Debates of June 6th, 2024

Opposition Motion—Documents Regarding Sustainable Development Technology Canada

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, first and foremost, I would like to think that all appointees under this administration, whether Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats, independents or possibly the odd separatist, though hopefully not too many, would be responsible in that position and take actions that are in the best interests of Canada as a nation. That is my expectation.

If they do not meet the expectations, then there is a need to take action. That is, in fact, what we have seen the government do. Tangible actions have been taken on this particular issue, and we will continue to move forward in making sure that Canadian taxpayers are in fact—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

There needs to be time for more questions.

The hon. member for Berthier—Maskinongé.

[Yves Perron, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Madam Speaker, the tragedy in all this is that every time there is a Liberal scandal, they quickly cook up a fresh scandal to bury the previous one. There is no end to the mismanagement and lack of transparency.

I think that, in this matter, there are reasonable doubts that justify making these documents available to parliamentarians. Will the parliamentary secretary commit to providing them, as we are requesting? It is important that this be clear, in the name of transparency.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, we have a system in Parliament that enables standing committees to be very productive. It is the will of standing committees to meet and build up relationships that ensure a higher sense of accountability and transparency. Nothing prevents standing committees from calling before them the ministers responsible and others to take a deep dive into what has taken place. That is all good. I would encourage and support standing committees doing that.

At the same time, from my perspective, it is also important for departments and ministers to do what they can. I am satisfied that we have a minister and a government that continue to ensure there is a higher sense of accountability, having found the degree to which there were problems. We saw that more specifically this week, as the board no longer exists.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member said there are some issues at Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Let us go over the basics. Annette Verschuren, the former board chair, as well as being CEO of a Toronto-based energy storage firm called NRStor Inc., participated in approving grants totalling $217,000 to her own company. She refused to recuse herself.

SDTC awarded funding to projects that were ineligible. It did not follow conflict of interest policies for directors 88 times. The legal requirements for the number of foundation members were never met; the board was required to have 15 members, but, by 2020, there were only two. Decisions were also made without quorum. These are not “some issues”. This is a board that is colossally compromised by corruption.

Given facts such as these and more, would my hon. colleague really describe the situation at SDTC as one where there were “some issues”?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I would not want to attempt to marginalize the serious issues that the Auditor General has brought forward, and this is why I provided comments regarding the appointment of board members. There are many boards that are appointed. Whether the government appoints Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats or people who are really and truly independent to boards, I expect, as I like to think every member should, that they would behave in an appropriate fashion and respect conflict of interest and so forth. When that does not happen, I expect the government to take action, and the current government has done so. It demonstrated that as far back as two years ago in freezing new funding.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member opposite seems to have a really bad case of political amnesia. He always wants to change the focus and forgets that it is actually nine years of the Prime Minister and his party in power. They are in power for now; I hope a Conservative government will be back in office in short order. He talks about history lessons and how “Stephen Harper did this.” He probably goes back and even talks about John Diefenbaker. I am surprised he did not invoke Sir John A. Macdonald and blame him for the government's latest scandal.

I want to go back just a shorter amount of time than that to when the Prime Minister and the NDP Liberal government came into office. The Liberals said, in their 2015 election platform, “Liberals will also make government information open by default to all Canadians”.

The member talks about the high standard he is holding his government to and says that anybody who questions this is a radical, an extremist or on the fringe. Simply, given what he ran on when he came into office in 2015, if he has such “high standards” that he holds himself to, is he going to vote for the motion?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I was with the Prime Minister when we were in third party, where he talked about things such as proactive disclosure. We, in fact, put in proactive disclosure even before we were elected into government. I know the member will recall that.

As a government, we have consistently been very transparent and accountable for the many different programs we brought in, even when it came to the pandemic. Then, governments around the world had to develop and promote programs and spend a great deal of money. Whenever there has been opportunity to ensure we can have the documents required, at one point or another, the government has been bringing forward the information in a reasonable way.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Madam Speaker, with all due respect to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, he cannot deny that the Auditor General released a report. The findings of that report are absolutely devastating and require an in-depth review.

