Debates of Dec. 2nd, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Bob Zimmer, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River—Northern Rockies, BC]

Madam Speaker, in juxtaposition of what the government has been doing for the last nine years, including corruption and sending money offshore when Canadians desperately needed it here, a Conservative government, under the leader from Carleton, would bring it home and would change the way things are done. We would bring home the Canada that we all know and love. I just appreciate the Canadians out there and their patience. We need a carbon tax election, and we need it today.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House and speak on behalf of the good people of Calgary Midnapore.

I was very fortunate to have my annual general meeting this weekend. It was just so lovely to reconnect with so many supporters, so many constituents. They are also supporters of the leader of the official opposition. I am very lucky to have the mother of the leader of the official opposition in my riding. He was, of course, raised in Calgary Midnapore. I am so incredibly proud of that fact.

Indeed, many citizens expressed to me that they are very tired of the corruption of the government, of the fiscal mismanagement of the government. They are also looking forward to a carbon tax election, where finally we can return good governance to Canada and bring in the leader of the official opposition, the member for Carleton, as our prime minister. There are hopeful, happy days ahead, most definitely.

The point that I would like to raise today is just how ironic it is that, even though this is the third time that I am speaking to this motion, I actually have a new fresh list of scandals and corruption relative to the matter at hand, which is, of course, the green slush fund documents. I will start by saying, as I am sure members well know, that the leader of the official opposition has given me the honour and privilege of being the shadow minister for the Treasury Board, the President of the Treasury Board's counterpart.

Last week, the President of the Treasury Board made a lot of noise about the release of supply and whether supply would be released so that the government could continue. I think that the official opposition showed its goodwill in coming forward on the motions that were voted on late into the night on Thursday. However, if the President of the Treasury Board is listening, the fastest way that supply could be guaranteed would be to hand over the documents, frankly, to stop this charade of corruption and to really bring this to a close so that we can get on with the governing of Canada. We can work together to continue that, but as long as these documents are outstanding, we will have to continue to bring this to the attention of Canadians. That is how it is.

That was one incident that has occurred since the last time I spoke on this. As my other colleagues have mentioned, I was very fortunate this morning to be in the room at 7:30 to have a preview of the Auditor General reports. They are public now, so I can talk about them. There certainly were many damning features in the reports on the evaluations by the Auditor General. They included reports on defence procurement and that this procurement is not necessarily being timely or providing value for money. That is no surprise with the government. This is a theme we have seen. We have seen how the management of seniors' programs by the government has been poorly handled. We have many seniors living below the poverty line as a result of the government's not being able to manage its programs for seniors.

Most notable, as my colleague mentioned, was the management of the CEBA program during the pandemic. It was a failure of the Minister of Finance. Interesting facts were unearthed in this audit by the Auditor General. Accenture is the company that awarded the contract to itself and provided the vast majority of its work from Brazil. Nine per cent of those who received the money were found to be ineligible. That is really something. Of the hundreds of millions of dollars that were handed out, 9% is really a significant amount. It is no surprise after what we saw with ArriveCAN, or the arrive scam, as we like to call it, that Accenture chose to award those funds to itself. It received $313 million. In other words, 92% of the entire funds in contracts were awarded to those who were delivering CEBA.

Once again, in the Auditor General reports issued and announced this morning, we are seeing the incompetence of the government, with 9% of funds being given to ineligible recipients. Again, the same old fraudsters, scamsters and friends of the Liberal government are getting ahead. Accenture awarded 92% of the contracting to itself and then completed more than a large majority of that contracting out of country, and that is just what we learned this morning.

I have more mismanagement scandals to mention since the last time I was up here to speak. Of course, we have the two-month GST tax holiday. There are actually reports today in the news. The government certainly likes to talk about Conservatives following our leader. We are proud to support the member for Carleton, but he does, in fact, consult with us and take our opinions into account. I am not sure it is the same for members on the other side of the aisle, as I see some Liberals were not happy they did not get consulted regarding the two-month GST tax trick.

This is just another example of the corruption and mismanagement that we are seeing. Of course, this GST implementation is very unfortunate because it forces small businesses to have to make significant administrative changes for a brief period of time and then change them back. If we are talking about the mismanagement of funds, as we are here with the green slush fund, then we also need to mention the amount of government administration it will take to do this two-month tax trick.

