Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the ruling of the Speaker with regard to the production of documents ordered by the House on the scandal involving Sustainable Development Technology Canada, also known as the Liberal green slush fund.
For those watching at home, here are the facts. The Auditor General found that the Prime Minister turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal insiders, with $58 million given to 10 ineligible projects that could not demonstrate an environmental benefit or progress in any green technology, $58 million given to projects without any effort to ensure the terms of the contribution agreements were even met, and $334 million funnelled to 186 cases where board members held a conflict of interest. The very people trusted with safeguarding taxpayer dollars were funnelling money into projects they were connected to. The NDP-Liberal government shovelled the working man's pay into the pockets of elitists who provide no value to the country, in the amount of $400 million.
Canadians who are barely scraping by are watching the Prime Minister waste 400 million of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars. It is a lot of money and it is hard to think about how big the amount actually is. Here is what that $400 million means for Canadians. The $400 million could cover the costs for about 89,000 kids to play hockey. Let us think about that. With rising costs, families are barely able to put food on the table, let alone pay for a season of hockey to keep their kids active. The $400 million could cover a month's worth of groceries for over 300,000 families of four. Right now, one in five kids are facing poverty and two million Canadians are going to food banks. The $400 million could feed hundreds of thousands of them.
For seniors watching their pensions go up in smoke because of the Prime Minister's carbon tax and inflationary spending, $400 million could cover a year's worth of housing for around 10,000 of them. The $400 million could have gone toward our health care system, where one in four Canadians are set to lose primary care within a couple of years. The $400 million could hire 4,700 more nurses or 1,700 doctors to ease stress on the system. What was done with the $400 million?
The SDTC scandal is just one example of the moral and financial corruption of NDP-Liberals. A few hours from now, we were supposed to hear the fall economic statement from the now former finance minister, but she will not be delivering it because she is gone. She, like millions of Canadians, has no confidence in the Prime Minister. In her resignation today, she said the government needs to keep its “fiscal powder dry” and avoid “costly political gimmicks”. Even she admitted the government has abandoned our people, saying Canadians know when government is focused on itself. Finally, she conceded the inevitable truth that the NDP-Liberal government will come to an end.
However, let us not forget that this is from the same disgracefully awful former finance minister who blew up the deficit, raised taxes on hard-working Canadians and could not even stay within her own fiscal guardrails. Her legacy is inflationary spending, higher taxes and broken promises. The NDP-Liberal government is a national embarrassment, a dumpster fire, with nine years of inflationary spending, a ruthless carbon tax, broken immigration, housing doubled, crime, chaos, drugs and disorder, and now a fall economic statement without a finance minister to deliver it.
The Prime Minister has lost the confidence of his own cabinet. The sellout NDP and its leader appear to have more confidence in the Liberals than the Liberals have in themselves. It is clear the Prime Minister has a problem with strong women: Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott and now another one is out the door. Every Liberal and NDP member in this House knew all of these so-called programs were delivering nothing and they watched every single one fail. They sat idly by as Canadians continued to struggle to put food on the table and pay their bills.
How many across the way agree with the former finance minister? How many are willing to let this chaotic clown show of a government continue? From evidence-based policy to macroeconomic government gimmicks, it is time for the Liberal caucus to put the government out of its misery. It is time for Liberals to force a vote of confidence in the Prime Minister's leadership. Will the NDP-Liberals have the guts to stand up and have a free vote, or will the NDP leader get up on his feet and deliver today's fall economic statement?
To quote Jody Wilson-Raybould, “When the general is losing his most loyal soldiers on the eve of a...war, the country desperately needs a new general”. I agree. For the sake of our country, Canadians need a carbon tax election today. This is not a serious government, and the matter we discussed today, the green slush fund scandal, one of the many scandals of the current government, has led us here to this very moment.
A question I am always asked by my neighbours back home is, how do we get out of this mess? How do we fix all that has been broken and get back to the country we all know and love? How can Canada go from middling power to the major power it could be? For starters, we can scrap these payouts to the Prime Minister's corporate cronies for so-called sustainable development projects. We can axe the carbon tax eating away at our paycheques, our industries and our trade, and shift our focus to the power of our resources sector. It is time for us to put Canada first above all else: our workers, our paycheques and our people. Our resources represent trillions that would fuel, feed and secure the world; bring home paycheques for our people; build energy projects, reducing emissions; build economic reconciliation with first nations; and rebuild our armed forces.
