Garnett Genuis

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2024]

Who wrote them?

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, when it comes to the issue of double-dipping, we know that the company owned by the member for Edmonton Centre, Global Health Imports, is still eligible to bid on government contracts, even though that company has engaged in indigenous identity fraud by falsely claiming to be indigenous owned based on false claims that the former minister was indigenous.

It is our position in the Conservative Party that this company, owned by a member of the Liberal caucus and responsible for indigenous identity fraud, should no longer be eligible to bid on government contracts. We are calling on the government to actually take this issue of indigenous identity fraud seriously, to respond to the expectations of indigenous leaders and to protect taxpayers' dollars.

Would the member from the NDP who just spoke agree with us that Global Health Imports, which is owned by the Liberal member for Edmonton Centre, should no longer be eligible for government contracts?

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on comments the member made about indigenous identity fraud. We have been studying the Liberals' indigenous contracting scandal and how non-indigenous elite insiders, such as the member for Edmonton Centre, have had companies try to gain access to government contracts that are supposed to benefit indigenous entrepreneurs. One of the concerns I have been hearing from indigenous leaders is that indigenous identity fraud is a growing problem that is not taken seriously. The penalties that would normally be associated with fraud do not seem to be applied in the case of indigenous identity fraud.

We have people in various places, including when they seek government contracts, pretending to be indigenous and not facing any consequences. Even if they are found out and are not able to access whatever the opportunities are, there are still no penalties. We see this happening with the former minister from Edmonton Centre, in particular with his company. The company he owns is still eligible for government contracts. In other instances of fraud, this would automatically be taken more seriously, yet Liberals are turning a blind eye. They are not taking it seriously. They are not applying penalties when a company or an individual misrepresents themselves for commercial advantage by pretending to be indigenous.

Why does the member think the Liberals have consistently failed to take the concerns of indigenous leaders seriously when it comes to the growing problem of indigenous identity fraud?

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate working with my colleague from the Bloc on the various issues of Liberal scandal.

I want to ask the member specifically about the company owned by the member for Edmonton Centre, who is still a member of the Liberal caucus. This company continues to be eligible for bids on government contracts. It has committed indigenous identity fraud, falsely claiming to be indigenous-owned, and continues to be owned by a member of the government caucus. Our position in the Conservative Party is that this company should no longer be able to bid on government contracts. It does not make sense for a company that has committed indigenous identity fraud and is owned by a member of the government caucus to simultaneously be bidding on government contracts.

Would the member agree that Global Health Imports, owned by the member for Edmonton Centre, should be barred from bidding on government contracts?

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member suggests I may have the record for moving the most reports for concurrence of any member. I want to thank him very much for those kind words. It is very gracious of him to acknowledge my work in that regard. I am very proud of having had the opportunity to put important motions on substantive policy issues before the House.

In this particular case, I spent my entire speech talking about the issue, which is double-dipping. We could end this right now. The government could commit to ending all double-dipping. The government also does not seem to like the debate over the privilege issue. We could end that right away if it would just agree to hand over the documents.

This is a minority Parliament. If we have a majority of the House wanting to see something, ordering the government to do something, the majority of the House should have its way. When the majority of the House says that it wants to see the documents, those documents need to be handed over. When we have the majority of the House saying that the government should end this double-dipping, the government should comply with that.

We end up with a deadlock in the House when the government, which is representing a minority of the seats, and a very small minority in public opinion, nonetheless insists on defying the wishes of the House and of the people of Canada. That is where we are right now, and the member needs to reflect on how his government is refusing to listen to Parliament and the people. If it did listen to Parliament and the people, if it ended double-dipping and handed over the documents that were ordered, then it would be a straightforward matter of proceeding on to the next order of business.

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, this motion is about policies that allow outsourcing to people who are inside the house. It obviously does not make sense to allow outsourcing to people who are already inside the house.