Of course, we know if the Prime Minister were really concerned about the well-being of Canadians, he would just eliminate the carbon tax. He has not done that as of yet. Instead, he has just done this two-month tax trick. With this two-month tax trick, the carbon tax would be applied to heating, gas, groceries, farmers, those who deliver the food, the grocers who sell the food, etc. In this case, the Prime Minister took it upon himself to determine the items, specific to Canadians, for which the GST will be taken off, even though it is just for this minimal, two-month period of time.

I think it speaks to the larger problem that we are discussing here, which is the fiscal and economic incompetency of the government, the mismanagement of funds relative to the green slush fund and the Liberals' withholding of documents.

Unfortunately, this goes beyond our borders. We had, of course, our neighbour to the south, the President-elect, indicate that he was going to slap Canada with a 25% tax. The Prime Minister went down to have a conversation with the President-elect, and he did what he does best, which is take selfies with individuals. He did the same thing and was really happy to share this selfie with the world, but he came back empty-handed, as was indicated by my leader, the member for Carleton. This just shows the mismanagement of money and the mismanagement of our economy, and the green slush fund is just one example of that.

I have used the first half of my speech to talk about the new scandals and new mismanagement that has occurred, everything from Liberal insiders getting rich with the handing over of $312 million of contracts and expenditures to the two-month tax trick. All of these things are new things since the last time I was here to make some points about the green slush fund.

The 25% tariff would come at a terrible time. As I am sure everyone is aware, the Parliamentary Budget Officer expects the federal government to have a deficit of $46.8 billion in fiscal year 2023-24. That is deeper than the $40 billion forecasted by the finance minister in the April budget. This is no surprise.

In reviewing some of the documents in the Auditor General's report this morning, it was astounding that some of these initiatives that departments were mandated were not achieved because they did not have the funding. My mind struggles to understand. If the government runs a $46.8-billion deficit, how could it not achieve its mandates? It is one thing to make the decisions and to promise things to Canadians, but then to break these promises is another. A lot of times, as in the issue we are discussing here, which is the inability to hand over the documents, it can be corruption, but in other cases it is just poor planning and mismanagement.

Again, in reading these Auditor General reports this morning, I was left to wonder whether it is mismanagement. Yes, in some cases I think it is, but again, in the case of Accenture, I think it might be another case of a conflict of interest whereby Liberals are giving money to their friends.

The Conservative opposition has been fantastic in terms of exposing different areas of not only mismanagement but, frankly, poor governance. Another example that comes to mind, in addition to the green slush fund, is how the Liberal government ignored scientists and residents on wildfire risk to Jasper. I think our team did an incredible job of unearthing that. I see the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, who did fantastic work on it, as did the member for Red Deer—Lacombe and the member for Sturgeon River—Parkland.

I talked at the beginning about how my constituents, at an annual general meeting this weekend, expressed to me their interest in having a carbon tax election. Speaking of the carbon tax, this is another situation where the government refused to hand over documents. The Liberals declined to release their internal analysis of the economic impacts of carbon pricing and refused to say why they were keeping the data secret, even as they criticized the federal budget watchdog for an error in his analysis of the policy. This is another situation where the government did not hand over documents, similar to the situation we have today.

There are so many examples of the government not handing over documents that I do not even know which to choose. Another is the WE Charity. I am going back to the Liberal government previous to the current government, where it released thousands of pages of documents related to the WE matter, as the committee requested, but rather than have the independent law clerk redact information, such as cabinet confidences and personal information, the various departments responsible for this program did the blackouts themselves, which was an apparent contravention of the committee's request.

A spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office said that the redactions were done by the parliamentary law clerk, who was following the committee's direction to remove documents covered by cabinet confidentiality and personal information about Canadian citizens. However, the law clerk said in a confidential August 18 letter to the clerk of the finance committee that the vast majority of the blackouts had been done by government bureaucrats. I wonder: Under whose direction?

Another situation where we did not receive documents was one I worked on intensely, the ArriveCAN scandal. This was where the Canada Border Services Agency missed the deadline to hand over ArriveCAN invoices and declined to identify subcontractors. I feel as though this is a theme within the government: declining to identify subcontractors in addition to not handing over documents.

I am very grateful that the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan is doing such good work on indigenous procurement, because this is similar. We want to ensure that subcontractors and their practices are also evaluated to ensure they meet government guidelines, rules and regulations.

Of course, the terrible finale of the ArriveCAN scandal was when we had one of the two partners of GC Strategies, Mr. Kristian Firth, here at the bar, in front of Parliament. This is just another example of the lack of oversight of the government and the amount of corruption that we continue to talk about in the House today.

