Debates of Sept. 27th, 2024

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I will resume and summarize where we are. We are debating the Speaker's ruling on the privilege motion on the Prime Minister's department, the PCO, redacting documents against the House order to provide documents regarding the Liberal green slush fund to the law clerk to be transferred to the RCMP for investigation.

Where I left off was in the middle of discussing the various conflicts of interest of the various directors. Members will recall I was talking about the director, Andrée-Lise Méthot, who owns a company called Cycle Capital. Her companies have received $250 million, before and during her time on the green slush fund board, and her lobbyist, before he came to the House, was the current, radical Minister of the Environment.

In his time as the lobbyist for Cycle Capital, when he lobbied 25 times in his last year before entering the House, the PMO and the industry department gave over $100 million in green slush fund money to Cycle Capital. Shockingly, the minister still owns shares of that, even though, as a cabinet minister of government, he participated in discussions that gave the green slush fund another $750 million, of which over a quarter has gone to that company. He still owns shares in it. He has not disclosed what they are worth. I know he is familiar with orange jumpsuits, but I think this needs to be explored more by the RCMP, and hopefully the documents will show that when they are transferred.

I will speak also about another board member handpicked by the Prime Minister, Guy Ouimet, who has admitted in committee that $17 million of green slush fund money went to companies he has a financial interest in. He said that it is a small amount of money. It may be a small amount of money to him, but it is not to most Canadians, and that amount of money, he admitted, had gone up 1,000% in value since that investment was made in 2019. It pays to be a Liberal insider.

I will bring our attention to another director, a fellow named Stephen Kukucha from British Columbia. Stephen Kukucha was a political staffer to former Liberal environment minister Anderson, and he was the organizer for the Liberal Party for the Prime Minister in British Columbia. As a reward, they put him on the green slush fund board. Surprisingly, we have another Liberal on the board in whose company he had a financial interest. In his time on the board, the companies he had a financial interest in received almost $5 million from the very board he was serving on. He said they were small amounts of money, but in committee, unlike Mr. Ouimet, he did not have the courage to say how much the value of his investments had gone up. That is why these documents need to be produced and why these directors need to be investigated.

We all know about Annette Verschuren, so let me talk a bit about one of the processes that they established. They established something called accelerators, and those accelerators were outside organizations that the board hired to vet proposals and make recommendations to the board. One of those was an organization called the Verschuren Centre at the University of Cape Breton, which is in the name of and was set up by the chair of the green slush fund.

There is MaRS Discovery District at U of T. Members probably know that. Can members guess who chairs MaRS? It is the chair of the green slush fund, Annette Verschuren.

Companies would be screened through board member-controlled organizations, and shockingly, their companies got recommended to the board for funding. That is just a pure coincidence. With 82% of the transactions that they approved, nine directors were conflicted. These directors do not represent 82% of the green technology industry in Canada, yet their companies got 82% of the funding. It is strangely a pure coincidence with these hand-picked directors from the Prime Minister.

We are debating the issue of systemic conflict of interest and corruption in this green slush fund. We only know right now about $390 million because a forensic audit has not been done by the Auditor General. The Auditor General did a sampling of things.

The Ethics Commissioner has not investigated any of the other directors, other than the one my colleague from Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes asked to be investigated. When I asked the Ethics Commissioner if he had the power to investigate anyone who is a GIC appointment, he said yes. When I asked him why he had not investigated the other eight GIC appointments put out in the Auditor General's report as having conflicts of interest, where money flowed to companies they had an interest in, do members know what the Ethics Commissioner said before a committee? He asked what the point would be in investigating GIC appointments of people who are no longer on the board. That is what the Ethics Commissioner of this institution said. I said that because the taxpayers pay him to discover and expose conflicts of interest of GIC appointments, appointments by the Liberals, of featherbedding insiders funnelling money, perhaps he should do his job for a change. He is not doing his job. He was shocked that anyone would ask him that.