Taxpayers expect accountability. They expect us, as elected officials, to be able to shed light on this type of scandal.

Is he prepared to ensure that we are given access to all of the documents?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I have more confidence in our standing committees than some members maybe do. In fact, one may have a standing committee that is effective in building relationships and trying to get to the bottom of everything that has happened. I would encourage members to work with those who are on the most appropriate standing committees in order to take that deeper dive into the situation.

I am not trying to undermine the seriousness of the Auditor General's report. I recognize it, as the government has. The government has taken direct actions, as would have been expected. Just because the official opposition feels it has to attach the words “scandal” and “government” to anything and everything that moves in Ottawa or across the country, it does not necessarily justify every demand the Conservative Party has. It would likely cost into the hundreds of millions of dollars to provide all the documents the Conservatives would want to see, especially if we factor in—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.

Before I begin, I want to share some very bad news with the House. After nine years of this Prime Minister, the cost of housing has never been higher. Rentals.ca reports that rents have increased 9.3% year over year. That means the average rent reached $2,202 in May. This is an all-time high for rents paid in Canada. In Vancouver, rent costs $2,671; in Toronto, $2,479; in Halifax, $1,925; in Montreal, $1,763; in Winnipeg, $1,416. No one has been spared.

The cost of housing keeps soaring because this government is not building enough of it. Only the Conservatives have a plan for building homes, not bureaucracy. I wanted to take this opportunity to pass that message on. Why? We witnessed something quite incredible this week. We received not one, not two, not three, but four damning reports about this government's management.

A damning report has been released on this government's management of foreign affairs. We learned about it this week. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians also released a scathing report, which revealed that the Prime Minister repeatedly tried to cover up, deny and then downplay the impact of foreign interference on Parliament and on our elections.

It was probably a terrible day for the Liberals, but I would say that it was an even worse day for Canadians when they saw the Auditor General's reports on McKinsey, the Liberal green fund, which we are talking about today, and cybersecurity.

There have been three reports showing that this government is simply incapable of managing the affairs of the state and the money that Canadians entrust to it. It is not the government's money. It is Canadian taxpayers' money. Unfortunately, the government no longer deserves the trust of Canadians when it comes to managing the money people earn by working hard day after day, and night after night for some folks, seven days a week. Reading these reports, one cannot help but wonder how the Liberals manage to do so much so poorly.

Why am I mentioning that? The reason is that the government continues to spend freely with $61 billion in new inflationary spending that was supported by the Bloc Québécois in the last budget. What did that do? It drove up the cost of housing in a way that has never before been seen in Canada.

Food also costs more. All a person has to do is go to the grocery store on a daily or weekly basis. One has to be there to see people passing up the nicer cuts of meat for something cheaper. People have to make tough choices like that, and sometimes they cannot even buy food that is essential for staying healthy. Why? They cannot afford it. They are worried that, when they get to the register, they will find out they do not have enough money in their bank account to cover their groceries. That is what things are like now in Canada after nine years of this Prime Minister.

Last week, we moved a motion that neither the Bloc Québécois, nor the Liberal Party, nor the NDP supported. We asked the government to suspend the gas tax this summer to give a little breathing room to Quebeckers and Canadians who have been struggling with the cost of living and inflation over the past year. We wanted to give them a break and a chance to dream of taking a little vacation. Unfortunately, the other three parties rejected the idea out of hand. For purely ideological reasons, those people no longer want us to use cars. They want us to travel by bike, through bike paths or whatever, even though they know perfectly well that we do not have the infrastructure.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

It is true, Madam Speaker, that we do not travel through bike paths; we travel on bike paths. The NDP member himself is very much in favour of increasing carbon taxes. He himself voted against our motion to suspend the taxes. He is against Canadians and Quebeckers taking vacations this summer.

Today we are talking about the sixth report of the Auditor General, the subject of which is Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC. As I said, this report is damning for a number of reasons. This report covers the period from March 1, 2017, to December 31, 2023. During that time, the board of directors approved 226 projects worth $836 million. That is a lot of money.

It all started after a whistle-blower exposed what was going on by recording a senior public servant who criticized the Liberal government's total incompetence because it inappropriately awarded contracts worth $123 million.