We also have the situation with the Winnipeg labs where the documents were not handed over. Again, these are the most extreme and delicate of cases, when we look at our national security. In fact, as per usual, the New Democratic Party worked with the Liberals in an effort to shut down a hearing on the Prime Minister's Winnipeg lab documents scandal. The documents detailed the infiltration of Canada's highest security lab.

The Prime Minister defied four orders of Parliament and took the House of Commons to court to block the release of these documents. In fact, that was the only time a sitting Prime Minister had done this in Canadian history. Again, this is another example where the government and the Prime Minister went out of their way, as we continue to discuss here today, on the handing over of documents and the covering up of information.

The Prime Minister's attempts to cover up interference at Canada's most secure lab has put the safety and security of Canadians at risk. In 2019, it was revealed scientists working at Canada's high security lab were collaborating clandestinely with the People's Republic of China. Alarm bells were first rung in August 2018, and it took 10 months for these scientists to be marched out of the lab, 10 months after parliamentarians first asked for these documents to be released and the Liberal government refused. Again, we have so many examples here.

Another example of where the Liberals have avoided responsibility would be the purchase of the $9 million residence in New York. We know that Tom Clark approached his good friend, the Prime Minister, and asked for a change of residence. Again, the government is passing off this blame and is not taking responsibility. It is passing it onto the bureaucrats when it needs to, once again, take responsibility.

There are endless examples. It is just excuses. As I said, the more recent examples in my speech have happened over the last nine years. However, if we look at just today, we have the CEBA situation, defence procurement, seniors living below the poverty line. Then, this week alone, there is the two-month tax trick and the unwillingness to do anything regarding the 25% tariff from our neighbours to the south.

I will close with this. Aristotle said that character is revealed through actions. Time and again, the government has revealed its poor character. Since I gave a similar speech on this same subject not long ago, it has remained the same.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite spoke about character. I am curious as to how she feels about the CBC story breaking today, that India allegedly interfered in the leadership race and that members of her own caucus were encouraged to step down from helping any leader other than their current leader.

If we are talking about character, then how does the member opposite respond to these allegations that their official leader could not win that leadership election unless there was a finger on the scale?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, I was very proud to serve as the Alberta campaign chair for the member for Carleton. I can tell the member that we swept Alberta, so I am not concerned at all about the support and tipping the scale. It sounds absolutely ridiculous. It is unfortunate that she would say such things about that. Again, it speaks to the desperation of the Liberal government.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I also had, coincidentally, an annual general meeting in Vancouver Kingsway this weekend. What I heard from the people who attended my meeting was just how desperately people are struggling right now. The figures back that up: 50% of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque; one in four parents, according to the Salvation Army, are cutting down on their food intake so that they have enough food for their children; and 80% of Canadians are worried about the holiday spending coming up, yet my hon. colleague voted against a GST cut that would reduce the expenses of an average family by several hundred dollars.

I was in the House last week when the Conservatives called that chump change. I wonder if she agrees with that. Does she think that saving an average family a couple hundred dollars this Christmas is chump change? Everybody in this place earns over $200,000 a year. Does she not agree with me that it shows a disdain for the working and poor people in our country that is unbecoming to this chamber?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, I like the colleague and appreciate him, but that is so rich coming from someone whose leader is just holding on to the horrible current government in an effort to get his pension. It is really hard for me to hear that question.

I genuinely do not believe that the New Democratic Party understands economics. The Conservatives understand that the administration of this two-month tax trick alone would create more administrative burden that would put a greater tax burden on Canadians just with the program itself. We would be far better off implementing a carbon tax removal across the board.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for her outstanding work on OGGO.

I notice that every time the Liberals get up, they are trying to distract from the actual topic at hand, which is to produce the documents for this green slush fund. It seems they must have something to hide. I wonder if the member could comment on that.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, as a member of the government operations committee, the government will go to any lengths to hide anything. We have found that time and again, whether it is its work with McKinsey or ArriveCAN. We are going to have to look into Accenture now and see what happened. There is indigenous procurement. The government knows no limits when it comes to covering up.

[Denis Trudel, Bloc, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Madam Speaker, the Conservatives have kept us from getting our work done for the past month and a half, so I am going to go ahead and do some work.

We saw some rather disturbing footage this morning. A homeless encampment was dismantled on Notre‑Dame Street in Montreal. The number of homeless people has doubled in Quebec in the past five years. Three times as many people die on the street in Quebec compared to five years ago. We definitely have a problem.