Why is all of this important? Every one of us was sent here to be very careful when spending the hard-earned money Canadians make that we are privileged to oversee. That is an essential part of our job. This organization stuffed its own pockets with taxpayer money, yet the Liberals are fighting it. They say it is not their role. Taxpayer money that we oversee was authorized by this Parliament and the Minister of Industry is responsible. For 40 months, he sat there, with an ADM in every meeting, the current Minister of the Environment, and did absolutely nothing until it made it into the press.

This is corruption like we have never seen in Canada. This is why we have asked for the documents, because the Liberals are hiding documents. This is why they are resisting and hiding the documents, because they know there is more corruption there with their hand-picked directors. If we were a private sector institution, we would be turning those documents over to the police to investigate. That is our job. No, it is not just the job of the police to go to the courts to seek that. It is our job to expose the corruption in the things we have authorized money for in this Parliament. It is our job, and it is time the Liberals started caring about it.

[The Acting Speaker, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

Before moving on to questions and comments, I would like to inform the House that the volume of earpieces will now be reset. Members using their earpieces at this time will have to readjust the volume.

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.

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

Mr. Speaker, contrary to the false impression that the member tries to give, there is a blurring of judicial independence here. He needs to recognize that the House of Commons, which has the supreme authority or power, is now saying that it wants to get this information in order to hand it over to the RCMP.

Even the Auditor General and the RCMP have issues with the direction the Conservative Party of Canada is taking today. If we were to use the same very principled arguments the member is attempting to get across, can members imagine what would have happened with the Conservative ETS scandal of $400 million, which is, from what I understand, in part still going through the court process?

The Conservative Party is directly trying to interfere in a dangerous area and violating the Charter of Rights, amongst other issues.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, why am I not shocked that the Liberal member for Winnipeg North wants to cover up the corruption by saying it is somebody else's responsibility? It is our responsibility. I know he has spent most of his life in public office, so he may be unfamiliar with how a company works.

A company works like this. When it discovers there has been malfeasance by employees, its job is to turn that over to the police and to let the police investigate. It does not have to go to court; it calls in the police. We own this company, the taxpayers. We funded this company. The member and the Liberals do not seem to accept that it is our job to call in the police when we see corruption with respect to appointments by the Liberals in something that is funded by Canadian taxpayers.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets noted that the minister had to have been aware of this corruption over the months he has been in office, during which millions went out the door and there were conflicts of interest. Last week at the public accounts committee, there was bombshell testimony from the whistle-blower, who characterized the minister's conduct in this matter, among other things, as corrupt and deceitful.

Would the member comment on the testimony of the whistle-blower and on the whistle-blower very specifically pointing the finger at the minister?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. Two whistle-blowers, in fact, have been very brave individuals who came forward to expose this. A year and a half ago they got absolutely no response from the industry minister but did get a response from the CFO's department saying this was huge. The minister did nothing until it was public. That minister, the current minister, had a senior assistant deputy minister in every single board meeting, where 82% of the time they were voting for money for their own companies.

It is beyond credulity, beyond believability, that the minister claims, in a Hogan's Heroes Sergeant Schultz sort of way, “I know nothing”. He had a senior official in every meeting. That official is obligated to report to the deputy minister and the minister. I do not believe the minister knew nothing. I believe the minister was incompetent and enjoyed the featherbedding of his Quebec colleagues on the board.

[Alex Ruff, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for laying out just how deep this corruption is and how implicated the current minister is. Because I think he understands more of the historical context of how far back this goes, to even the former minister of industry Navdeep Bains, and how the PCO and PMO were warned about these potential conflicts, I wonder if he could explain to Canadians just how far back this goes and how deep this corruption is with the current Liberal government.

