Debates of Nov. 6th, 2024

Questions Passed as Orders for Returns

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Motions for Papers

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all notices of motions for the production of papers be allowed to stand at this time.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

I wish to inform the House that, because of the deferred recorded division, the time provided for Government Orders will be extended by 12 minutes.

The House resumed from November 5 consideration of the motion, of the amendment and of the amendment to the amendment.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of rising in Canada's Parliament to join in the debate about the privilege question relating to the Liberal government's latest scandal: the green slush fund.

Before I do that, I just want to take a moment to mark this historic day and congratulate our neighbours to the south for a very decisive election. I congratulate Mr. Trump for regaining the White House. Canada and the U.S. have so many ties. They are not just economic, which is going to become very relevant for us, but also social and family ties. For me, it is my daughter, Kristi, her husband, Brad, and their four children, my grandchildren. They are all proud Americans living in the state of Washington.

What are the future relations of Canada and the U.S. going to look like? We do not have to look any further than a speech that President Kennedy gave here when he was first elected in 1961. He said, “Geography has made us neighbours. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies.” That is as true today as it was 60 years ago.

It is often said that the success of a Canadian prime minister depends largely on how well they get along with the U.S. president. Politics is about relationships, after all. How is that going to look in the next little while? We do not have to look very far. History tells us that we should probably be having an election very soon.

This is now the fourth week we have been debating the Liberal government's refusal to produce documents relating to SDTC, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, also called the green slush fund lately. Parliament ordered the government and SDTC to produce documents in June.

Why are the Prime Minister, his cabinet and his government refusing to deliver those documents? We do not know, but the longer they delay, the more suspicious we become. Are some of the cabinet ministers involved? Are they involved in the graft related to the green slush fund? I think that they need to come out and tell us what is going on.

The Liberals have raised specious arguments about why they can ignore this order and why they do not have to comply with it. It is something about contravening the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. What are the arguments? We do not know because they have not stated them very clearly. Besides, who are the Liberals to judge? They are one of the litigants in this whole litigation. They are not the judge.

What the Liberals are conveniently ignoring is that the rights of Parliament are spelled out in our Constitution. We can look at sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but we can also look at the preamble of the Constitution Act, 1867, which says Canada shall have a Constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom. That goes back 157 years in our history.

Section 18 of the Constitution Act also defines parliamentary privilege for the House of Commons and all its members as those “enjoyed, and exercised by the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain”. Those are the privileges as they existed the day that Canada became a nation on July 1, 1867.

That latter point is very important because with that comes 650 years of parliamentary tradition and history coming out of the mother of all parliaments in Westminster. One of those traditions is, of course, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty. It is that Parliament can make or unmake any law that it deems just and appropriate.

Another one of these age-old traditions is the concept of responsible government, where the government, the Prime Minister and his cabinet, must always retain the confidence of the House and must answer questions from the opposition during a daily question period relating to the business of government. A third way that the House of Commons keeps the government accountable is through motions directing the government to do certain things.

An early example of that, at least early in my career, was a Conservative opposition motion in December 2019, just a few months after I was elected, to create a special, all-party committee of parliamentarians on China-Canada relations. That motion passed with the support of the Bloc Québécois and the NDP members of Parliament. Only the Liberals voted against it.

Someone had pointed out at the time that this was the first time the Liberal government, under the current Prime Minister, had lost a significant vote. Of course, four years earlier, the Liberals had been elected as a majority government, so they could put through any legislation that they wanted or stop any legislation or motions they did not like. This was a whole new dynamic now, a minority government, and the Liberals had not yet figured out how to play nice with the opposition parties for a minority government and a minority Parliament to be successful.

I want to point out the Liberals did comply with that motion and we created a special committee on Canada-China relations. However, things deteriorated pretty quickly after that. We have seen time and again where the Liberals, under the current Prime Minister, have held Parliament in contempt. I am going to raise three examples of when that happened. Of course, just to anticipate the end of my speech, the third example is going to be the green slush fund, which is the subject of the day.

