime Minister's first scandals with a newly elected government, surrounded his attendance in the United States at pay-for-play fundraisers featuring billionaires with connections to the communist regime in China. Perhaps the most concerning is that the Liberal government openly ignored warnings from the House of Commons about attempts by communist Beijing to swing the results of two federal by-elections.

In early 2023, most of the board of directors resigned from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation in light of a $200,000 donation from political strategists and a billionaire with connections, once again, to the Communist regime in China. The foundation misled Canadians when it said the controversial donation made by two Chinese businessmen qualified as a Canadian donation. However, not surprisingly, emails revealed that the foundation corresponded with the China Cultural Industry Association, an arm of the Communist Party in Beijing. They contain the name that should be listed on the tax receipts for the donation, and where they were to be sent.

I do not know who does the oversight with the Liberal government; perhaps there is no oversight; that is obvious with the number of scandals there have been, including the one involving Jaspal Atwal. Photographs surfaced of Mr. Atwal posing with Canadian officials, and he obtained a travel visa and secured invitations to formal events with the Prime Minister on the official tour to India.

The Liberal research bureau, a taxpayer-funded office, paid $75,000 in public funds to Data Sciences, a company owned by Tom Pitfield, a Liberal strategist who ran the last two digital election campaigns for the Prime Minister and who is a childhood friend of the Prime Minister.

Who could forget the arrive scam app? It is just another case of the government's spending way more money on something that would have taken a reasonable amount of time and a reasonable amount of money to develop. However, for the glitchy, often-criticized mobile app that was an absolute disaster and mandatory for Canadians during COVID-19, the initial budget was $80,000.

The app ended up costing, from what we know, and it could be way more, at least $60 million. The ridiculous thing is that the company that was asked to build the app, GC Strategies, had only two employees and did no IT service whatsoever, yet when the bills kept coming in to the government, and the bill kept getting higher and higher, no one said a thing. The government just kept paying the bills.

I am sure the folks at GC Strategies wondered how far they could push it, how many times they could go to the well before they got their fingers tapped a little bit. Apparently they could go 60 million times before anyone within the Liberal government and the bureaucracy said, “We started at $80,000; we are now at $60 million. Did we miss a zero somewhere, or is this legitimate?” Obviously it was not legitimate. Canadians still have not gotten their money back.

That was a regular occurrence with the government, as cabinet ministers have handed out sole-source contracts to friends and family. The international trade minister spent $20,000 in media training for a close friend and staffer inside the office of the housing minister, who also paid $93,000 in constituency funds to his sister.

Liberals also awarded nearly $100 million in contracts to their good friends at McKinsey & Company, flouting procurement rules along the way. The report sparked serious concerns about cronyism in the government's outsourcing of its contracts. McKinsey management has long-standing and deep ties to the Liberal government.

McKinsey employed Dominic Barton as its global managing director from 2009 until his appointment as ambassador to China in 2019. Of 28 competitive bids, six appear to have been designed specifically with McKinsey in mind, based on the job description. This was a way for the Liberals to justify awarding the contracts to McKinsey. They had sourced them through Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, which was also concerned about McKinsey's growing influence on their policy, without any public knowledge.

When the Liberals named the Ethics Commissioner's interim successor, they went with Martine Richard. She was a veteran lawyer in the commissioner's office, but she also happened to be the sister-in-law of the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.

We now have the story of two Randys. There is a minister from Alberta. I honestly do not know how the minister goes back to his riding in Edmonton, looks his constituents in the face and says there are two Randys, but he is not the Randy they are looking for. We know he is misleading his constituents and Canadians.

There are not two Randys. The emails prove it. I would implore the Liberal minister from Edmonton to just come clean. It was his own company. He was still a shareholder and still had decision-making power when the company was getting government contracts during the pandemic. I hope he goes home to his riding and comes clean with his own constituents.

We now have Tom Clark. The Liberal-NDP government decided to purchase a $9-million luxury condo on Billionaires' Row in New York. Just this week, Politico reported that Tom Clark was encouraging the government to purchase this new condo because his living standards in Manhattan were just unlivable. He first said he knew nothing about this purchase. I cannot imagine the squalor that Tom Clark was living with in Manhattan, when we have 1,400 homeless encampments just in Ontario.

Worse still, the decision to purchase this condo was only made after the Prime Minister visited Tom Clark in New York City; soon after, Global Affairs Canada decided to make this purchase on Billionaires' Row. Clearly, the Prime Minister takes very good care of his friends in their times of need, with an unlimited credit card backed by the taxpayer.

We had the clam scam. A number of these scandals have occurred.