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the Harper government cleaned this up and put in a new chair, Jim Balsillie; hired a new CEO; and got a clean bill of health from the Auditor General and Treasury Board in 2017. Then the chair, Jim Balsillie, started to criticize the government in public on its lack of action on the surveillance economy. Guess what Navdeep Bains did. He said Balsillie had to go because he would not shut up about criticizing the government.

The Liberals tossed Balsillie out and put in a chair who, they were told repeatedly by SDTC, should not be in the position because she was the first conflicted chair in the history of SDTC. Even a former PMO staffer, who did communications and was in SDTC, phoned her colleagues in the minister's office and the PMO and said this person was conflicted. Guess what former minister Navdeep Bains said. By the way, he is the guy in charge of the highest cellphone rates in the world at Rogers now. Former minister Navdeep Bains said the government would manage the conflict. They sure managed the conflict, with $390 million of taxpayer money going to conflicted directors.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am stunned that my colleague said somehow the Harper government had cleaned up messes when we had so many cases of corruption that the Harper regime refused, shut down Parliament on, so we could not get information. There was the $3.1 billion that could not be found around anti-terrorism activity. The G8 fund, and a gazebo, was a billion dollars, and the Harper regime shut it down so we could not get to the bottom of it. There was the F-35 procurement scandal. The Phoenix pay system that we are still afflicted with today cost $2.2 billion, and the Harper government refused to have any sort of inquiry on it. There is the ETS scandal, which is $400 million, and again, the Harper government shut it down.

Why did the Harper regime shut down all of the inquiries into all of these scandals? Do Conservatives finally admit they were wrong to refuse to get Parliament to get to the bottom of these incredible, atrocious Conservative scandals?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps the NDP House leader missed the news that his boss, his party's leader, ripped up the deal with the Liberals. He does not need to use the PMO talking points anymore. He can be independent and maybe support the position of the member for Windsor West on this, rather than undercutting his own party's member.

On that issue, why is the member issuing PMO talking points to bury the corruption in SDTC? Why is it that he is deflecting onto other things and will not talk about the issue before Parliament today and the parliamentary privilege breach of the government? The House leader should be concerned about parliamentary privilege breaches. Apparently, he is not. He is more interested in spewing PMO talking points.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the extreme discomfort the Conservative Party is causing the Auditor General and the RCMP would potentially compromise them. However, the member says, “It's okay. It's our job”. That is the response he gives. I wonder if he could indicate if it is also the Conservative Party's job to deal with the issue of foreign interference?

We found out, earlier this week, that in not one but two Conservative leadership campaigns there was alleged foreign interference. Is it not “our job” to find out and get to the bottom of that? Was his current leader impacted by foreign interference? Is that what killed the leadership ambitions of Erin O'Toole? Should we not do our job and get to the bottom of that too?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal member is part of a government that did not want an investigation into foreign interference. He is a member of a party that refuses to release the 11 names of parliamentarians who have been compromised. He does not believe in that. He is deflecting from the issue of the supremacy of Parliament.

I know Canadians did not give you a majority, and you are sad about that; you will not be getting it next time either. However, a majority of people in the House, representing Canadians, said these documents need to go to the RCMP. Why do you not listen to the people?

[The Acting Speaker, Gabriel Ste-Marie]

I would like to remind the hon. member that he must address his questions through the Chair.

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, can the member indicate if the Conservative Party, in his perspective, is compromising in any way or making it uncomfortable for the RCMP and the Auditor General?

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Mr. Speaker, we are doing what responsible parliamentarians do. Any responsible business, when it uncovers corruption in its own organization, turns it over to the police. Why will he not let it be turned over to the police?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on your finding of a prima facie question of privilege arising from the Liberal government failing to abide by a clear and unequivocal order of the House, namely to turn over documents relating to a massive scandal involving Sustainable Development Technology Canada, more accurately known as the Prime Minister's billion dollar green slush fund.