The first example was a pandemic power grab. I remember that day very well. It was March 13, 2020. The World Health Organization had called this virus a worldwide pandemic. The parties consulted and we agreed that we would suspend Parliament for five weeks, hoping that perhaps the worst of things would be over by then. Then the Liberals tried to pull a fast one on us. Just a couple of weeks later, they put forward a proposal that Parliament would be suspended for a long period of time and that they would be given all the power they wanted to tax and spend as they pleased without parliamentary oversight, which we found just unbelievable. Parliament has worked very effectively during other times of crisis, so what was so different this time? We put a quick stop to this insanity and the Liberals had to back down.

The second example of the government holding Parliament in contempt was with the Winnipeg lab affair. The special committee on Canada-China relations, which we know the Liberals did not like very much, was investigating rumours that two employees of the Public Health Agency of Canada, PHAC, had been fired because of their direct ties to the Beijing Communist regime. The committee ordered the production of documents, similar to what we are doing with the green slush fund, and on June 2 Parliament voted to confirm that order. The Liberals voted no, of course. PHAC did not comply with this order. Therefore, on June 17, 2022, the House declared the agency to be in contempt of Parliament and ordered that the president appear in the House of Commons to be reprimanded in public and ordered to produce the documents. The Speaker of the day, Mr. Anthony Rota, supported the majority of the House, of course. He was doing his job—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

The hon. member is still a sitting member of the House, so I would say that “the hon. member for Nipissing—Timiskaming” would be more appropriate.

The hon. member for Langley—Aldergrove.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the greatest respect for the member for Nipissing—Timiskaming, who is a former Speaker of the House. He supported us, of course. He was doing his job. That is what the Speaker is supposed to do.

Now we know the Liberals did not like the special committee on China-Canada relations right from the start. We know that they did not like the makeup of the 43rd Parliament, a divided House, and we knew that they would not like this order for the production of documents because they wanted to keep all this ugly business that was going on in the Winnipeg labs and the relationship with the Wuhan lab in China under cover, but what we did not know was the degree of contempt that this Liberal Party held for Parliament. We found that out when the former Attorney General, the Liberal Attorney General, sued the former Speaker of the House, who was a member of the Liberal Party. There was a big showdown in court of the Attorney General's lawyers versus the Speaker's lawyers, all at the expense of taxpayers because we were paying for all the lawyers. We knew that this was a loser case right from the very start. We knew that no one was going to come out the winner, except for the lawyers maybe, who were charging their full hourly rate.

In the end, the whole case fizzled out when the Prime Minister made his trip to the Governor General's mansion and asked her to dissolve Parliament and to drop the writ for a new election. In the end, the 43rd Parliament lasted only a mere 23 months. We thought that the Prime Minister would do the responsible thing and wait until the pandemic was behind us, but, no, right in the middle of a pandemic, he thought that perhaps Canadians would affirm what he and the Liberals had been doing, and that they would return a majority government for the Liberals. We all know how that ended. The 44th Parliament, the one that we are in right now, looks very much like the 43rd Parliament. There was $600 million spent in expenses to run that election campaign and the House looks almost exactly as it did before with roughly the same number of Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois. We lost some of our colleagues, we gained a few others; the same with the other parties. In the end, the Liberals, even though they lost the popular vote, had the most seats, so they got to form government. Conservatives were the official opposition while the Bloc Québécois and the NDP looked pretty much like they did before.

This brings me to the issue of the day, the green slush fund, which is the third example of the Liberal government holding Parliament in contempt. The scandal started with some whistle-blowers who worked at Sustainable Development Technology Canada who smelled a rat and called in the Auditor General. As a little bit of background, SDTC is a federally owned and created company with a mandate to promote public and private investment in green technology. That is a laudable goal, I would say. If the Prime Minister had just left things alone, SDTC today would still be functioning and fulfilling its mandate, but he could not resist putting his fingerprints all over that company. He fired the then board chair, Mr. Jim Balsillie, who was very capable at his job, but had some disagreements with the Prime Minister, so the Prime Minister put in all his own people, who were friends of the Liberal Party.

