Madam Speaker, as a long-time fan of yours, I know you are a deeply thinking person, and I always appreciate the opportunity to hear your thoughts on a range of issues. With that compliment, I am hoping for all of the graces afforded to parliamentarians in this great chamber.
I am thankful for the opportunity to rise today. I will be splitting my time with my dear friend, the hon. member of Parliament for Calgary Crowfoot.
The debate today is a central one to the integrity of the nature of democracy in our country. We need to ask ourselves three principal questions. The first is why this motion is being debated today. The second is what concerns the Liberals have when it comes to opening up transparency on the Prime Minister's conflicts of interest. The third is whether the Prime Minister thinks that somehow he might be above the rule of law in this land, always knows best, can always make the right decision and does not need to subject himself to the standards of transparency that the great people of Calgary Heritage and all Canadians deserve him to be held to.
Let me start with a little reflection on why Canadians deserve answers with respect to the integrity and transparency of their government.
Canadians deserve to understand exactly what the Prime Minister's conflicts of interest are. They deserve to know that the loopholes in the Conflict of Interest Act are not being used to make politicians richer. That is why we are calling for the Clerk of the Privy Council and the chief of staff to the Prime Minister to appear before committee. It would be an opportunity for them, not to be part of some kind of witch hunt about the Prime Minister's individual conduct, but for parliamentarians and all Canadians to understand clearly what the perils might be in the screen they have set up.
Both the Clerk of the Privy Council and the Prime Minister's chief of staff are unique. As government and public officials, they are administrators of the Prime Minister's conflict of interest screen. With the opportunity to appear before committee, people deserve to know how the screen is being applied, when it is being applied and what loopholes need to be closed to protect the public interest.
This is a central issue to how our government conducts itself on behalf of the taxpayer every single day. The fact that it is even a question now was born specifically out of the Prime Minister's commercial conduct in the past.
When the Prime Minister set up his so-called blind trust, he knew exactly what went into it, so consider the likelihood that those assets have changed from the start of the trust to what it is now, seven months into his prime ministership and only a few months after he surrendered them to a blind trust. Members will remember that he has been reluctant, since being sworn in as Prime Minister after a general election campaign, to show transparency. There has been a reluctance from the very beginning. That does not build confidence and trust with the people of Canada at a time when people are very anxious about government abuse and waste in spending.
Specific to this, the Prime Minister is a very impressive business person, and I say that comfortably in this chamber. He coled efforts to raise billions of dollars in capital. He is entitled to future carried interest payments based on the performance of the fund he set up. At his previous firm, he set up a massive fund and raised billions of dollars in which he has a personal stake, but the Canadian public has no idea what is actually in that fund. Members will understand the conflict issues that the opposition is raising in good faith with the government.
The screen set up by the Ethics Commissioner does not require disclosure when the Prime Minister recuses himself when dealing with these types of issues. That is an intolerable loophole. It is an opportunity for a massive abuse of taxpayer money and massive abuse of the public trust. We are talking about a country that the Prime Minister himself has defined as one in a huge crisis. Major decisions need to be made with blinding speed, but with that must come brilliant transparency to ensure that the Prime Minister and his government are not setting themselves up to be on the take later.
This is not a different kind of government, a government worthy of trust. We are now into over 10 years of it, and historically the Liberal Party has not exactly been known as the model for public trust and public confidence with public finances. This speak to a pattern of Liberal corruption.
Canadians have seen this Liberal movie many times before. They saw it with former prime minister Justin Trudeau, who violated four provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act by accepting a vacation on a private island, of all things. They saw it in the SNC-Lavalin scandal, where the former prime minister abused his power and forayed into the integrity of public prosecutions to protect his friends and a company that has been revealed to be mired in scandal and corruption around the world, building prisons for dictators in Middle Eastern jurisdictions. We saw a prime minister who abused the idea of charitable work for our young people through the WE Charity scandal. That was supposed to be good in this country, but he engorged and enriched himself and his family through it. We saw a prime minister who stood by the arrive scam app, an app that was designed to try to keep Canadians safe, and who spent tens of millions in development on phony companies and phony front organizations.
That is the just the tip of the iceberg. This is a record of abuse that stretches into the tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Massive spending was required in the context of an international crisis, but so much of that money is completely unaccounted for. It is not exactly a record of trust.
Now we have a Prime Minister who could cash in on nearly 100 conflicts of interest, according to statistics expert Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch, who appeared before committee. Ninety-nine per cent of the decisions the Prime Minister makes are not subject to conflict laws. The Prime Minister told Canadians that they needed to sacrifice while he financially benefits from offshore tax havens. This is not the kind of confidence that Canadians expect of their government. It is not the kind of trust that we would expect to see built over the months the Prime Minister has had, despite the support of Conservatives, to move major projects forward.
These ethical failures of the Prime Minister and his government are already an opportunity to investigate a bit more how he views ethics and integrity. Internationally, there has been the beginning of a disaster. We have seen the government and the Prime Minister dispense with something as simple as the rule of law and basic human dignity when it comes to standing with the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, instead siding with terror organizations and rewarding them with statehood. That is one of the highest failures of ethical standards and moral judgment.
The Prime Minister is now ensconced in not just one trade war but two with the United States, which were uncalled for and require Canada to stand strong and united, but he is not turning to resolving a deal with the United States. Instead, he is creating strategic partnerships with the world's biggest rivals in Beijing. The People's Republic of China does not deserve a strategic partnership with Canada. It deserves strategic concern on a range of issues that touch on natural resources, data, technology and the economic growth of our country. For all of these issues, the Prime Minister will be making massive infrastructure decisions with respect to the future of our country, and he, himself, may be personally incentivized in them.
Finally, there is the unleashing of our resources. The Prime Minister is in Asia this week without a single deal to offer the Asian markets that have lined up for our resources. They want to end their reliance on dirty dictator energy. They want to partner with Canada on our resources, the most cleanly cultivated in the entire world with the most stable market for long-term partnerships. However, he did not arrive in Asia for the purpose of doing this, but in anticipation of a meeting with the leadership of Beijing to try to deepen a deal with bad actors.
The decisions made when the Prime Minister looks at the ethics of our country and the screens he sets up, not just to incentivize himself, are for the national interests of our country, the prosperity of our people and, indeed, the security of our western security architecture. That is why this is important.
If this is truly a new government, as the exact same Liberals claim, then they should prove it, flip the page on Liberal corruption and be transparent with Canadians. Should they not want to close these loopholes? Should they not want our people to know that decisions are made in the public's best interest, not in the partisan interests of the Prime Minister or for his personal enrichment?
With that, I will conclude my comments. I hope this Parliament and this chamber pass the amendment we proposed today.