On June 10, a majority of the House, not only Conservatives but also New Democrats and Bloc Québécois members, called on the government to turn over all relevant documents to the RCMP to shine a light on the self-dealing conflicts, corruption and law-breaking that have mired the SDTC foundation, or again, better known and more accurately described as the green slush fund. For three months, the Liberal government has obstructed that order of the House, and in so doing, it has once again demonstrated its utter contempt for the House and the supremacy of Parliament.

It is all part of a pattern of cover-up by the current minister to protect Liberal insiders who got rich by ripping off Canadian taxpayers. The level of scandal and corruption at the green slush fund is truly staggering. It was laid bare in the Auditor General's report issued last June. The Auditor General found, among other things, that $400 million in taxpayer dollars went out the door improperly at the green slush fund. That is $400 million out of the $800 million in the green slush fund.

I should note that was just based on the sample by the Auditor General because the Auditor General did not do a full audit of SDTC. Even with that sample, she found $400 million. If a full and complete audit had been undertaken, it is almost a certainty that she would have identified tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars of taxpayers' money that improperly went out the door in addition to the $400 million that she identified. Of the $400 million that went out the door, the Auditor General found that a staggering $330 million involved conflicts of interest of board members.

In some instances, board members voted to funnel money into their own companies. In fact, the Auditor General found 186 cases of conflict. Essentially, just to provide Canadians with a picture of what was going on at this Liberal green slush fund, board members were appointed by Navdeep Bains and the minister. These were board members who all had various financial interests in green tech companies.

Funding decisions would come up at board meetings. A board member would say they had a conflict of interest and step outside the door, while all the board members knew that was that board member's company, and the board would then approve the money to go into that board member's company. The board member would then come back in, and another funding decision would be considered. Another board member would say they also had a conflict of interest, they would walk out the door, and the board would then approve funding to that board member's company. Then that board member would come in and another board member would step out and on and on it went, rinse and repeat. Talk about a total racket.

This went on 186 times since 2017 according to the Auditor General. The times that board members walked out the door were instances where, arguably, compared to other conduct at the green slush fund, they acted ethically. In 90 cases, the Auditor General found that board members actually sat in, deliberated on and voted on funnelling monies into companies that they had an interest in or had a conflict of interest with. There were blatant conflicts of interest in 90 cases. I would submit that is not only a conflict of interest, but that is out-and-out corruption and out-and-out theft.

One person who was involved in voting to funnel money into her own company was none other than the chair, Annette Verschuren, who was hand-picked by the former corrupt Liberal minister Navdeep Bains. She actually said, to her credit, she had a conflict of interest upon Bains tapping her on the shoulder. However, Bains said it did not matter, that conflicts of interest did not matter to him or to the government, and they would manage the conflict of interest. Of course, that set the tone for the culture at SDTC.

What did Annette Verschuren do? She actually sat in and moved two motions to unlawfully funnel $38.5 million out the door in so-called COVID relief payments. By unlawful, I mean monies that went out the door in contravention of the contribution agreements that the green slush fund had with ISED or Industry Canada. Not only did $38.5 million improperly go out the door in those so-called COVID relief payments, but $220,000 was funnelled into her own company, a company in which she was the CEO, founder, majority shareholder and sole director. She moved a motion and voted on sending $220,000 to her own company.

Ms. Verschuren is a sophisticated business person but it does not take a sophisticated business person to realize that when they are a shareholder, sole director and CEO of a company, it is completely unethical and improper to be sitting on a board, moving a motion and voting on funnelling $220,000 to their own company. However, that is what she did and it is one example of many of conflicts, self-dealing corruption and law-breaking at the green slush fund. The Ethics Commissioner, last month, found Ms. Verschuren guilty of breaching multiple sections of the Conflict of Interest Act. I underscore that Ms. Verschuren's misconduct merely scratches the surface of self-dealing.

