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.