The current government cut funding by 3% for the only program that helps the homeless, the Reaching Home program. I want to know what the Conservatives plan to do to end homelessness in this country if they ever get into power, which we do not want them to do.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is obvious that the government wants to spend money. The problem is what it spends that money on. We know that the Conservative leader has four priorities, namely to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. People can expect good changes from a Conservative government with the member for Carleton as the prime minister of Canada.

[Wayne Long, Liberal, Saint John—Rothesay, NB]

Madam Speaker, I think the party opposite has about 80 pages of speech that they hand from member to member. It is almost like a fruitcake at Christmas, going around from house to house.

The member opposite speaks about accountability and transparency, so here is my question: Where is the transparency with the leader of the opposition with respect to his clearance? He refuses to get it, and more and more Canadians are wondering why he is refusing to do that.

Second, what is up with the allegations of foreign interference with respect to his leadership bid? Could the member opposite comment on that?

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, first, no one likes fruitcake and no one likes the scandal and corruption of the Liberal government.

We all know that the government should just release the names, and the member for Carleton knows that. The member for Carleton knows that if he receives a clearance, it will be the clearance that the Prime Minister wants to give him. He would like the same briefing that The Washington Post received, but he will not receive that from the Prime Minister. Then he will not be able to speak on the information he has received. It would be far more transparent if the government would release the names, but it is not willing to do that.

As for the comment on the foreign interference, the member for Calgary Nose Hill gave a very eloquent statement today and she stated exactly the truth. She is far too experienced a parliamentarian to ever be involved in a situation like this. Of course, the Liberals do not like to listen to her words, because they do not like to listen to the Conservatives and even less to strong Conservative women. This is just the same case.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Madam Speaker, in my speech this morning, I talked about accountability and transparency. I will ask my colleague about what she just mentioned about transparency and accountability. As much as I may like fruitcake more than she does, a couple of people across the way are acting like squirrels chasing nuts around. They are trying to pick up the nuts and put them in a tree so that they can be dealt with after the next election. We will deal with it after the next election.

However, there is a real conflict of interest here, and maybe this is why they are trying to distract us. We have already seen one minister who has been taken out of the government. We are very concerned about the fact that there may be more ministers. If the SDTC scandal is unveiled, more ministers across the way will be fired.

I wonder if my colleague could comment on that.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, for weeks and weeks, the former minister of employment sat here and defended himself. In fact, the Prime Minister defended him as well until he had to release him in absolute shame over identity fraud essentially. Even leading up to that identity fraud, it was just a series of moral lapses.

Where there is smoke there is fire. I have no doubt that there are so many more fires burning on the other side of the aisle, and I say that with a heavy heart. I hope I do not have to speak on this for a fourth time, but this is where the government has left me and Canadians.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Before I go to resuming debate, there are a lot questions and some discussions being had that are not really related to the privilege motion. Maybe if people can do the link to the privilege motion as they ask questions or make statements that would be very helpful. It would be good if they were on the privilege motion or the amendments.

On a point of order, the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.

Alleged Intimidation during Proceedings of the House

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

Madam Speaker, I would like to add a few things to the excellent question of privilege that was raised by the member for London—Fanshawe on Friday. I know that the Speaker will address this question of privilege in the coming days, and I wanted to add new elements and raise some important points.

The member for London—Fanshawe spoke about Standing Order 16(1), which is on decorum. I will read it: “When the Speaker is putting a question, no member shall enter, walk out of or across the House, or make any noise or disturbance.” That is precisely what happened on Thursday. It was a sad evening in the history of our Parliament. There was utter chaos.

Also, the member for London—Fanshawe read an excerpt from the House of Commons Procedure and Practice, which is our procedural bible. In chapter, 3, page 107, it states:

In order to fulfill their parliamentary duties, Members should be able to go about their parliamentary business undisturbed. Assaulting, threatening, or insulting a Member during a proceeding of Parliament, or while the Member is circulating within the Parliamentary Precinct, is a violation of the rights of Parliament.

She also cited Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, chapter 12, page 241, which states, “Any form of intimidation of a Member with respect to the Member's actions during a proceeding in Parliament could amount to contempt.”

When we consider all these aspects, there is no doubt that this is indeed a prima facie question of privilege.

I would like to add what the Chair could have done, the powers given to the Chair, from a ruling made on March 30, 2000, by the former deputy speaker Peter Milliken, who said the following when there was disorder during a vote in the House of Commons, which is a key part of our work. Deputy Speaker Milliken said, “The Chair will say that if members persist in...some other demonstration of that kind which is inappropriate in the House, the Chair will have no reluctance in directing the clerk to strike the hon. member's name from the list of those who have voted and continue to strike it if the conduct persists and, if necessary, take further measures.”