I am going to take the liberty of repeating the statements made by this whistle-blower, given that they are the reason we are here today. Thank goodness at least one person dared to stand up and make it clear that the minister responsible, and his office, knew about the corruption within the Liberal green fund and were helping spread it. According to the whistle-blower, they then lied repeatedly. “The minister said...multiple times, that he was briefed on the outcome only on August 27, but that's definitively not true.”

These are comments from the whistle-blower who broke this scandal. Thanks to him, Canadians were able to learn about what was going on within this organization, this Liberal green fund.

The Auditor General noted that the SDTC did not comply with conflict of interest policies in 90 cases. That means that people voted on funding when they were directly involved in the companies receiving it. That is unbelievable. Unfortunately, a departmental representative attended most of those meetings but turned a blind eye. He seems to have done absolutely nothing to help prevent these conflicts of interest.

Some $76 million was allocated to projects with ties to Liberal cronies, appointed to the leadership of this organization. Some $59 million was allocated to projects that should not have received money. We are talking about money that should have gone to innovative environmental projects but instead went to projects that had nothing to do with environmental innovation. How was anyone okay with this?

The thing that stands out from the Auditor General's report is that this all started when former minister Navdeep Bains decided to dismiss the former chair and appoint one of his friends to head the fund. All the problems started there. Before that, there was no problem at the SDTC.

The other thing to keep in mind is on page 23 of the Auditor General's report and reads as follows:

We found that Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada had not received records of conflicts of interest at Sustainable Development Technology Canada....

That is understood. Further on, the report states as follows:

We found that the department had not asked for or received such information and did not determine what actions it should take when informed of conflicts of interest by the foundation.

The Auditor General concluded the following:

Sustainable Development Technology Canada did not always manage public funds in accordance with the terms and conditions....

Most importantly, she stated the following:

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada's oversight did not ensure that the administration of public funds was in accordance with the terms and conditions of the contribution agreements and with relevant government policies.

That is squarely the minister's responsibility. He did not do his job. He could have and should have put a stop to this spending spree a lot sooner. Unfortunately, he did not.

Today, we are asking that all of the material examined by the Auditor General be turned over to the RCMP so that it can get to the bottom of this matter and, most importantly, tell us whether any fraud was committed.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Madam Speaker, certainly there were policies governing conflicts of interest at SDTC. Not only were there policies, but those policies did not even comply with the legislation. They were inadequate.

That is not all, however. In addition, within SDTC, these policies were not being respected, and were themselves illegal. Furthermore, SDTC's conflict of interest policies were less stringent for the board of directors and management than for SDTC employees.

I would like to know how that can reasonably be explained. In my colleague's opinion, is that in itself enough to request additional documents so that taxpayers can get a straight answer?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question, which is so relevant. After the new chair was appointed, resignations followed as people got caught. Afterwards, it was funny to see these folks denying all the conflicts of interest, as though it were normal to vote to give themselves money and then profit from it.

The chair voted to give $217,000 to companies in which she was a shareholder. If her lawyers advised her that she could do that, the rules must have been wrong. The rules did not apply to her, but they applied to everyone else at SDTC.

My colleague is absolutely right. Changing the rules to benefit oneself is illegal. I think it is perfectly legitimate for Canadians to ask the RCMP to get to the bottom of this, because the Auditor General does not have the mandate to lay criminal charges.

Unfortunately, this whole affair smacks of criminal behaviour.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments.

Obviously, the NDP agrees that the more transparency and accountability, the better.

Furthermore, as far as accountability and responsibility go, my colleague and the Conservative leader recently discovered an interest in Montreal and the tragic events that unfolded there. The opioid and addiction crisis is a real crisis happening across the country, including in Montreal. The Standing Committee on Health went to Montreal to study the overdose crisis and meet with experts and groups working in the field to save lives. Do members know how many Conservative MPs were sent to study the situation in Montreal? Zero.

Why is my Conservative colleague unwilling to go visit Montreal and meet with organizations on the ground and doctors at the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal to find out what is really going on with Montreal's opioid and overdose crisis?

