Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.
Sustainable Technology Development Canada was launched in 2001 to support businesses to innovate and create new sustainable technologies. For more than a decade, and under both Liberal and Conservative governments, SDTC had a few problems, but nothing major, until the current Prime Minister took office.
In 2016, the Liberals changed the process for appointments, claiming it would be open and transparent. In 2019, the Liberals were frustrated with then-chair Jim Balsillie, who had spoken out against government legislation, and they decided he should be removed and replaced.
The former minister of industry, Navdeep Bains, proposed two options for Mr. Balsillie's replacement. One of them was Annette Verschuren, an entrepreneur who had been receiving SDTC funding through one of her companies. There was a clear conflict of interest with Ms. Verschuren, so one would think, with this new and open transparent appointment process, Ms. Verschuren would have been disqualified immediately. One would be wrong. Former minister Bains, ignoring several warnings about her conflict of interest, proceeded with the appointment within three weeks of Mr. Balsillie's removal.
With the arrival of Ms. Verschuren at SDTC, an environment was created in which conflicts of interest were tolerated and managed by the board. Board members would go on to award SDTC funding to companies in which they held stock or positions. Minister Bains appointed five more of the board members, who engaged in unethical and illegal behaviour by approving funding to companies in which they held ownership or seats on the board.
Officials from the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development sat on the board as observers and witnessed 96 conflicts of interest, but they did not intervene. Former minister Bains would be replaced in January 2021 by the current minister, and in November 2022, whistle-blowers began raising internal concerns with the Auditor General about the unethical practices at SDTC.
In February 2023, the Privy Council was briefed by whistle-blowers, and it commissioned two independent reports. In September, the allegations became public, but it took the industry minister a month to agree to suspend funding to the organization. In November, the Auditor General announced that they would be conducting an audit of SDTC.
That brings us to this week, with the damning report outlining how $123 million of taxpayer money was misappropriated and misused by the board. The Auditor General's report is one of the most damning I have ever seen in my adult life. It is way worse than the sponsorship scandal of the 1990s, I might add. The report outlined that SDTC did not follow conflict of interest policies in 90 cases and $76 million went to projects connected to friends of the Liberals who sat on the board. SDTC spent $59 million on projects that were not allowed to be awarded any money. Moreover, SDTC spent $12 million on projects that were both in a conflict of interest and ineligible for funding. In one case, Ms. Verschuren siphoned off $217,000 to her own company. The report makes clear that this scandal falls squarely on the shoulders of the government, on the current minister, who did not sufficiently monitor the contracts that were given to Liberal insiders.
At last night's Standing Committee on Industry and Technology meeting, the government was quick to gloat over how many clean-tech projects have benefited from SDTC. However, when witnesses were questioned, they failed to admit to the corrupt nature regarding the funding and conflict of interest of these projects.
My colleague questioned the witnesses who were responsible for making appointments, yet the SDTC communications manager failed to take any responsibility for the conflict of interest cases. We continued to ask officials how decisions and appointments were made, but time and time again, the government failed to take responsibility for its corrupt practices. Instead, it pointed to broad administrative processes that had no bearing on the questions taxpayers were demanding be answered.
It seemed as though the whole team had amnesia, and they failed to provide the committee with answers on how these decisions were made or the relationship to the Auditor General's report.
I will again ask what my colleagues asked of the Liberal government last night. Nobody really knew what was going on, nobody had any involvement in the appointments process, and the government was completely guilt-free of anything that happened. Maybe today we can get some answers from Liberal members about what they did wrong and how they are going to fix it.
When former minister Bains was questioned as to whether he had read the Auditor General's report, he could not even say he had. It is absurd that a former minister and current vice-president at Rogers Communications would not take the time to read such an important report before going to committee.
It is hard not to feel disappointed in one's government when there is a new scandal every day. In 2015, the Liberals promised to be the most open and transparent government in Canadian history. Very quickly, Canadians learned that this is not the case. We saw this in 2019, when the Prime Minister pressured former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to give a get-out-of-jail-free card to the corrupt SNC-Lavalin and fired her for refusing to do it. We saw this in 2020, when the Prime Minister granted hundreds of millions of dollars to WE Charity, an organization his family had financially benefited from. He then prorogued Parliament to shut down the investigation and avoid accountability. In 2022, when we first started to hear of foreign interference in Canada's democracy, the Liberals continued to cover up.
This week, we asked Liberals numerous times to name the MPs involved; they refused to do so. After nine years, Canadians know that they will not get any transparency or accountability out of the government. At this point, Canadians have so many scandals before them that they are becoming numb to how bad things really are. They are no longer able to expect the government to be open and honest with them or to take responsibility for its actions, which should be the bare minimum expectation of any government.
We cannot continue to allow the government to get away with this level of corruption. More than $100 million was handed out to Liberal insiders with clear conflicts of interest. Therefore, the Conservative Party today is calling upon Parliament to get the requisite documents and to get to the bottom of what happened at SDTC, to get to the bottom of how taxpayer dollars were misappropriated in such a clear and deliberate way.
Canadians do not have a lot of trust left in our institutions. I hope the Liberals will vote with the Conservatives today and allow Parliament to access the information we are seeking. This will give Canadians, the RCMP and law enforcement the clear tools they need to hold people accountable, so Canadian taxpayers know where their money is being spent and how it is being used.
Again I will point out that last night's industry committee meeting was one of the most disappointing displays I have ever seen in the close to five years I have been in the House. The Liberals clearly could not answer a single question, nor did they want to. It was delay and obfuscation at a level I have never seen before.
Parliament needs to know how Canada's money was spent. Parliament needs to know that this will not happen again, and Canadians need to be assured that we will not waste their taxpayer dollars in this way ever again.