Madam Speaker, last week I, along with other Conservatives, called on the government and the Prime Minister, to remove the Minister of Employment, the member for Edmonton Centre, from the Liberal cabinet, and that actually happened. On Wednesday, this Liberal minister left cabinet, and he did so under a major cloud of concern about various corrupt activities. Most acutely, it was revelations that his company engaged in indigenous identity fraud.
The company made the claim that it was indigenous-owned when it was not. It made that claim, because the minister, and the Liberal Party of Canada, had claimed that he, the owner of this company and a minister of the Crown, was indigenous when he was not. He has now left the cabinet. Some would say, “Is that the end of the story?”
We have been digging into this Liberal indigenous contracting scandal for months, and it is a scandal that includes this former minister, who is still a member of the Liberal caucus, but it is much wider than this. It reflects the phenomenon, and we are hearing from the Assembly of First Nations, that a majority of contracts that have been set aside that are supposed to benefit indigenous entrepreneurs and communities are actually going to shell companies. We have this endemic identity fraud and manipulation of criteria within the indigenous contracting program designed to allow privileged, elite, non-indigenous insiders to take advantage of contracts that are supposed to be going to indigenous people.
It is very interesting. When this program was created, there were many existing indigenous organizations that had been putting together lists of indigenous businesses, but instead of working with those existing organizations and building off those existing lists, this Liberal government decided it was going to create its own separate list where it was going to decide which businesses are indigenous, and that it was actually going to allow on that list companies and organizations that are actually not on anybody else's list.
There are instances of companies or joint ventures where all, if not the vast majority, of the benefit, is going to non-indigenous, elite insiders who are taking advantage of these programs. They do not show up on any of the other lists of indigenous-led organizations, but they show up on the Government of Canada's list of so-called “indigenous businesses”. That allows them to take contracts that the policy is supposed to reserve for indigenous people.
We know now that false claims about indigenous identity are not only rampant within this program, but were made by a minister of the Crown himself. Meanwhile, now that this former minister is out of cabinet, he remains a member of the Liberal caucus, but also his company continues to be eligible for government contracts. Now figure that one out.
The government should be taking fraud seriously, and that should include indigenous identity fraud, yet indigenous leaders have been telling me that they are concerned that indigenous identity fraud is not being taken seriously at all. There are all kinds of instances of people making false claims for their own advantage of indigenous identity in order to take things that have been promised to indigenous people. This is another case of people in the government, like the member for Edmonton Centre, who are still able to take advantage of government procurement. His company, Global Health Imports, is still eligible to bid on government contracts.
The question to the government should be why it has continued to allow systematic abuse in this program. Why has it continued to allow non-indigenous people to steal benefits that have been promised to indigenous people? Why in particular is the government continuing to allow companies like Global Health Imports, which we know now committed indigenous identity fraud, to access government contracts?