We know all of that from the Independent Auditor's Report, which was tabled with Parliament on June 4. I am not going to list everything from the report because many other speakers have already done so, but, for example, $390 million was misallocated to insiders, board members who the Prime Minister had appointed. They had non-qualifying projects that did not even meet the criteria. As well, there were 186 instances of conflicts of interest as board directors had voted money for their own companies. “Hey, I'm going to step out of the room. Please vote for my application of a couple of million dollars and then I'll return the favour to you when it's your turn to step out.” It was just friends distributing taxpayer money amongst themselves. This is what one of the whistle-blowers said after the auditor's report came out:

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.

These are very serious words. This was not just mismanagement, but criminal activity, so the official opposition did what we are supposed to do, which is to hold the government to account. We put forward a motion for the production of documents. The NDP and the Bloc Québécois voted with us, doing their jobs. As fellow opposition members, it is also their job to hold the government to account. That motion passed on June 10, six days after the Auditor General's report came out.

The Liberals, of course, were not happy that the motion passed, but this is the reality of a minority House, where they need to get the support of at least one of the other parties to get their way. They failed. They did not do that. The order was made. Parliament is supreme. Parliament has the authority to do this. It is definitely within our jurisdiction to do so, but the Liberals just refused. They think that they have some arguments to say that they do not have to comply with the order, and they did not. They ignored it.

As such, we came back here to Ottawa, to Parliament, in September, and things got ugly. We appealed to the Speaker and asked him to rule on the question of privilege. We argued, based on the age-old rules, that Parliament has the right to and the privilege of demanding the production of documents when it sees fit to do so. The Speaker ruled in our favour. I will read one sentence from the Speaker's ruling: “The Chair cannot come to any other conclusion but to find that a prima facie question of privilege has been established.”

One would think that that would be the end of the story. It was pretty clear, but we know what these Liberals think about Speakers who make rulings that they disagree with. They sue them, hoping maybe to find a judge who would turn a blind eye to the centuries-old traditions of parliamentary proceedings and parliamentary privilege.

The Liberals did it before. Will they do it again, or will they just keep dodging and weaving as they have for the last four weeks, or actually since June, saying that nothing gets done around here? It is because of this contemptuous behaviour on the part of the Liberal government that things have ground to a halt here in Canada's Parliament.

We know the Liberals do not like an aggressive opposition. I get it. They think that we should all play nice. “Hey, we are all in this together”, they like to say, but we are just doing our job as the official opposition, holding this government to account as prescribed by Canada's Constitution. Now the Liberals need to do their job and comply with the order so that we can all get back to work. That is what we want to do. We have important work to do here, but the Liberals' refusal to act is causing us to have ground to a halt here.

Now, the Liberals have not formally lost the confidence of the House because the New Democrats, despite all their bluff and blunder, continue to support this corrupt and incompetent regime, but the Liberals have lost the confidence of the people of Canada. I know that. This is what my colleagues and I are hearing at home, in our ridings, when we are out knocking on doors and when we are at events in our communities. It is what we heard in the two recent by-elections, where the Liberals' base supporters are even saying, “Enough is enough. It is time for a change”.

Here is an idea for the Prime Minister: Do not comply with the order about the green slush fund. Do not even bother taking the Speaker to court. The Liberals would lose. He should take a walk to the Governor General's mansion and ask her to dissolve the 44th Parliament and call an election because that is what Canadians want. They are ready for a government that would stop the corruption, fix what the Liberals have broken and offer common-sense solutions to the problems facing ordinary Canadians, the people whom we listen to. Canadians deserve a government that would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.