We now have a new one that I am not even sure many of my colleagues are aware of. The CRA was duped out of $40 million. In the summer of 2023, a Canadian taxpayer logged on to his CRA account and falsely amended his tax returns; the CRA paid out $40 million in fake tax returns. The worst part is that it was not the CRA that made the discovery that it was inadvertently paying out $40 million. It was CIBC, the taxpayer's bank, that raised the alarm. It was odd that this one person was getting $40 million from the CRA. How lax are the accountability and the metrics within the government if $40 million just goes missing without anybody blinking an eye?

I wish I could say all this is surprising, but it just seems to be a regular occurrence with the government. We go on and on with these scandals. The truth is that these are not oversights or missteps. This is a habit. When we have a couple of mistakes, I think we can overlook them somewhat, but this is now tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. The Liberals are lining the pockets of their friends, Liberal insiders and people within the party.

Canadians have simply had enough. Canadians deserve to see the documents that show exactly how deep this rot goes. The Liberal government is blocking the transparency that Canadians deserve and that all members in the House, who were elected to represent our constituents, also deserve. I would encourage the Liberal government to honour the privilege of the House because that is the privilege of every single Canadian who sent us here.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Madam Speaker, our colleague across the way is recounting many incidents, but when we ask his leader to get a security clearance, he dodges the question. What is he hiding? Is there a scandal in the making or a scandal to develop? Why does he not want to get a security clearance? What is so difficult about doing that? It is to protect Canadians.

The member is trying to preach to us, but his own leader does not want to get the security clearance so that we can get to the bottom of this and figure out what is happening with foreign interference. What does the member have to say about that?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting to see what lengths the Liberal Party will go to try to deflect and distract from the scandals that are rotting on their side. The Prime Minister, who was—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I do want to remind members, and some of them have been here for quite some time, that if they have questions and comments, to please wait until the appropriate time. I have not recognized the hon. parliamentary secretary, so he should wait.

The hon. member for Foothills.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is good to see the energy from my Manitoba colleague on the Liberal side.

However, the Prime Minister was at the foreign interference inquest, and he claimed that he knows the names of members of Parliament, past and present, who wittingly or unwittingly co-operated with foreign entities and foreign jurisdictions. The Prime Minister has the authority to name those members of Parliament. I would encourage the Prime Minister, and I would encourage the Liberal member to tell the Prime Minister, if indeed he has proof and evidence of members of Parliament, of people in the House, who, wittingly or unwittingly, aided a foreign entity or foreign jurisdiction and influenced Canadian elections, he should table those names.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to know what my colleague thinks about the foundation format itself. We are talking here about a foundation that seems to have engaged in wrongdoing. We are asking the government for documents and the government is refusing to comply, which is why the question of privilege was raised.

When the Liberal government created 15 or so foundations in the late 1990s, the then auditor general, Sheila Fraser, quickly issued a scathing report. In this report, she urged caution, because a lot of taxpayer money was being paid out without proper oversight. The format itself was problematic.

Would it not be better to abolish these foundations so as to prevent this kind of problem from happening again?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from the Bloc has a good point.

Any legislation tabled by the NDP-Liberal government in its nine years develops a new department, a new level of bureaucracy, a new committee or a new board of directors. That is why we have seen the public service balloon by 50% under the government, and it is clear that, by developing all these new departments and all these new bureaucracies, the government is finding new ways to funnel money to the Liberals' friends and insiders.

We talk about ad scam. Ad scam helped bring down the previous Liberal government, and that was $40 million. We are talking about $400 million. That is the level of scandal, and I find it frustrating that, yet again, we do not have anyone in the press gallery. They do not seem to be paying attention to the level of this scandal. It deserves their attention.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Madam Speaker, since the subject of foreign interference was already broached, I want to challenge my friend from Foothills on this point. I serve on the public safety committee. I have had the chance to directly question the current director of CSIS. Former directors of CSIS, former executives of CSIS and, in fact, every major person of note who is part of our national security and intelligence community say, without equivocation, that there is no justifiable reason for the Leader of the Opposition to continue not getting the security clearance.

This is not about naming names. It is about actions. They have all said it is about actions that a leader can take within their caucus, so again, I would like to challenge my friend. Does he think he knows better than current members of CSIS? Does his leader know better than current members of CSIS? I would challenge him to make that claim here on the floor of the House of Commons.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a great deal of respect for my colleague from the NDP, but I have to say I am disappointed in that this discussion is about a level of scandal and taxpayer dollar abuse unlike any we have ever seen before, and he did not ask a question about that. He is asking a question about foreign interference. The Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Opposition's chief of staff have been given briefs on the foreign interference issue. I guess this just shows that, despite their ripping up of the agreement, the same old marriage stands and the Liberal-NDP coalition is as strong as ever.