Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the last thing the government House leader said, because I think this is the nub of the misleading nature of what the government is doing here. He said that they could not find an example where the makeup of committees did not reflect the makeup of the House. Yes, that is precisely because there has never before been a situation where a government has changed the fundamental nature of itself through floor crossings and backroom deals. Every other time, the makeup of committees reflected the makeup of the House, because that was what happened at the election. The makeup of committees reflects the democratic expression that the Canadian people provide through the ballot box.
It is very telling that the very first thing this government has done with its newfound majority powers is not to make life more affordable for Canadians, not to fully lift gas taxes, not to stop inflationary money printing or repeal anti-development laws that chase away investment and block jobs from being created here in Canada. No, instead, the very first thing they did was to make life easier for the government itself. Those are not just my words. They are words that Liberals have said as to the justification for why they are doing this. This means that they will have an easier time getting their agenda through and, most importantly, they will not have to face the type of scrutiny that opposition parties are able to provide for Canadians when the opposition makes up a majority in the House.
The committee makeup reflects the makeup of the House as the Canadian people elected it. No Canadian has been able to pass judgment on the floor crossings or endorse the deals that were offered those members who changed parties so soon after an election. These are all individuals who looked their voters in the eye, ran on a platform, a party and a leader, and then, for their own personal gain, again, their words not mine, made a decision to join the government. Again, Canadians have had no opportunity to examine what those negotiations or those talks were all about or what promises may have been made to entice members to cross the floor.
The government has made so many false statements. The government House leader says that there is no such thing as two-tiered committees. The context of that is what my colleague from Barrie South—Innisfil, with whom I am sharing my time, is going to do in a few moments. He is going to propose an amendment that would at least preserve the oversight capabilities of three very important committees: the public accounts committee, which is tasked with poring through, line by line, every dollar that the government spends; the government operations committee, which examines all kinds of government operations, making sure that Canadians understand who is getting paid, why contracts are being given and why funding decisions are made or not made, again, a very important oversight committee; and, of course, the ethics committee. This is the committee that is tasked with investigating government corruption, and this is the true reason why the government is not going to agree with our request.
Every other committee deals with legislation. If we have a bill to change the airports act, that would go to the transportation committee. If we have a bill to change the way natural resources are developed, that bill would go to the natural resources committee. Legislation does not go through those three oversight committees. All this talk about getting results for Canadians, getting things done and working in a collaborative manner does not apply to those oversight committees. We know what happens when Liberals get majority on these committees.
Another falsehood that the government House leader has said is that members of Parliament still have the power to send for documents, compel departments to hand over information and compel testimony. That is false. Members of Parliament do not have that right individually. They only have that right when a committee or the House passes a motion. Should the Liberals have a majority on those committees, we already know that they would block those efforts. We know this because that is what they have done in the past.
When the Liberals had a majority in the 2015‑19 Parliament, it took a whistle-blower, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to shine a light on what Justin Trudeau was doing, trying to inappropriately pressure her to intervene in a criminal court proceeding. After just two meetings, we had heard from Jody Wilson-Raybould and the then prime minister's chief of staff, and then committee members wanted to hear from Jody Wilson-Raybould again so she could respond to what Gerry Butts had said. What was the first thing the Liberals did when they got the floor on March 13, 2019? They moved to adjourn. They had the votes, because they had a majority, and they shut down that investigation.
There was the WE Charity scandal. This is where the Liberals gave a sole-sourced $912-million contract to an organization that had paid Trudeau family members through speaking events. The Liberals filibustered for dozens of hours and voted to shut down the investigation and stop documents from seeing the light of day.
There was the arrive scam app. This app, initially budgeted at $80,000, ballooned to an estimated $60 million. The Liberals tried to block committee investigations and hide their connections to their favourite Liberal IT contractors, GC Strategies.
Let us think of all the corruption this House has unearthed just in the last few years of the Liberal government precisely because the Liberals could not block those investigations. Because the opposition parties collectively had a majority, we could compel that kind of information. Had the Liberals had a majority on the ethics committee, the public accounts committee and the government operations committee in the last Parliament, there is no way we would have seen the head of GC Strategies in this House at the bar being admonished for the misappropriation of taxpayer money.
There was the Winnipeg lab scandal. Again, the Liberals blocked document production orders and even took the Speaker to court to try to block information from being released to parliamentarians.
There was the Liberal green slush fund with its widespread Liberal corruption. This is where Liberal insiders were sitting around as an entity that allocated tax dollars the government had collected. Liberal insiders were placed on that board. Do members know what they did once they were on that board? They funnelled money to their own companies. They wrote themselves cheques off the backs of taxpayers. When the Conservatives led the charge to shine a light on this kind of corruption, the Liberals blocked it. They voted against it.
That is what this is all about. The Liberals do not enjoy transparency. They do not enjoy when Canadians find out the truth about how they are running the government. That is why they are pushing this motion through. All the arguments about collaboration are totally false.
Our party, after the last election, said that we are facing a lot of global challenges, but we are also facing a lot of terrible Liberal policies that are driving up costs and inflation, making our country weaker when it comes to dealing with global threats. We said we would roll up our sleeves and get to work. Where we have had agreement, where there has been common ground, members have seen the opposition co-operate and ensure that things that, at the very least, do not do any further harm to the Canadian people get passed.
We have also helped fix terrible Liberal legislation. Do members remember Bill C-2, the very first bill that the current government brought to the House? It was because the government did not have a majority that it was not able to ram that bill through. It was because opposition parties got together and said that there were many things in the bill that should pass, but also many things that were huge government overreaches, such as the invasion of people's privacy, the ability to open people's mail, the banning of cash transactions and all kinds of things that empowered the state and infringed on individual liberties. We were able to block that and force the government to abandon those aspects that were huge government overreaches while at the same time passing the common-sense parts that the Conservatives have long been calling for.
This is a solution to a problem that does not exist. If the government is looking for obstruction and game playing, it need look no further than its own benches. The Liberals have filibustered for the last two weeks at the ethics committee to prevent an investigation into the finance minister's potential conflict of interest. They filibustered their own legislation at the justice committee by insisting on debating a bill that was dividing parliamentarians and was very divisive for the Canadian public, while we were calling on the justice committee to focus on real measures to make Canada safer.
At the end of the day, what the Liberals call “silly games”, Canadians call “transparency and accountability”. Every time parliamentarians tell them that there is a conflict of interest and that they have shovelled money into their own friends' pockets and their own companies, they say that it is partisanship. Any time a light is shone on their nefarious activities, they have to project and they have to demean and insult those individuals who are trying to get to the bottom of what happened to Canadian tax dollars. We make no apologies for fighting for transparency and for respecting that taxpayer dollar.
I am urging the government to rethink its rejection of our amendment. When my colleague proposes it, I hope the Liberals will get on board so they can show the Canadian people that it is not about using their power to shut down investigations.