Canadians deserve a government that does not play favourites, but creates an environment where non-insiders can work hard and get ahead. Canadians deserve a Canada that delivers on its promise to all who call it home, which is that hard work earns a powerful paycheque for pensioners and for workers that buys an affordable home on a safe street in a country where everyone from anywhere can do anything, as long as they work hard. All of this is achievable, but first we need an election. There needs to be a call for a carbon tax election.

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

Mr. Speaker, this is nothing more than a cheap, or should I say a very expensive, political game, which is being orchestrated by the leader of the Conservative Party. It shows an absolute disrespect of what takes place in the House of Commons, on the floor here inside the chamber.

I refer the member to a story in The Hill Times. The author of the story is Steven Chaplin, a former senior legal counsel in the office of the House law clerk and parliamentary counsel. He is an expert, and he gives a very stark warning to all members of the House because of this game the official opposition is playing. He wrote, “It is time for the House to admit its overreach before the matter inevitably finds its way to the courts which do have the ability to determine and limit the House’s powers, often beyond what the House may like.”

The game that the Conservatives are playing is borderline contempt in itself, and it is coming from the office of the Conservative leader. I am wondering if the member has read the story, and if he has not read the story, would he commit to read the story and maybe share some of those conclusions with his leader?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the only conclusion we care about is the conclusion that the House of Commons came to, which was to order the government to produce the documents.

Parliament is supreme. It is completely within our wheelhouse to be able to make that order for the production of documents. This is an age-old tradition, and the government should respect it. If the Liberals do not, then they should call an election. They should go to the people and let them judge. If they want to take the Speaker to court, well, they can try that too, but I would suggest calling an election and letting the people decide who is right.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member and enjoyed his speech.

I am glad the member raised the issue of the by-elections. Of course, as members know, we had two by-elections recently. One was in Elmwood—Transcona, where the Conservatives were badly defeated by the NDP. In LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, the Conservatives finished fourth. The Liberals were defeated in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, and they finished with 5% of the vote in Elmwood—Transcona.

Now, we know about the Liberal scandals, and the NDP has been pivotal in getting to the bottom of each of those scandals, including SNC-Lavalin, the WE Charity and now the SDTC. We are supporting the motion.

However, the reason the Conservatives did so badly in the by-elections, of course, is that people are aware of the legacy of Conservative scandals. I just have to refer back to the period of the Harper regime and the ETS scandal, which was $400 million; the G8 scandal, which was $1 billion; the Phoenix pay scandal, which was $2.2 billion; and the anti-terrorism funding, which was $3.1 billion.

Conservatives were even worse, if we are talking in monetary terms, with their corruption, their failures and their scandals. They did not allow Parliament to get to the bottom of it. Does the member agree that that was a mistake and that the Conservatives owe Canadians an apology?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I guess I am not surprised to hear a member of the NDP, which continues to support the Liberal Party in preventing an election that so many Canadians want, now looking back in history for other scandals to divert Canadians' attention from what is going on in Canada right now with the green slush fund. This is what our focus is right now. We want to get to the bottom of it. There is corruption. There are allegations of criminal activity. We need to get to the bottom of that, and I hope that the NDP will support us in the next non-confidence vote to defeat the government and force a carbon tax election.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question on respect for the House and what is involved in respect for the House.

The Liberal government has shown zero respect to the House. It has shown zero regard to the rules of Parliament. I would ask the member if he would maybe talk a little bit about what his constituents have been telling him in regards to the Liberal government and its lack of respect for parliamentary procedure, lack of respect for their tax dollars and lack of respect for respecting the will of Parliament in this situation. How do they want to see this solved?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. I wish I could answer quoting directly from my constituents, but their statements would probably be ruled as unparliamentary.

People in my home community are fed up with the Liberal government. They want so desperately for there to be an election. So many people ask me when they see me, “Why are the Conservatives not putting forward a non-confidence vote?” I respond, “Well, we do it all the time, but with the support of the NDP, this government continues to stand.”

