Madam Speaker, I am speaking tonight about the Liberals' indigenous procurement scandal. We need to be very clear about what indigenous leaders have repeatedly told us at the various committees that have been studying this: that abuses of indigenous procurement under the Liberal government have become systemic. The Assembly of First Nations said “the majority” of those who benefit from these procurement set-asides are actually not indigenous. Liberals have trumpeted a 5% target, but Chief Joanna Bernard from the AFN has said it is closer to 1%.
We have repeatedly heard from indigenous witnesses, and every indigenous group has said there are serious, major problems in this program. Sometimes it is people like the member for Edmonton Centre, outright pretending to be indigenous for personal advantage. In some cases, they are shell companies or shady joint ventures that are set up to exploit these programs with all the benefit going to non-indigenous actors.
This week, we had another example revealed of this, a very significant example. This was a non-indigenous company, a Canadian health care agency, that was supposedly in joint venture with an indigenous company. The reality was that, according to the evidence we heard, the indigenous side of the partnership was exploited. All of the benefit and all of the work went to the Canadian health care agency. This was years ago.
At the time, the auditor himself came forward with the fact that he thought there was criminal activity, the invention of names of employees and fraud going on. People attempt to defraud the government, we know that, but in this case the auditor told the government about an instance of fraud, and he was told the government did not want to bring it to the RCMP. He recommended it be brought to the RCMP, and unbelievably, the government decided not to share this information with the RCMP.
We have the issue with the member for Edmonton Centre pretending to be indigenous and his company, Global Health Imports, misrepresenting itself as indigenous-owned to try to get these contracts. We have now this issue of a Canadian health care agency. More broadly, we have indigenous leaders saying that, systematically, there are abuses of this program. Then, the Liberal government is interested in championing claims that it has made progress in terms of its target, so it has an incentive to turn a blind eye when these abuses take place.
On the one hand, we have bad actors, non-indigenous companies, that have an incentive to misrepresent their identities, to pretend to be indigenous to get these contracts. On the other hand, we have a government that is more interested in virtue signalling than in actually achieving results. It is more interested in being able to make statements claiming it has realized its targets when it has not. Companies misrepresent themselves as indigenous to get these contracts and the government turns a blind eye to be able to say it has achieved targets that in reality it has not achieved.
We have seen over the months that Conservatives have been looking into this and bringing attention to this abuse that Liberals have tried to cover it up, tried to cast aspersions at us and make all kinds of claims to bury the reality. However, here is the reality: We know now that they had information brought to them about criminal activity, fraud, by those pretending to be indigenous in order to take contracts intended for indigenous people. The victims of this are the taxpayer and indigenous communities. This evidence was brought to the government, and the government, in fact, buried it. It did not bring it forward.
Why have the Liberals failed so badly and why have they not prioritized results?