To that end, I would note that another bad actor at the green slush fund is Andrée-Lise Méthot, the CEO of Cycle Capital. This is someone whose firm has received, and the companies connected to her firm have received, more than $40 million from the green slush fund. This is someone who sat on the board as tens of millions of dollars went out the door. The Minister of Environment happens to be a shareholder. He happens to have worked closely with Ms. Méthot prior to his election. We have a minister in the government who is profiting off the conflicts and corruption at the green slush fund. Perhaps that may explain the total lack of interest in getting to the bottom of the corruption.

It must be noted that, through all of the meetings involving conflicts and self-dealing, a senior official in the minister's office sat in on those meetings. This was not just any senior official. The assistant deputy minister sat in on 186 conflicts. In that regard, we have a government that turned a blind eye and was essentially, in so doing, complicit in the corruption at the green slush fund.

Members need not take my word for it. They can take the Auditor General's word. Paragraph 6.74 of the Auditor General's report reads, “an assistant deputy minister of the department regularly attended meetings of the foundation's board” and “that the assistant deputy minister's presence at meetings provided an implicit agreement by the department for any decisions that the board made.” In other words, it was wink-wink, nudge-nudge. They were going to turn a blind eye to this corruption. That is the finding, essentially, of the Auditor General.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Edmonton Strathcona seems to think that $400 million going out the door is a funny thing. Well, I certainly do not. I think it is a very serious thing. It is too bad that she and her party sold out time and again to prop up the corrupt Liberal government.

Be that as it may, we have that finding from the Auditor General. The minister says that he had no idea. Now, given that his assistant deputy minister sat in on each of those board meetings, it is beyond belief to accept that the minister had no idea.

In the unlikely event that the minister did have no idea, it does not really get any better for the minister because this means that there was either one of two scenarios. Either the minister knew and turned a blind eye to corruption, and was therefore complicit in the corruption, and I would submit that that is the likely scenario, or the minister had lost complete control of his department, in which case the minister is utterly incompetent. In either case, the minister has demonstrated himself wholly unfit to serve in the high office that he holds as minister of industry.

The minister's failures and complicity in all of this is not speculation. Last week, a whistle-blower appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. His testimony about the minister's conduct in this entire matter was absolutely devastating. The minister would have Canadians believe that he only learned about this in February 2023 when a whistle-blower came forward. Essentially, in February 2023, it was going public, and the minister really had no choice politically but to act as though he was doing something.

Therefore, the minister appointed a firm to investigate, RCGT, and frankly, the scope of its investigation was inadequate. According to the whistle-blower, RCGT came back with an interim report in May 2023, which the minister blocked from being released. The minister blocked the release of the report. Not only that, but according to the whistle-blower, the minister tampered with evidence that was being considered by the RCGT report. He actively intervened and tampered with its investigation as he pushed for further delay and to water down the findings of RCGT.

Then, when the report was issued in the fall of 2023, despite it being a very damning report that identified many of the conflicts that had been confirmed by the Auditor General, the minister kept the corrupt board in place. He kept his corrupt Liberal friends, people he and Navdeep Bains appointed, in place so that they could continue to enrich themselves. At the very least, he did not see to any level of accountability and he, according to the whistle-blower, ignored the consensus within the department that this rotten and corrupt board needed to go, needed to be fired.

To that end, I would cite the testimony of the whistle-blower, who said at committee last week, with respect to the minister and with respect to the government, the following:

...I think the current government is more interested in protecting themselves and protecting the situation from being a public nightmare. They would rather protect wrongdoers and financial mismanagement than have to deal with a situation like SDTC in the public sphere.

I would submit that this is a damning indictment of the minister. Further to that, the whistle-blower characterized the minister's actions, among other things, as corrupt and deceitful. The minister has a lot to answer for.

Let me again say that 400 million tax dollars were improperly spent from the green slush fund. That $400 million is only scratching the surface of the corruption that likely took place beyond the conflicts that have been identified. So massive is this scandal that the former deputy minister of industry was recorded as saying, “It was free money. That is almost a sponsorship-scandal level kind of giveaway.” That was before the report of the Auditor General. Based upon the findings of the Auditor General, the green slush fund scandal is significantly bigger than the sponsorship scandal.