It is very clear that the Speaker could have intervened in what was an absolute collapse of order in the House of Commons during the vote. The member for London—Fanshawe was very clear, as I believe other members have been; they could not even hear whether their name had been called for the vote. That is clearly stopping their ability to do their work.

We need to get to the real issue here, and I am citing Speaker Regan on November 20, 2018, on the use of alcohol in the House of Commons. He said at that time, in the Speaker's ruling, that “it is incumbent upon all of us to ensure that Parliament is a healthy and safe workplace for everyone.”

By no means all Conservative MPs, but some Conservative MPs, had very clearly consumed alcohol before they came into the House. That is something that is strictly prohibited in any workplace. I have worked in factories. I have worked in an oil refinery and in breweries. In no place is it acceptable to come to work having consumed alcohol, especially in excess. In the oil refinery where I worked, if somebody had come to work drunk, they would have been summarily fired because not only are they putting at risk their own lives in a very dangerous work environment, but they are putting in jeopardy the lives of others in the workplace. It is completely unacceptable.

As you were aware, Madam Speaker, because the Speaker's office was notified, the pages were withdrawn from the opposition lobby because of safety issues. What an unbelievable circumstance, that the pages who do such incredible work for us, who are part of the work we do each and every day, had to be withdrawn because of the drunk and disorderly conduct of some Conservative MPs. It is absolutely unacceptable that this situation happened and it is unbelievable to me that we have not had Conservative MPs standing and profusely apologizing for their conduct on Thursday night.

I also want to say that the Speaker could have taken action and chose not to on Thursday night, and I find that extremely disappointing.

The reality is that whips have an important role in the House of Commons, and it is a codified role. I want to reference appendix II of the Standing Orders. The whip's role with regard to dealing with allegations of harassment is explicit in the code of conduct for members of the House of Commons. Whips have a semi-codified role with regard to managing the conduct of their members and the appropriateness of their behaviour. For the whip to allow visibly drunk members of the Conservative caucus to come into the House of Commons and disrupt the proceedings in a drunk and disorderly fashion is absolutely unacceptable, and the whip bears responsibility as well.

When the member for London—Fanshawe rose on Friday and offered a very fulsome and well-thought-out question of privilege, we saw a number of Conservative MPs rise and spew misinformation and not a single one of them ever responded to the question of privilege. They did not cite a single standing order or a single citation from our procedural bible because they cannot. If they try to do the same thing now, unless they are citing standing orders or citing aspects of the procedural bible that governs our activities, they should not be able to go on at length spewing misinformation.

My final point is this: In the coming days, the Speaker will be asked to make a decision on this. In my mind, there is no doubt this is a prima facie case of privilege that should come to the House and then the House can decide whether the matter gets referred to the procedure and House affairs committee.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Madam Speaker, also on this point of order, I would like to respond to the information presented by my colleague.

I will start with the argument the member made at the end, regarding Conservative MPs factually laying out the case of intimidation, and very bad behaviour by NDP MPs in the House, which included several members of the NDP caucus aggressively gesticulating to a seated Conservative member. The member for New Westminster—Burnaby made an assertion that this was misinformation. I would draw the Speaker's attention to a video on the Twitter feed of one of my colleagues, which clearly shows this did happen. As of right now, the video has been viewed over 600,000 times on various platforms. I present this formally as evidence to refute the assertion of my colleague that somehow stating the behaviour of NDP MPs is misinformation; there is video evidence of what the NDP MPs did.

The second thing the member tried to do was state that, in response to a question of privilege where somebody makes an assertion, we should be censored. I reject that.

Again, with regard to this particular question of privilege, I would reiterate that the video evidence that has been widely disseminated is not of Conservative MPs behaving badly; it is clearly of the NDP. There is a lot of pressure in this place right now. There are a lot of people saying things and I understand it. I understand the NDP and the Liberal government are facing a lot of heat from the Canadian people. The Conservative caucus was not even going to release this video. We took video evidence of it because it was so preposterous, but we thought, “We are not going to raise the temperature in the House.”

What has happened and what I would like the Speaker to consider is that the NDP was literally caught on camera. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have seen the NDP. There were at least four MPs, three for sure, who were waving hands in my colleague's face. I must commend him for his neutrality and poise in the situation. Madam Speaker, if you look at that video evidence, you will notice my colleague was incredibly poised. He was incredibly in control of himself.