They want an election. They realize the lack of respect that the Liberals have for Parliament after nine years. It is time for an election. It is time for the Liberals to make room for a Conservative government.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are watching a very long show. Every week for some time now we have been going over the same episode. Yes, the motion was supported by the opposition parties. Indeed, the fund we are talking about seemed rather seriously tainted, so the fund was blocked. Back home, there are companies that would benefit from this fund. However, it is being undermined by who knows what until the documents are produced. We want to have the documents.

Let us keep watching the episode. If the smoke clears tomorrow morning and we receive the documents, what does my colleague think will happen next?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a good question: What would the next step be? The motion says that the documents should go to the law clerk and parliamentary counsel for them to review, and I am sure that we would take advice from them. The order also says that the documents should go to the RCMP. The Liberals are saying that it might be problematic for the officers to deal with it. Well, they are very smart people. They have very good lawyers on staff there. They will figure out what to do and what the next steps would be.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member made reference, in a response to one of the questions from the Conservative Party, to a lack of respect. Let me highlight the fact that the lack of respect is rooted within the Conservative leadership today. The current leader of the Conservative Party was the parliamentary secretary to Stephen Harper, who is the only prime minister in the entire Commonwealth who has been found in contempt of Parliament. Fast-forward to today, we have a leader of the official opposition who is virtually in contempt of the process here on the floor of the House of Commons. No matter what the Conservatives are saying, I ask the member to recognize this.

If the member were someone from outside of the Ottawa bubble, would he be following the Conservative Party, or would he be following the recommendations of the RCMP, the Auditor General of Canada and the former law clerk of the House of Commons, who are saying that the game the Conservatives are playing is, in essence, wrong? It is the Conservatives who are wrong, no matter how much they chirp from their seats.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Parliament has the unfettered authority to do exactly what it has done. The Liberals keep trying to divert people's attention to something else, but the real issue of the day is why the government is refusing to produce the documents that it has been ordered to produce. What do the Liberals have to hide? Who are they protecting? Canadians want to know.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague continues to speak about calling an election. A million Canadians have now accessed the NDP's Canadian dental care plan. Would the member support the elimination of the Canadian dental care plan were he to form government? Is that the position of the Conservative Party?

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservative Party will put out its platform in due course. I am not going to answer that question directly, other than to say that we are sensitive to the needs of Canadians. We are, I believe, well attuned to the issues of the day, and we will have a platform that is going to be a winner in the next election.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, as I rise today, I follow a great speech by my colleague from Aldergrove, British Columbia. The member is a lawyer who has had a great deal of sophisticated input into the debate we have been having in the House over the last number of weeks. I am very appreciative of what he brings to the table as far as his legal input goes.

We have to make sure that we follow the rules of Parliament. My party and some members of other parties in the House have tried to hold the government to account for weeks so that it performs the role it is required to for Parliament. This is the executive. We are Parliament. Parliament has responsibilities, and we are here to fulfill our roles as parliamentarians. The government is trying not to fulfill its role and is trying to make Parliament as dumbed down as possible.

The problem with that, of course, is that Canada is a parliamentary democracy, and we have a sacred trust to uphold the House's rules for Canadians. They elect representatives from across this country and make sure they bring perspectives from our various ridings to the House of Commons, where we discuss issues with our peers and share perspectives.

We have rules here about how we make the government act, and the government is responsible to the House at the end of the day. I appreciate the ruling the Speaker came to that the government cannot avoid disclosing facts about the $400-million scam at SDTC, Sustainable Development Technology Canada, and has to provide information to the House of Commons that the Auditor General exposed as money misspent through that program. We have called for those documents. There was a vote in the House, and the majority said it wanted those documents tabled, as is the rule in the House.

Let us get back to the core of this discussion and look at the amendments. Right now, we want to extend the time, through a subamendment, to make sure we get those documents, because time is obviously being ignored by the government. We want those documents. Parliament is due those documents by its very rules. To ignore those rules at this point in time is tantamount to saying that Parliament does not matter. That is where the government is trying to get us to at some point in time, as if this is just a place we get to walk over, a hurdle we have to get through as the executive branch of government. It is not a hurdle. It is the Parliament of Canada.