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would gladly go to Montreal.

However, I do not need to go to Montreal, because I know from reading the newspapers that tragic events are unfolding every day in Montreal. The most recent story involved a pregnant woman who was picking up her child from day care and was followed by someone. She was frightened. That is the reality we read about every day in the papers. This just goes to show how nine years of inaction on the part of this government have brought crime to a point where people are afraid to go out on the streets.

That being said, I understand why my NDP colleague did not want to ask a question about the report, because it is a very important report and, unfortunately, he will probably have to support whatever recommendations come from the top.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am going to tie in with what my colleague from Montreal just said.

Yesterday, his colleague who sits on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology, the member for Windsor West, spoke with officials who were there. He asked them a question about the fact that it was whistle-blowers who finally exposed the truth and that these people were never protected in any way. Some lost their jobs and were unable to find another job in the public service.

It is thanks to their efforts that the truth was exposed. I would like my colleague to tell me how we might protect them in the future.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague completely. We absolutely must protect whistle-blowers.

This week, I saw the Minister of Industry boasting that an investigation had been done and that SDTC had been shut down. Unfortunately, while he was boasting, he forgot to mention that the whistle-blower, the one who really brought the facts to light, is in trouble right now. The government failed to protect him.

In my opinion, it is important that we take care of whistle-blowers and that we get to know what is really going on inside the machinery of government.

[Bernard Généreux, Conservative, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak today.

Nine years with this Prime Minister in power has meant nine years of scandals. The scandals are piling up here in Ottawa at an unbelievable rate. There is a new one every day. This week, the Auditor General of Canada discovered that the Prime Minister turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal Party insiders.

This is taxpayers' money, more specifically, $123 million that SDTC awarded to close associates who were not only in a conflict of interest, but in some cases were not even eligible for funding. A total of $59 million of Canadians' money was awarded for ineligible projects, and $76 million was awarded for projects with a connection to Liberal cronies who had been appointed to positions within SDTC.

There is more. The Auditor General's report further indicates that long-standing conflict of interest management policies were completely ignored in 90 of the cases. We are not talking about one or two cases. We are talking about nearly 100 cases where conflict of interest policies were not followed. This is serious.

I was a member of the board of directors of the Port of Québec, and I owned a company. Obviously, the Port of Québec could not do business with my company. It was out of the question. It was not allowed. I do not understand how the members of this organization's board of directors were able to give themselves so much money. It is unbelievable.

More specifically, the SDTC chair, who was chosen by none other than the Prime Minister himself, misappropriated $217,000 for her own personal gain. She blatantly exploited public resources and behaved incredibly irresponsibly with regard to the ethics rules and with regard to the trust of Canadians.

Is no one in the government able to allocate those funds properly? One has to wonder. Who is responsible for preventing this type of scandal? One also has to wonder about that.

Whistle-blowers are the ones who tipped us off. They made sure that we, the official opposition, moved this investigation forward until it reached the point where the Auditor General was asked to investigate to get to the bottom of things.

The Auditor General made it clear that the responsibility lies squarely with the industry minister. This minister failed to adequately monitor contracts awarded to Liberal insiders and, in so doing, he seriously failed in his duty to protect Canadian taxpayers as well as Canadian dollars. He completely neglected the essential task of ensuring that public funds are managed with integrity and transparency. This scandalous situation is equally unacceptable.

The abuse of power and corruption are unacceptable. Canadians deserve much better after nine years of scandals from this Prime Minister. The Prime Minister and his government have betrayed the trust of Canadians with every misallocated dollar. We pay taxes. We send money to the federal government in the hope that the federal government will spend it wisely and, more importantly, offer services and products that we could be proud of. That is not the case right now.

They betray our trust with every dollar wasted and every dollar taken out of Canadians' pockets. Public funds are not there to line the pockets of Liberal cronies or to make the rich richer. Canadians are suffering and are having an extremely tough time meeting their most essential needs, namely food and shelter. While hunger and homelessness are a reality for more and more Canadians, while they cannot even live in dignity, while they are faced with choices such as buying food or paying the rent, living in a motel or living in the street, the government is turning public funds into a slush fund for its friends. How could such an abuse of power happen? How could there be such a misappropriation of funds?