I would just flip the narrative back to where it needs to be. A person from the NDP has gotten caught, with his whip. The member talked about our whip, but it was his whip, so I will use his argument against him. He said it is incumbent upon the whip to maintain decorum and order in the House. Well, it was his whip who was actually caught on video waving a finger like this and repeating these phrases ad nauseam over my colleague.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, I am not the whip. I would like the member to know that.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

That is a point of debate.

The intent is to bring new information forward to be considered prior to the decision being made. I will allow the hon. member to bring the additional information forward, which will be taken into consideration.

The hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I would ask, Madam Speaker, regarding your consideration of this matter, to underscore that the irrefutable evidence that has been presented to the House is that the NDP aggressively stormed the Chair and then aggressively gesticulated at and intimidated members of the Conservative caucus. That is what happened.

In terms of new information, I would reiterate that I believe it is incumbent upon all of us to make this place work. The NDP suggests the video evidence presented to hundreds of thousands of Canadians is misinformation. Let us not do that. That is embarrassing.

Perhaps New Democrats, like the Conservative caucus, could be part of bringing the light, not the heat, to Parliament.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

I appreciate the additional information that has been presented. We will certainly be looking into this further.

I remind hon. members that Speakers look at videos from the House and do not go to individual people's feeds to look for videos.

The House resumed consideration of the motion, of the amendment as amended and of the amendment to the amendment.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Madam Speaker, I cannot believe that I am back here today to speak about this motion. I think I spoke to this motion maybe three-plus weeks ago. It could have been four weeks ago. All of this could end if the government simply released the documents. It has stubbornly refused to do so. I can only come up with one reason. in my background as a lawyer, there is only one reason to hide something. The reason we are going to hide something is because it is so bad and so damning that clogging up the House of Commons so that no other work gets done is actually the preferable option.

We have to think about that for a minute. Liberals could have released the documents three and a half or four weeks ago and gotten on with their so-called agenda. I think it is a terrible agenda, and I think it has brought us to where we are as a country, where rent has doubled, housing prices have doubled, one in four Canadian parents are skipping meals for their children and two million people are going to food banks. We think it is a terrible agenda, as do most Canadians.

The NDP-Liberals are in a coalition. They are not. I cannot keep track. The NDP keeps voting confidence in them, so I guess they are still in an agreement, but maybe they are not, because the NDP leader ripped up the agreement but keeps voting support, so I do not know. I digress.

The NDP-Liberal government has an agenda that it thinks is working. Objectively, it is not but it thinks it is. The Liberals' decision has been that they are not going to bring forward their agenda at all because they will not release these documents. Any reasonable person has to ask themselves this very simple question. Why are they working so hard to hide these documents? A reasonable person, any person, would have to come to the same conclusion that we have, that these documents are so damning, that they are such an indictment of the government and the minister in charge, they will move heaven and earth not to release the documents. It is legitimately the only thing we can be left with. This is a scandal-plagued government. We know that. We have had a minister recently resign for a raft of scandals. He took off out of here under a cloud of scandal. Let me say that this will be worse.

It is across the entire breadth and scope of the government. We just heard today, from the Auditor General, about the CEBA business loans. There was $3.5 billion to 77,000 recipients who were not eligible. There might be some NDP-Liberals over there asking what that has to do with this. It is because this is exactly what happened at SDTC. A whole bunch of Liberal insiders got money with a process that was not the normal process. It was just a printing press for Liberal insiders. We have now looked at the CEBA business loans and we are finding the same thing. Again, this is why they try to cover up everything, because they know the truth is so damning to their incompetence and their corruption.

What is even worse, what the Auditor General revealed today is that the whole CEBA loan process was administered by Accenture in a non-competitive process. The government just gave it the contract. It gave it $313 million out of the $342-million worth of contracts awarded. Guess what? Most of the work it did was done in Brazil. It did not even benefit Canadians. We would think a Canadian program that is being managed by a Canadian company would actually be administered by Canadians. It makes little sense to me. It does not make sense to these guys because literally nothing they do makes sense.

As far as these kinds of scandals are concerned, it is kind of a strange place that we are in right now here in Canada. Every week, there is a new scandal that should bring down a government.

It has become so commonplace for the Liberals to be caught with their fingers in the cookie jar that it is hard to shock people, but Canadians should be shocked with how they have behaved with respect to these contracts. Just to reiterate, the Auditor General found in the green slush fund that 82% of the contracts were awarded inappropriately. Now that is an A-. When I was in school, if I got an A- I would be pretty excited. The Liberals have an A- in corruption. I suspect that if they keep working hard at it like they are, they could get that grade up to an A or an A+ before the next election, something they should be really proud of. That is probably what they are working hard on, going forward.