We are coming up on Remembrance Day next week, of course. How many people have stood for Canada to make sure we have democratic values and have the ability to elect people to the House of Commons so we can pass laws and represent the people? Democracy is sacred. If we lose it, we will miss it in its entirety, and it will be very difficult to get back at the end of the day.

Every sovereign nation around the world is envious of the democratic countries around the world. The democratic countries are the most prosperous. We are the ones that involve our citizens. We are the ones that impact the world the most in what we do. What the government is trying to do is turn us into less of a democracy through this measure and half measure by half measure.

This has been happening, as my colleague pointed out, for four years now. Ever since the pandemic happened, the government has thought it is not accountable. It started with the pandemic. I was elected in 2019, and 2020 came along very quickly. The government then decided that it wanted all this money control, called special warrants, and for us to authorize a whole bunch of money so that we would not even have to sit in the House of Commons and it could do whatever it wanted.

One of the main roles of the House is to make sure that we oversee the spending of the government. It brings back estimates and brings its plans to us, and we have to approve them. We have to make sure we hold onto that and hold the government to account so it is accountable for that spending.

When I was elected, it was a great honour to sit in the House. There are 338 of us from across this country, and it is a great honour to come here and meet with people across the aisle to see how we can make this country better at the end of the day. That is not happening right now. The first step to making that happen is to follow the rules of this place. One cannot tear down the rules of this place and expect us to function as a legitimate parliamentary democracy. We have to respect that we have rules on how to interact together and how the government, which is in the front bench, responds to what the House demands of it. We have demanded many things in the House, and the government has ignored a lot of them.

I recall the government held up one of the requirements we asked of it some time ago. Members will recall that the House demanded the IRGC in the Middle East be deemed a terrorist group. That was passed by Parliament years ago, and the government decided to ignore it until it was opportune not to, doing it just four months ago during a by-election in Toronto. Suddenly this was an issue and it had to obey the House of Commons' vote, and the government acquiesced, finally. Parliament was demanding this of the government and the government ignored it.

Now Parliament is demanding documents, and those documents are about a $400-million scam. It is one of the many slush funds the government has. We are not the ones who initially started questioning what this was. It was the Auditor General who examined the books and said that a whole bunch of things were amiss. Think about that: $400 million and hundreds of conflicts of interest where members of a board were giving money to their own companies and were not supposed to be doing so. That is the definition of conflict of interest.

This $400 million was put into projects that were supposedly part of what we call the green shift or the energy transition, but the Auditor General said that most of these projects did not even qualify. This was money going out the door to projects that did not even meet the requirements of a program that was vaunted. This was the government's way of getting through the new transition that was going to happen. It turns out, as the Auditor General has pointed out, and we want the documents that show this clearly, that most of those projects did not even meet the requirements of the program as they were written on paper. It was just a whole bunch of Liberal-appointed insiders paying money to their own firms.

That is not something Canadians will tolerate. It is not something the House should tolerate. Show us the documents, and at that point in time we and the RCMP will determine if there are charges to be laid in this respect. We are not the police. Turn these documents over so we can see what charges can be laid and what should be done in this case. It is pretty clear that a lot went amiss in this distribution of $400 million of taxpayer funds. That is on top of many other programs.

When I look at all these things, I see that each minister in the front bench has gone out of their way to create for themselves some fund where they can write cheques. There is the SIF from the Minister of Industry, and the finance minister got a new fund this past year, the Canada growth fund. Of course, there is the Canada Infrastructure Bank, as well as a whole bunch of other funds. We are just pushing money through the economy.

Some of the stuff the government is pushing money into is just a bunch of money for its friends. It is business that should have happened anyway, but because the government has a Liberal insider friend, that friend puts an extra few million dollars in their back pocket. Even though the projects should have made sense without government input, government friends take the money.

