Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on the massive scandal at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, more appropriately known as the billion-dollar Liberal green slush fund. This is a scandal involving $400 million in taxpayer dollars that improperly went out the door, according to the Auditor General. Of that, $330 million involved conflicts of interest involving board members; that was186 conflicts of interest and multiple violations of the SDTC act.
In the face of such a scandal, Canadians can rightly ask how it is that board members who were Liberal insiders engaged in conflicts of interest funnelled tens of millions of dollars into companies that they had interests in and got away with it for so long. Very simply, how this happened and why they got away with it for so long is that, after nine years of the current Prime Minister, we have a government in which there is a culture of rot and corruption that goes right to the top, to the Prime Minister.
This is a Prime Minister who fired his Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, when she defied his unethical and unlawful orders to interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin. This is a Prime Minister who hid behind cabinet confidence to obstruct an RCMP criminal investigation into his potential wrongdoing. This is a Prime Minister who has the distinction of being the first Prime Minister in Canadian history to be found guilty of violating the Conflict of Interest Act, not once but twice.
This reflects what we have seen at SDTC, and it also perhaps explains why, as we speak, there are sitting members of cabinet who, like the Prime Minister, have been found guilty of violating the Conflict of Interest Act, including the Minister of International Trade and the Minister of Public Safety. I would also mention the Liberal member for Hull—Aylmer, who was found guilty of breaking the Conflict of Interest Act while he served as parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister.
Then there is the Liberal member for Edmonton Centre, who two weeks ago resigned from cabinet in disgrace. This is someone who got caught violating the Conflict of Interest Act when he was involved in the operations of a shady PPE company in direct violation of the act while he sat in cabinet. More than that, the member for Edmonton Centre's company has been ordered by Alberta courts to pay back clients nearly $8 million for ripping them off. It faces seven lawsuits alleging fraud, and the Edmonton police have opened a criminal investigation into the member's company.
As such, all of this is to say that there is a culture of rot, corruption and conflict from top to bottom in this government, and it has been happening from practically day one, when this Prime Minister took office. Consistent with that rotten culture, it comes as no surprise that former Liberal minister, Navdeep Bains, when he was the industry minister, appointed a conflicted person as the chair of SDTC.
Annette Verschuren was someone who no doubt had a fair amount of business experience, but she had, as I alluded to, a major problem. She had a conflict of interest insofar as her company was receiving $2.2 million from SDTC. That is a blatant conflict of interest, and it ought to have immediately disqualified her from that role. However, Navdeep Bains, being in the cabinet of a corrupt and conflicted government, said conflicts be damned, and he appointed Annette Verschuren as chair.
It was from that time onward that we saw the self-dealings, the conflicts and the mismanagement that were identified in the Auditor General's report. Almost all of it occurred under the chair at that time, Annette Verschuren, someone who was handpicked by Navdeep Bains.
At or around the time that Verschuren was appointed by Bains to serve as chair, the SDTC board adopted a conflict of interest policy that encouraged corruption. Just to give the House an illustration of what was contained in this policy, it permitted directors to buy and sell securities within companies funded by SDTC within three days of a public announcement. To illustrate this policy in action, a board member could sit in and vote to fund a company for a project that would be announced on Monday and the same director could go and buy and sell securities in that company on Thursday. It is akin to insider trading.
At the public accounts committee, the Liberal member for Beaches—East York took great exception when I characterized it as that. I would remind the member, through you, Madam Speaker, that it is completely at odds with the rules of the Ontario Securities Commission for publicly traded companies, rules relating specifically to insider trading and self-dealing. It is no wonder because, as I said, it is akin to insider trading.
Pursuant to the rules of the Ontario Securities Commission, the directors of those publicly traded companies can only buy and sell shares on a limited basis outside of the quarterly financial reporting periods. However, here we have a policy that basically allowed members to get rich with insider information. It is total corruption. If the member for Beaches—East York wants to dispute that it is insider trading, it certainly is corruption.
Not only did the policy give a green light to, essentially, insider trading, but it also violated the standards provided for in the Conflict of Interest Act. Why is that a problem? Among the problems with that is that seven of the 14 board members were appointed by cabinet. They were GIC appointments and were therefore bound by the Conflict of Interest Act, yet we had a policy at SDTC that violated the Conflict of Interest Act and also violated the SDTC act, specifically subsection 12(2), which states, “no director shall profit or gain any income or acquire any property from the Foundation or its activities.” However, that is precisely what happened again and again at SDTC.
The Auditor General found that five out of the 15 board members, a third of the board, had interests in companies that were being funded by SDTC while they sat on the board in blatant conflicts of interest and in blatant violation of the SDTC act. One such example involved the chair herself, Ms. Verschuren. She not only voted but actually moved two motions to funnel $38.5 million into SDTC companies under the guise of their being so-called COVID relief payments, payments that the Auditor General determined to be improper and outside of the scope of the contribution agreements with the Department of Industry. Therefore, it was $38.5 million of mismanagement.