Why are we pressing so hard for these documents? It is because we know these documents are going to be so bad for the government that we have said we will keep debating this issue until it produces them. I am going to read a quote from a whistle-blower on this case so that Canadians who are watching can understand exactly why we are working so hard to get these documents produced. One of the whistle-blowers said that, “The true failure of the situation stands at the feet of our current government”. That is the NDP-Liberal government, the people over there, “whose decision to protect wrongdoers and cover up...over the last 12 months is a serious indictment of how our democratic systems and institutions are being corrupted by political interference.” Let us think about that for a second. That was from a brave whistle-blower who took a risk to expose the corruption. The words used are incredibly powerful and damning. The person went on to say that, “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.”

If we had a government that was not corrupt, someone would have been held accountable. I remember a time when there was this thing called ministerial accountability. Ministers who were found to have engaged in egregious conduct had the honour of resigning. What has happened here? The absolute opposite has happened. What has happened at SDTC is an ongoing, unfolding scandal. A scandal, according to one whistle-blower, that is an indictment of our democratic systems, and our “institutions are being corrupted by political influence”, all to award juicy, big, fat contracts from Liberal insiders to Liberal businesses from a program that was supposed to be monitored by a Liberal minister.

There are two things that could have happened. First, the minister is absolutely incompetent. Okay, so fire that incompetent minister, right? A minister who allowed this to take place is de facto incompetent. It is their department; they are responsible. There is this thing called ministerial responsibility. If somebody is an incompetent minister and they allow a raft of corruption to take place, corruption so much that it threatens our democratic systems and our institutions, that minister is incompetent and should have resigned. If the minister did not have the honour to resign, they should have been fired. That is scenario number one. Scenario number two, which is a little bit darker, is that the minister actually knew the corruption was taking place, and decided to do nothing.

We must ask ourselves this question. We are four weeks into demanding the release of the documents. The Liberals' entire political agenda has ground to a halt as a result of this. Let us think about the two options that I just presented. Was it that the minister was incompetent, so they are trying to protect incompetence? I do not think so.

Scenario two is the real scenario, that there was widespread corruption that the minister had to have been aware of and turned a blind eye to, just like the whistle-blower said, which is why the Liberals will fight tooth and nail not to release the documents, because they will show how systematic and systemic the corruption in this program was, and that it reached the highest levels of this government. Therefore, they will not release these documents under any circumstances, which is the sad but accurate state of affairs with this NDP-Liberal government.

These NDP-Liberals keep saying is, “Oh, there's no criminality; the Auditor General didn't find any criminality”, and that is true; it is one of the very few accurate statements we get. However, here is what a whistle-blower said about this: “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.” The whistle-blower is saying that they are confident that the RCMP will find criminal wrongdoing.

Let us go back to the scenarios I was just talking about before. We have two possible scenarios here on why the Liberals are not releasing the documents. Scenario one, as I said, is that we have a completely incompetent minister who allowed a whole bunch of bad apples to run rampant through this program, doling out cash and making it rain for all of their Liberal insiders and buddies. Scenario two is that we have widespread corruption. Do members remember the sponsorship scandal that brought the end to the previous Liberal government, with people stuffing money in little bags going around the place? The Liberals tried to deny that as well, if I recall. They said, “Oh, there's nothing to see here.” Well, there was a lot to see. So, the second scenario, again, with what this whistle-blower is saying, is that there was criminality.

If there was criminality, why do the Liberals want to hide the documents? We have to keep asking this question. This whistle-blower is saying that they are equally confident that there will be criminality found. Why would this person say that? It is because they obviously witnessed the criminality. Now, the criminality could have been from the the people at the department, which may well very have been the case, but if that was the case, why would the Liberals not just release the documents, because they do not have absolute control over the people who work there? The only reason they would be hiding documents that likely would have criminality involved is because the criminality just keeps moving up the food chain to people who knew, and that is the reason why they are refusing to release these documents, and why they have paralyzed this Parliament for the last four weeks in their absolute obstinance to release the documents.

They are so desperate to cover this up that they might have this go on for the next 15 months. Why? They know that the documents will bring an end to their government; they are that damning. It is the only explanation that I can see. Again, the Liberals said that there was no criminality, which is one of their defences in this. Then they said that there was no criminal intent, which is the other one. Well, it is interesting because there was a whistle-blower who talked about criminal intent; imagine that. The whistle-blower said, “I know that the federal government, like the minister, has continued saying that there was no criminal intent and nothing was found, but I think the committee would agree that they're not to be trusted on this situation.”