We need to get back to projects that make sense for the taxpayers of this country and get the government out of this slush fund business for its friends. There are many of these examples, and we need to expose each and every one of them. This is the first one, and the Auditor General has already exposed it for what it is: an absolute scam, a $400-million scam.

What I am looking for is what follows after that. When we take a look at how much money the government has spent in the last four years, it has overspent. Some of it was spent on the pandemic. Less than half of the money dispensed over the two pandemic years went toward dealing with the pandemic. Hundreds of billions of dollars went toward some kind of shift that did not happen.

Our greenhouse gas emissions are down only a slight bit, and much of that can be attributed to the offshoring of work that used to happen in Canada. It is a ridiculous equation at the end of the day. We have accomplished nothing for the world's environment. All we have accomplished is making sure we do not have any economic activity of note in Canada.

I will speak about misinformation by my colleague from Winnipeg North, which he provides over and over again. He stands up and challenges us, and when he speaks from the Liberal notes of the day, sometimes I cringe. I cringe because we are here representing something of a higher purpose: what is good for this country. What is good for this country is, of course, making sure we arrive at good decisions. Those decisions only arrive if we do the right thing and speak to truth all the way through.

The misinformation is the notion that if we get the documents we are entitled to as Parliament, it will contravene the Charter of Rights. I will challenge anybody here to say that in 1982, when the Charter of Rights was legitimized as part of the Canadian Constitution, the drafters anticipated that some documents would not be provided to parliamentarians because some lawyer with an opinion that might be trashed said this would contravene somebody's charter rights. This is the Parliament of Canada. It is supreme. We are demanding documents and we are due those documents. Those documents should arrive, and we are standing here upholding democracy, making sure they do arrive. Nothing further has to occur. This resolves itself when the documents get delivered in their entirety, and then we investigate what happened from there. Step one is to get those documents to the table.

There is more misinformation going on, and I heard a lot of it again today in the House of Commons. Earlier this week, I had to put up with two ministers announcing an emissions cap in the oil and gas industry. How does an emissions cap work? An emissions cap works by shutting down production in Canada. That is the only way to do it. We have been shown many times by industry and by all the scientists involved that if we shut down a million barrels a day of Canadian oil production, it will be quickly replaced by other suppliers around the world, end of story. Everybody knows that.

In Canada, right now we are producing some of the most environmentally beneficial barrels of oil for the world economy, particularly for our partners south of the border. The Liberals want to penalize one industry at this point in time by using a vanity approach to what they think they are doing for the environment, but are accomplishing nothing but offshoring. That has to be challenged to its utmost, and I will stand up for people who are adding value throughout the energy supply chain in Canada, but also for the amount of technology being developed that deals with Canadian energy production to make the most efficient and environmentally friendly oil in the world. That advancement has happened significantly.

I also need to raise this, because I am not sure everybody remembers it: Canada is not a cheap place to produce oil. The reason we produce oil in North America, but in Canada in particular, is the security involved in making sure our energy sources are provided here. Otherwise, those energy sources would be supplied by other places around the world where oil is much less expensive and much less environmentally friendly, believe it or not. This energy molecule is still the most important in the world, and we continue to move it along so that we have other sources, because putting all our apples in one basket is not a good strategy.

Ensuring we have energy from many sources, like oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydro, wind, solar and geothermal, is part of our future, but we are not going to end one without punishing Canadians and the environment, because we cannot push a transition faster than it moves. That is all there is to it at the end of day. I have addressed that very clearly.

There is other misinformation we have talked about. I saw the Prime Minister stand up in the House during Question Period today and say he is standing up for Alberta oil workers, and I have never heard such nonsense. The Prime Minister, the government and the front bench are doing everything they can to punish the sector and make it seem like it is the sector that is responsible for the emissions around the world.

Yes, CO2 comes from burning hydrocarbons, but CO2 comes from every human activity. We need to try to mitigate CO2. We are doing our best, but shutting down Canada is not the solution to accomplish that.