The Auditor General noted that Sustainable Development Technology Canada did not comply with conflict of interest policies in a hundred or so cases; spent nearly $76 million on projects with ties to highly placed Liberal cronies in the organization; and spent $59 million on projects that should not have received money. Think about it. There is a special fund that is supposed to be used to help the environment and help the country become carbon neutral by 2050, and it is being used to fund projects that have nothing to do with the green fund. It is quite incredible.

The Auditor General also noted that SDTC also spent $12 million on projects that involved a conflict of interest and were also ineligible for funding. What is more, its chair diverted $217 billion to her own company.

Talk about a total and outrageous lack of accountability. The Liberal government is neither transparent nor accountable. It should always be held responsible for its actions, and it should always answer Canadians' questions, especially when their money is being misappropriated, wasted, invested in a corrupt and negligent way. I think I speak for all Canadians when I say that we need answers. The most important thing is making sure Canadians get answers. That is why we think this matter should be handed over to the RCMP so they can find out the truth.

Once again, we are disappointed for Canadians, disappointed for our country and disappointed in this Liberal government. However, our disappointment merely reinforces and confirms what we already knew. We need to bring common sense back to Ottawa, and we need to do it now. Only the common-sense Conservatives can put an end to the corruption, the irresponsibility and the negligence. Respecting conflict of interest policies does not seem like mission impossible to us. It should not even be an issue. At the risk of repeating myself, it is just common sense.

I took a course in business administration at Université Laval. That was in 2013, if I am not mistaken. Anyone who wants to have a governance role must absolutely ensure that there is no conflict of interest in anything they are going to do. Allocating millions of dollars to one's own companies within an organization like that is completely and utterly unacceptable.

I can guarantee that we will bring common sense back to Ottawa. Serving the interests of those who elected us, representing them properly, answering their questions correctly, ensuring they can live with dignity, all without abusing their money, now that is common sense, and that is what we will stand up for on this side of the House. Nine years of scandals is nine years too long. Canadians deserve to see an end to this long and difficult era of scandals. We want to help bring this chapter to an end. Democracy depends on peoples' trust in their representatives. Without that trust, we have nothing.

Today, we are speaking out against the irresponsible corruption that has taken place at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, an organization where a failure of governance and a continuous cycle of mismanagement have led to very serious violations of conflict of interest policies. This has led to the mismanagement of over $123 million of taxpayers' money. An RCMP investigation is absolutely crucial. As usual, the government claims to be surprised and will waste even more money on overly generously paid consultants to cover up yet another scandal.

We know that the minister was informed years ago that there were concerns regarding Sustainable Development Technology Canada, so why did the problem continue? How did the mismanagement get so out of hand? This investigation is urgent. Action is urgently needed. It is imperative that we take action as quickly as possible. Therefore I move, seconded by the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable, the following amendment:

That the motion be amended:

(a) by replacing the words “14 days“ with the words “30 days”;

(b) by adding the word “and” at the end of paragraph (f), and by adding, after paragraph (f), the following new paragraph: “(g) in the case of the Auditor General of Canada, any other document, not described in paragraphs (a) to (f), upon which she relied in preparing her Report 6—Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which was laid upon the table on Tuesday, June 4, 2024;”; and

(c) in paragraph (h), by deleting all the words after the word “Police”.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

It is my duty to inform hon. members that an amendment to an opposition motion may be moved only with the consent of the sponsor of the motion. If the sponsor is not present, the House leader, the deputy House leader, the whip or the deputy whip of the sponsor's party may give or refuse consent on the sponsor's behalf.

Since the sponsor is not present in the chamber, I am asking the deputy House leader if he consents to this amendment being moved.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Madam Speaker, I do consent with pleasure.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

The amendment is in order.

Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

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

Madam Speaker, unfortunately some Conservative members are calling it nothing more than a slush fund. I am wondering whether the member could provide some clarity. Does the member believe that the Conservative Party would in fact cut the funding aspect to the fund?