Sometimes we get real pearls of wisdom from people who come forward and make statements on this. I think the committee would agree that the Liberals are not to be trusted on this situation. However, what this Liberal government is asking Canadians to do is to trust it on these documents. We have produced documents and we have redacted 80%, or whatever it is, of the documents: “Just trust us. There is nothing damning in these redactions. It's just standard procedure.” I think what we have learned from these NDP-Liberals is that they absolutely cannot be trusted with these kinds of documents.

We heard way back in the day with respect to Jody Wilson-Raybould that the story in The Globe and Mail was false. Do members remember that was what the Prime Minister said? Then, remarkably, the story was actually true.

When we look at whether the Liberals should be trusted on this, I think there is no one who still wants to trust them. There might be a few hard-core Liberal supporters in downtown Toronto, but anywhere else in the country, the trust in these guys is at zero, as it should be.

The whistle-blower, Witness 1, goes on to say, “I would happily agree to whatever the findings are by the RCMP, but I...wouldn't trust that there isn't any criminality unless the RCMP is given full authority to investigate.”

Again, the whistle-blower is saying that they cannot trust them, that they think there is criminality here and that the RCMP should investigate for criminality. We go back to asking ourselves why they will not release the documents. I have said this several times, but it is really important that this point hits home: They will not release the documents, despite four-plus weeks of not getting their agenda through Parliament, because they just know the degree of criminality that is going to be found in these documents and how damning it will be for their government.

I will phrase this in a way that everyone can understand. The government has been mired in scandals for the past two years. It is not new to scandal; it is not something new or shocking. One would think that, at a certain point, the Liberals would say that another scandal is no big deal. They would just get those documents out and say it would blow over in a couple of weeks.

However, they do not. The Liberals are still obstructing Parliament and not producing the documents. It goes back to the fact that this is not an everyday, run-of-the-mill scandal. It is actually really sad when we have to say that phrase, “not an everyday, run-of-the-mill scandal” by a government. It is because of how many scandals and how corrupt the government has been proven to be that we get to use that phrase.

It is not a run-of-the-mill scandal, however, or the Liberals would just release the documents. They would do what they normally do: a Friday evening document dump. We all know it. That is when the government takes out the trash. It puts something out at 5 p.m. on a Friday, usually on a long weekend, such as Thanksgiving or the August long weekend, because the Liberals know Canadians are not paying attention.

However, the government did not even do a document dump on this. Again, it is because the Liberals know that what is in these documents will bring about the end of the government. We know there is going to be an end. When we have a carbon tax election, which is coming, that will be the end for the Liberals. They just want to desperately hold on as long as they can.

The NDP wants to hold on as long as it can because the leader needs his pension. That is why the NDP keeps propping up the Liberals at every opportunity. The New Democrats say they ripped up the agreement, but they prop the Liberals up. Unfortunately, the government is going to keep going. If it released these documents, it would actually be the end. Even the NDP would not be able to prop the Liberals up anymore, because the documents are so bad. That is why they are not releasing the documents. It is why we are where we are today. It brings me no joy to be here speaking about this another time. The Liberals have made this choice.

The conflicts that go on in this program are really unbelievable. We now have another minister mired in scandal. First, we have the minister who was responsible for SDTC; we have come to the conclusion that he is either incompetent or involved in this scheme. We now also have the Minister of Environment, who was a strategic adviser for Cycle Capital Management, which got a whole bunch of money from the green slush fund. I wonder how that happened. Given that point, I wonder why the Liberals do not want to release the documents. There are at least two ministers who we know will be very badly exposed by the documents.

I will end with this: This has gone on long enough. It is very simple. All the Liberals have to do is release the unredacted documents, and we can get back to the business of the House.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite spoke about corruption and the importance of whistle-blowers. I want to give the member the opportunity, right here today, to come forward before we hear testimony from the former leadership candidate he supported. In March 2022, he supported Patrick Brown for the leadership of the Conservative Party. However, by June of the same year, he switched to the current Leader of the Opposition.

Can the member come clean here today? Was he approached? Was there foreign interference that asked him to step aside? There will be testimony coming forward on this before December 10. He has the opportunity to tell the House today: Was he coerced? Was he being influenced to switch his leadership support?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

Order.

Again, I want to ask members to please make sure that they indicate how their question is linked to the question of privilege.

I see the hon. member is standing up. I will give him the opportunity to respond. The hon. member for Dufferin—Caledon.