For many, Canada's role in the world is often centred on what we can do with our intellectual and cultural talents. We see ourselves as a country best suited to act as a teacher, a mediator or a good example. We cling to a Canadian diplomacy from an international order of a different age, but this excessive focus on Canada's social capital can distract from the fact that we actually are distinguished on one important front: energy.
Canada is a world leader in its supply and mastery of virtually every energy resource and technology known to man. With this enviable access to the assets that fuel 21st century life increasingly reflecting real political power, Canada has the ability and the opportunity to present itself as a true leader. The sheer size of Canadian energy interests ensures virtually no corner of this planet is beyond our influence or our contribution, and should we choose to seize it, we have a unique opportunity to supply our allies with the energy they need, while also lessening the energy influence of the world's bad actors.
As economies require more and more energy, and rely more and more on supply routes from undesirable sources, the stakes and the upsides for every Canadian are high. China's energy imports have mirrored larger trends in its decisively illiberal foreign policy. Close relationships with Iran, Russia and Venezuela have kept China awash in petroleum, while Beijing plays defence for the atrocities of Putin and Maduro regimes in international forums.
In the Middle East, continued bad actions by the state of Qatar, including housing Hamas terrorists, have resulted in appropriate calls for the country's diplomatic and economic isolation. This provides ample opportunity for any nation willing to offer itself as an alternative to Qatari oil and gas, which is currently exported everywhere, from Morocco to Europe and Japan. Canada already has nuclear co-operation agreements with Jordan and the UAE. These agreements should be animated with long-term Canadian supply.
It is perhaps in Europe, however, where the geopolitics of energy are most fraught and most open to Canadian supply. Vladimir Putin spent years choreographing Germany's dependencies on Russian oil. Having exploited that to shake down Europe, he intervened in Syria and Libya to subvert pipelines that would supply Europe and amplified misinformation against our own Canadian energy, ensuring a steady stream of revenue for Russia's war machine of nearly $1 billion a day, with $250 million a day from Germany alone, to fund his war machine.
When Germany finally realized the costs of this, Chancellor Scholz and, subsequently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came knocking on our door for Canadian energy and both times we turned them away. The leadership Canada can demonstrate in offsetting these negative trends for energy, sustainable energy and energy technologies is clear. We should fearlessly pursue our economic interests by making Canadian energy resources and technologies accessible to those who want them, offsiding allied dependence on worse alternatives.
At precisely the moment the world and our people need more Canada, the NDP-Liberals want to shut down our resources. With growing uncertainty about whether this country has the capacity to get its energy to overseas markets, Canada has to do better. It is insufficient to merely repudiate the anti-energy agenda. A comprehensive Canadian energy action plan is needed to advance the essential resources that support the Canadian social safety net and can deliver Canadian leadership to a world that demands it.
We must liberate Alberta's oil sands from their landlocked status to dramatically increase Canadian oil exports and, at the same time, Canadian power on the international stage. We must open liquefied natural gas export terminals on Canada's east coast, allowing it to serve as a gateway point for Canadian natural gas to Europe, and we must limit the damage of foreign interests who have worked to disrupt Canadian energy production.
For too long, woke, leftist policies have demanded that emerging economies extend the poverty of their people and delay economic development rather than accelerate sustainable growth toward lessening environmental damage. Addressing energy poverty boldly, where the young can light their homes to do homework at night, industrial development builds smarter cities faster that pollute less and traditional energy catalyzes transformative growth, should feature centrally in our national policy.
This is not the first time Canada's national interests have encountered obstacles; Canada itself was forged by overcoming divisions with a big vision, uniting a country with ribbons of steel and advancing a shared development. For more than 150 years, our country has endured wars, depressions and hard times. Our experience as one of the oldest democracies on earth affords us the opportunity to apply the lessons of an imperfect past toward shaping a promising future.
In an uncertain world, Canada's essential rise as a power hinges on our ability to reconnect with the determination and resolve that have already overcome so much and to dispense with the corruption we have seen in the House today and over the last years. Now is the age of leaders with the courage of their convictions, with the competence to see us succeed and who will end the corruption awash among the NDP-Liberals. Now is the time for a prime minister with the brains and backbone to stand up for this country and who will rebuild our security, our military and our economy.
Let us have the election Canadians need. Let us restore the promise and put Canada first.