In the face of corruption, self-dealing and conflicts, it is enough obstruction and enough delay. It is time for accountability. It is time to ensure that those who abused positions of power are held to account. To that end, as a step in doing that, it is necessary for the government to abide by the order of Parliament and turn over all relevant documents to the RCMP in the face of this corruption. It is long past due to call in the Mounties.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is important to correct some of the misinformation being provided by members opposite. To try to give the false impression that the government does not care about tax dollars is simply wrong.

We have had direct ministerial involvement in resolving the issue, and we have not seen resistance at the committee stage, where we have seen even more accountability on the issue. We are working co-operatively with the Auditor General of Canada in regard to this.

What we are really dealing with today from the Speaker's ruling is the blurring between parliamentary supremacy and judicial independence. The Conservative Party of Canada believes that it can take any file, get information from it and hand it directly to the police, negating any responsibilities to the charter. Does the member have any issue with taking that kind of responsibility?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, when the member claims that the government has been co-operative all along, he is uttering a falsehood. I have been involved, along with the member for South Shore—St. Margarets, in trying to get to the bottom of the corruption, and every step of the way, the Liberals have voted to block and obstruct the ability of various committees to do their work. They have voted against every motion to produce documents, for example.

The minister failed to fire the board. The minister dragged his feet in finally taking any action. Only when the Auditor General released her damning report did he see fit to fire the board. With respect to the inaction of the government, do not take my word for it; take the word of the whistle-blower who called the minister's actions corrupt and deceitful.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the order of the House to produce documents was made on June 10. If I am not mistaken, today is September 27. That is a rather long time, and yet the principle is clear, is it not? The House can request any document that it deems appropriate to request.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks of a government that does not give the House the documents it should, when the government must be accountable to the House. If my colleague's party takes office one day, will it do the same thing or will it give the House the documents it requests?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, what it demonstrates is the total and utter contempt that the government has for Parliament and for the supremacy of Parliament.

We have Liberal members challenging the validity of a Speaker's ruling. They are trying to defend what is tantamount to the blatant obstruction of a clear and unequivocal order of the House. I would note that it is not an isolated incident. This, again, is part of a pattern of the Liberal government, which, for instance, blocked the production of documents relating to the major national security scandal at the Winnipeg lab, forcing the Speaker of the House at the time to go to court.

It is part of a pattern of cover-up and corruption by a rotten and corrupt Liberal government.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that speech was a little rich coming from the member. This is a member who has shown to have very little moral authority. In fact, he is one of the only members in this House who has had to have his statements taken out of Hansard by a committee because they were found to be so offensive.

Realistically, he is part of a party that has been plagued by scandal after scandal. He talks about the release of documents, but when the Harper government was asked to release documents on the Kairos scandal, the Bev Oda “not” scandal, they prorogued Parliament.

From my perspective sitting in the NDP, I look at all the moral failings of the Liberal government, but I certainly do not see a solution with the Conservatives.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, talk about pathetic. The member has exposed herself for propping up the Liberal government and proving how phony of a display it was when her leader ripped up the agreement and then turned around the next day and said maybe he would prop up the government. Then, sure enough, when he and the NDP had an opportunity to vote non-confidence, they propped up the government.

Here we have massive corruption involving $400 million that improperly went out the door, and instead of holding the government to account, the member for Edmonton Strathcona has spent her time heckling me and is now using PMO talking points to deflect attention and protect her coalition friends, the Liberals.

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

Mr. Speaker, could the member elaborate on the level and scale of some of the issues that have been talked about in the House? Our colleague from Nova Scotia indicated in his speech earlier today that roughly $330 million is being abused versus about $42 million from the old ad scam days of the Liberal government. Could the member just put into perspective how much damage this has done to taxpayers' money?