Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to follow my colleague from Windsor West, the dean of the NDP caucus, in this important debate.
As our dean just said, our caucus has always been concerned about government transparency. When we look at all the NDP governments across the country, we see that they have not only been transparent but also that they are much better financial managers than the other parties. I am not the one saying that. It is the federal Department of Finance, whose end-of-fiscal files show that, over the past 40 years, NDP governments, as a collective body, manage the public finances better than all of the other political parties. We are very proud of that. We are waiting for the NDP to have the chance to form the federal government, because then we will be able to put the fiscal house in order.
As my colleague from Windsor West just said, the NDP has always advocated for whistle-blower protection. It is extremely important, because protecting whistle-blowers means having the opportunity to get the real information and prevent scandals from happening. That is something we pushed hard with the former Harper regime. We are still pushing today. We think it is important to protect whistle-blowers to both avoid scandals and bring them to light. It is important that we enable workers to report the misuse of public funds to the public while being protected. We also want to strengthen the independent offices of officers of Parliament, such as the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Office of the Auditor General of Canada. All of these elements add up to better protection for the public.
When we look at this Sustainable Development Technology Canada scandal, we see that the Liberal government's failure to strengthen these independent officers of Parliament has reduced their ability to expose the misuse of public funds. My colleague from Windsor West just mentioned this. It is clear in this case that Annette Verschuren, who was the chair of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, handed millions of dollars over to companies she had ties to. Obviously, that was absolutely inappropriate, and we need to get to the bottom of it.
Every time we have had minority governments, the NDP has sought out the truth and has tried to get to the bottom of things. Whenever scandals were exposed in one way or another, the NDP always pushed to get to the bottom of things and pass on important information to the general public. As I mentioned earlier, the NDP has also highlighted the importance of implementing solutions to prevent scandals like this from happening again. The NDP is waiting for an opportunity to put all these protections in place, because we cannot keep going in circles as Liberal scandals give way to Conservative scandals that give way to Liberal scandals that give way to Conservative scandals. During the last two Parliaments, we have at least had an opportunity to expose and get to the bottom of every one of those scandals.
In a minority Parliament, because the NDP has more weight, we have been able to expose these scandals. The much larger scandals we saw under the Harper government were all covered up, because the majority Conservative government simply refused to put into place the protections that allow taxpayers to know money is being spent in an effective way.
What I found most reprehensible during the Harper regime was the fact that not only did Conservatives cover up these scandals, and I will come back to those in just a minute, but they also strangled the Auditor General of Canada and the PBO's office. They cut funding dramatically. They did that because, of course, when Conservatives are in power, they do not want independent officers of Parliament trying to get to the bottom of these many scandals. Under the Conservatives' watch, it was terrible. It was the worst financial management we have seen in a party's history. There were myriad scandals.
We can talk about the Senate scandals and the scandals through the PMO, but let us just talk about some of the Conservative scandals that were covered up by the Conservative government members when they were in power. Unlike now, where we have a motion that is being debated, that I am sure will pass and that will direct PROC to actually do its work, in each of these cases in the Harper majority regime, Conservative MPs simply slammed the door shut on any investigation of the myriad scandals of the Harper government.
Let me just enumerate a few of them. First is the ETS scandal, which represents $400 million. We talked I think quite legitimately about the misuse of funds around the ArriveCAN app, which was $60 million. The ETS scandal was many times that, and yet Conservatives clamped down to make sure that no parliamentary committee could review it, no documents were exposed and there was no way for the public to ever know the truth of what was a misspending of nearly half a billion dollars. It is unbelievable.
However, it is not just that. I think of the Conservatives putting in place the Phoenix pay system, which cost over $2 billion. It is a scandal we are still seeing the repercussions of today. The Conservatives forced the Phoenix pay system to move forward, a system that had not worked in other parts of the world. It had not worked in Queensland, Australia and had been rejected by other governments that understood the importance of not saying yes to a pay system that was so clearly inadequate, yet Conservatives forced it through and cost Canadians billions. Even today, we are still paying for the repercussions of that.
Members will recall, of course, the Harper regime clamping down on the F-35 procurement scandal. We still do not know how that money was used. Fortunately, very good journalists were part of exposing the Harper regime and the Conservative scandals around the G8 funding, the gazebos and the money that was misspent. Up to a billion dollars was misspent around the G8, and again Conservatives clamped down to ensure that the public never knew the truth. On anti-terrorism funding, $3.1 billion disappeared, could not be found, and yet Conservatives again clamped down to ensure that the public never knew the truth.
While we are having this important debate, while we are openly referring this to committee to ensure we get to the bottom of this scandal under the Liberal government, we cannot forget the fact that the Conservative government was absolutely reprehensible in shutting down any sort of parliamentary ability to get to the bottom of things, in clamping down to ensure that the billions of dollars that were misspent or could not be found were never gotten to the bottom of and to ensure as well that they would cut the funding of the independent officers of Parliament, who do such an effective job of ensuring that the public gets the information that is a vital part of democracy.
Transparency in financial affairs is an essential component, a foundation of our democracy. What we saw under the Harper regime was all of those rules being thrown out the window. Billions of dollars were misspent, could not be found, and the Conservatives would never allow any of those scandals to actually be exposed to Canadians.
This is a matter of relevance coming to a possible election, because of the preponderance of corporate lobbyists now on the Conservative national executive, and the fact that the member for Carleton's closest advisers are lobbyists. If the Conservatives were bad under the Harper regime, we can imagine how much worse they would be now. We need transparency. That is why we need an NDP government in this country.