Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton Griesbach.
This issue is serious. New Democrats will support this motion. We have supported shedding more light on this because we believe in the support of sustainable technology, but it has to be done with accountability and it has to be done with a process that builds public confidence. This motion would provide a clearer path of where we need to go because the Liberals continue to be in some type of spin cycle that they cannot get out of and will continue to be in until there is actually justice on this file.
SDTC was created under Jean Chrétien's government. It has survived all the way through successive Liberal and Conservative governments over this period of time and, most recently, it has poked its head out again because the workers brought forth the erosion of a good program and some good investments that were costing Canadians.
What is important to recognize, too, is that all the other competition that was going on for money in SDTC, which is 100% publicly funded, was lost because corrupt and poor decision-making processes, political interference and intimidation sent money to projects that should not have been supported. By the organization's own internal investigations, which are now shedding more light, it probably had political favouritism involved at the very least. That is unfortunate because all those other companies, investment strategies, programs and services are now cast in doubt. To this day, we have not recovered a single cent from all that money that went out there.
The practices got so bad that during the pandemic the government just decided it was going to give everybody a 5% raise because it could not bother to go through the files. The government gave up and decided to just give everybody 5% more across the board in funding. On top of that, there was also 10% more for some select companies and, surprise, surprise, familiar names have popped up and political connections have popped up. There still has not been a word from the government about what it is going to do about that.
During that process, some managers were getting bonuses. They should have declared a conflict of interest. Some managers would get their packages, would go into the boardroom and would know it was all on the table there. They would leave for a moment and then they would come right back into the same room. They would do that over and over. What was awful was that there was a direct connection to the minister's office because we had a public servant staffer in there.
During all that decision-making process, all that camaraderie and all that time at the board table, there was no information apparently brought back to the minister; nor recognition at a time when we had not one, not two, but now three reports about how poorly it operated, about how poor the decision-making process was and about the culture of racism and sexism. An attack on French workers as well was noted in terms of the whistle-blowers. Some people lost their jobs and they had to sign non-disclosure agreements just to get out of there so they and their families could be protected.
I had an amendment that I wanted to propose today that would call on the government to apologize. Neither the government nor the minister nor anybody has apologized to these workers and their families for the stress that they went through every day having to go into a toxic workplace, being pressed to hand out government money to people it should not have gone to, and being maligned in the public as SDTC spokespeople defended the organization and the culture there at the expense of the whistle-blowers.
I had a motion that was ruled out of order because of the document requirement. Part of this motion is different from what I was proposing, so we will look for another way to have the government to at least say sorry. How sad is it that I had to come here today to get the government to say sorry to the whistle-blowers?
I want to go back for a second. Let us recognize what has happened here. The government created SDTC at so-called arm's length because then the workers were not unionized and it had fewer supports and structures for workers and their families.
I asked the government if it would at least, in all these months of investigations and circuses, allow those employees to get out of this toxic environment and have another public service job, but no, the government could not even do that. It could not even do that for the remaining people who have held the line and done the right things. We still do not know who is going to be migrated over to the other agency.
They do have an association, so there will be better rights there. I do not know the full story right now, and we do not even know if that is what they wanted. Perhaps some of them still wanted to go somewhere else and start a new chapter, doing the right thing. We should have at least provided the choice for them. The government has not done that, and part of that is because of its insincerity in protecting workers. The government's recent decision on anti-scab legislation does not mean it has changed its culture against workers.
I asked that there be an independent evaluation to determine whether managers and people in authority, including board members, should keep their positions and be migrated. That is a fair thing, because there are probably some good people in there who do not need to be blanketed as part of the problem of workplace bullying.
We had the Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton report, the confidential report of the special committee and the Osler report. The Privy Council Office got a report, and now we have the Auditor General's report, all because a number of people raised issues about people like Annette Verschuren and others who were in conflict of interest in deciding where money should go and where it should not go. This is the biggest part of this that we want to fix, if we are going to have the confidence of the public for doing work for sustainable technology.
I asked my colleague where the Liberals are on this, so let us get an idea here. The Liberals continue to leave all these people on their own. They cannot say sorry, but they had enough energy to buy a pipeline and manage the politics of a pipeline, at 37 times the cost and with less accountability. They are putting that on the shoulders of the workers to whom they still cannot even say they are sorry.
An interesting thing has come about in this culture that still exists under Liberals. I recently got a document. As we are looking at a potential strike and border closure, here is what the departments under the governance of the President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Public Safety should know about. Their management plan right now to deal with our customs officers on the front line is an email that went out to their staff and to the unionized workers saying:
As stress and anxiety rise with the pending strike deadline of Friday, June 7th, 2024 16:00EST, we wanted to send out some clarifying information to our team. Some officers across the county have received letters deeming their positions “essential”. In essence, this means that they are to report to work for duty (our team) despite being in a legal strike position. These determinations were made with PSAC and TB collaboration. For those officers who did not receive notification and therefore were not deemed “essential”, you have the choice to either participate in the legal strike actions or continue to report to your current work (our team). Whatever decision each team member makes will be respected and kept private. We will not be disclosing who was deemed essential and who was not. We will continue to support each other and continue to ensure our team is a healthy, supportive team, free of any harassment. Should any team members who were not deemed “essential” decide to continue to report to work, please PRIVATELY email me...as such reporting will be recorded to ensure those who reported are continued to be paid.
This attempts to bring in scabs and break the union. Right now, our border could be closed for the economy and is being compromised for safety. The President of the Treasury Board has a recommendation to treat these workers like every other border officer and every other public safety officer by giving them the “25 years and out” and also ensuring the workplace is safe for all of us.
Shame on the Liberals for the continuing practices of their management and for not caring about the workers who actually fight for Canadians every single day.
