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.