This is pretty bad, but even worse, arguably, is that $220,000 of that went into Ms. Verschuren's own company, NRStor. As I noted, Ms. Verschuren is a woman with vast business experience and vast experience sitting on corporate boards. It should not take someone with that experience, and frankly it is a matter of common sense, to know it is completely unethical and a conflict of interest to sit on a board and move a motion to funnel money into one's own company. Not only is it a conflict of interest, but I would say there is another word for it. It is called stealing. It is stealing taxpayers' money, and Ms. Verschuren was found guilty by the Ethics Commissioner for that blatant conflict.
Then there is Andrée-Lise Méthot. She is a close associate of the radical environment minister. Ms. Méthot came to the public accounts committee and admitted that SDTC funnelled $10.4 million into companies she had interests in. She said that she identified she had a conflict and left the room, but of course that is not good enough. Think about it. It is not good enough in that context for a board member to say, “I have a conflict; therefore, I am going to leave the room,” and the board votes to funnel $10.4 million into their companies. Then the board member comes back and another board member leaves the room and the board votes to funnel money into that member's companies. That occurred again and again, 186 times. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It speaks to a culture of total corruption.
Yes, Ms. Méthot can argue that she technically recused herself, but come on. It is further not good enough because it violates the SDTC act in terms of not profiting, not gaining and not acquiring property. That is strictly prohibited, but there was Méthot cashing in $10.4 million in unlawful payments approved by the board. When I put it to her at committee that she had blatantly violated the SDTC act, she had no answer. It was almost as if she was taken aback, which speaks to the degree to which there was a culture of conflict and entitlement that permeated the SDTC board for so many years under former Liberal minister Bains' watch and the current minister's watch.
The ministers say they did not really know anything about it and that SDTC is an arm's length foundation. That is hardly an excuse. We are talking about a billion taxpayer dollars, and we have a former minister and a current minister who are basically trying to wash their hands clean and saying to forget about the $400 million, forget about the $330 million involving the conflicts of board members and forget the 186 conflicts of interest. They say that it was not their responsibility.
The Auditor General's report is an indictment of the lack of oversight provided under the two ministers, Bains and the current minister. It is an absolute indictment, the report, but it is worse than that. There was someone who, according to the deputy minister, was the department's eyes and ears at every one of these green slush fund board meetings, the assistant deputy minister Andrew Noseworthy. He sat there as there were 186 conflicts of interest and as tens of millions of dollars were funnelled into the companies of board members, and he appeared before the public accounts committee last Thursday.
His excuse was that he had no independent way of verifying conflicts of interest. There were 186 conflicts of interest sitting there, but he had no way to determine that there were conflicts of interest. I said to him that this was impossible, that it could not be true because there was plenty of evidence before committee that the practice at SDTC was for an agenda to be sent out weeks before the meeting. Board members were then invited to identify proposed projects in which they had conflicts of interest. At the beginning of each meeting, the secretary would then read the the names of those members who identified conflicts of interest, while Noseworthy was sitting there. Noseworthy, after he was caught misleading the committee, came up with the response that it was not his fiduciary duty to report on these conflicts and corruption.
It speaks not only to a culture of rot, conflict and corruption that goes right to the top of SDTC's leadership with Ms. Verschuren, with members of the cabinet and the Prime Minister, but it also speaks to a complete level of contempt for taxpayer money by the government.
I am just flabbergasted by that testimony, but perhaps I should not be flabbergasted, because, again, it goes back to the culture of corruption that is so embedded in the government.
Here we are, more than two months after the House ordered the government to turn over all documents relating to SDTC so that they in turn could be turned over by the law clerk to the RCMP and we still do not have the documents. It begs the question, why? The only plausible explanation is that what is contained in those documents is really bad.
Based upon the Auditor General's report, we know that there was a total lack of oversight at SDTC. We know that in some instances the ministers of the government encouraged or tolerated conflicts of interest, such as Bains handpicking Verschuren to serve as chair, notwithstanding that she had a conflict of interest. We know that these ministers had to have known that all was not well at SDTC, given the fact that they had eyes and ears sitting in on each of these meetings. We also know from the whistle-blower that despite the minister's assertion that he took action when he learned of wrongdoing, that was not so, that the minister was more interested in protecting himself and the insiders who got rich, and was prepared to take steps to cover up this massive scandal for as long as possible.
The government's refusal to turn over the documents, to black out thousands and thousands of pages is a continuation of the cover-up. The bottom line is that heads need to roll. There needs to be accountability and we need to get fully to the bottom of this massive scandal. If there is criminal wrongdoing, then the RCMP needs that evidence and taxpayers need to be made whole from the Liberal insiders. As long as the government continues to block and obstruct the House order, we will continue to stand up for taxpayers and demand the release of the documents.