I also speak to my colleague across the way from Winnipeg North because he has said a lot on this and it is always a speaking line off of the Liberal talking sheet of the day. The member talks about the contempt of my party's leader in the House. My leader is not showing contempt; he is doing his job, his role, as the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition. As opposed to the government's mouthpiece, he is actually sitting there holding the government to account.

We have talked about this many times, the whole notion that the Leader of the Opposition needs to have a security clearance in order to get this information. That is the government's job. The opposition leader's job is to hold the government to account on what it is actually supposed to provide here. He cannot usurp that role or he is defying his main role as the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition.

I am going to move on to a few things the members will appreciate. I have some issues around what this country is going to look like going forward, because this country is being torn apart by the government. We need to fix this budget; it is out of control. This country is $1.3 trillion in debt, with another $50 billion going into debt this year. How much debt can Canadians assume from the current public government? It has doubled since the government came into power, and it is not turning around. This notion that government debt can continue to accumulate, and Canadians can continue to bear the burden of that, only kicks the can down the road until programs do not get delivered to Canadians who are going to need those funds going forward.

Debt-to-GDP ratio is a ridiculous notion, frankly. How much money are we spending on servicing that debt? It is $50 billion plus per year, which is about $3,000 plus per Canadian household. Therefore, 3,000 dollars' worth of government services does not arrive because we are servicing a debt that is far out of control. We need to address that. We need to make sure we fix this budget and stop spending money willy-nilly, including on a $400-million slush fund that went to a bunch of insiders, to bring that back home.

We also have a $1.3-trillion deficit, which is about $100,000 per household. We can tell that to every household in Canada: “The federal debt adds an extra $100,000 to your actual debt, and you are paying the interest on that debt all the time and there is nothing you can do about it. Do not worry, everything is free in Canada. We will get you some more free programs. Do not worry about it. Nobody is going to worry about that debt. Well, your kids are going to worry about it, because somebody is going to have to deal with this.”

Kicking the can down the road is no way to address what we need to deliver to Canadians. Dealing with debt is something we have to focus this government on, because it thinks it just has to continue spending more, and it is going to make facts up as it goes along.

I did not mention the emissions cap the Liberals talked about. It ties in with the debt situation. The emissions cap is going to harm a sector that provided $45 billion to Canadians in 2022 through taxes that supply services, like health care, education and social services, across this country. I am asking how the government is going to replace that $45 billion as it does its utmost to try to shut in an industry and an asset that is the envy of the world. The government seems bent on destroying that industry. We do not know what we have until we have thrown it away; this is something we have to try to hang on to.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Chris d'Entremont]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, Public Services and Procurement; the hon. member for Calgary Shepard, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship; the hon. member for Battlefords—Lloydminster, Carbon Pricing.

[Ben Carr, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest as my colleague across the way talked about respecting the will of the majority of Parliament. The majority of Parliament believes in $10-a-day day care. The majority of Parliament believes in a national school food program. The majority of Parliament believes in putting money into investments for housing to municipalities, as do 18 Conservative members of Parliament.

If my hon. colleague believes in respecting the will of the majority of Parliament, does he also support these programs, which are supported by the majority of parliamentarians?

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a good question. I know everybody in this House wants to do well for the Canadians they represent. Whatever program that is, I am certain they want to deliver it.

I will put on the table, pushing back to my colleague across the way, that if we tell Canadians there is a new, free program but their kids are going to pay for it 20 years down the road, with interest along the way, their kids might have something to say about it first and foremost. We have to get back to that space where the programs we offer are the programs we are actually paying for, and we are not asking others to pay for them for us.

The next generation in Canada is going to have tougher choices to make because we have constrained it so badly. We should build the country of the future, not sit here and just shovel out cash today. We have choices to make. Nothing is free. Nothing can just happen. We have to make sure we look at our costing and our payments, and get the right things done for Canadians so we have a viable country going forward.