It sounds to me like the NDP members are saying that they would oppose any instance whatsoever of the government using outside contractors. We have said that there has been a significant growth in spending within the public service and there has also been a significant increase in outside contractors. There are people hired to hire other people, and there are instances of people being brought in to provide strategic advice, such as those at McKinsey, which should be provided by those within the public service.

We think we can cut down on the abuse of this outsourcing, and there are obvious instances of corruption, the misuse of this, that can clearly be eliminated. That is what we have committed to tackle right away.

[Committees of the House, November 25th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I move that the 37th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, presented on Friday, March 22, be concurred in.

I will be sharing my time.

I think colleagues know about my general fondness for poetry, so as I move this motion with respect to Liberal corruption and double-dipping, I thought I might elevate the conversation by briefly reflecting in verse on last week's events:

He sought to increase his fee
By pretending that he was Cree
What an obscene joke
Shared an address with coke
Wait, not Cree, but Métis
What a corrupt and insane notion
He sure caused quite a commotion
Edmonton Centre is fired
Calgary Skyview may be hired
Could we see a porch pirate promotion?
For his false indigenous boast
The minister now is toast
Texts regarding the other Randy
Now that sure was handy
Calgary eyes a minister for Canada post
Will this scandal cause a prime ministerial shift?
Or will he just run off to watch Taylor Swift?
We need a new direction
And a carbon tax election
To end this corruption and grift.

It is great to see colleagues from all parties applauding that verse.

We are debating concurrence with respect to the 37th report of the public accounts committee, a very short report that puts forward a very simple proposition. It says, “That the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to prohibit any government employee from simultaneously working as an external contractor.”

It is really incredible that this even needs to be discussed, because the whole point of contracting out work is that the expertise or the ability to do the work does not exist within the public service. Conceptually, the argument is that if we do not have someone inside of the public service who can do a particular job, maybe there is a case for contracting out to an external company to do the work. Maybe there is some logic to that. However, we found that there are cases where the public service is contracting out to somebody who is also a public servant, which is incredible. The government will say it does not have expertise internally, so it goes outside of government to contract with an external company, and that company is owned and operated by someone who is inside the public service. It obviously makes no sense.

We found out that David Yeo, benefiting from the arrive scam scandal contracts, was, according to his LinkedIn page, simultaneously a government employee and a government contractor. We asked him at committee how it was that, according to his LinkedIn page, which is not exactly a private source so someone could have checked it, he was simultaneously a government employee and an external contractor, and that this did not line up with the timelines that he presented to the committee. He said that LinkedIn was not an authoritative source, except that it was his own LinkedIn page, which he controls. We therefore had this contractor and government employee telling us we could not really believe the things he wrote on his own LinkedIn page.

It was in the context of testimony from David Yeo at the public accounts committee and revelations by public servants that we heard this is actually allowed. According to the rules of the Liberal government, someone can simultaneously be an outside contractor and a government employee. I put forward what I think was a common-sense motion to say that the committee report to the House that it calls on the government to prohibit this. There is no need to contract out the work if there is somebody inside of government who can already do that work. Opposition parties do not always agree, of course, but all three opposition parties thought this was common sense. However, the Liberal members on the public accounts committee voted against the motion. They said, “Wait a second; we are not so sure now ”, and they voted against it.

Now will be the chance for all members of the Liberal caucus to vote on double-dipping. Should we allow people who are government employees to simultaneously be outside contractors to the government, or should we end this practice so that we are contracting out as little as possible? Certainly, we should not be contracting out to people who are already in. This absurd practice of double-dipping should end. That is why we put forward this motion. It has the support of a majority of the House, and I hope to see it pass today. We will see how the Liberals vote when they have the chance.

We found more recently that double-dipping is not just a phenomenon that involves lower-level folks. These are still insiders in a substantial sense, but are at a lower level within the pecking order, folks like David Yeo. We also found out that the former minister of employment, the member for Edmonton Centre, not only had double identities, but was involved in double-dipping. He owned a company that was bidding on contracts with the federal government while also being a minister in the government. He has a company, Global Health Imports, that according to text messages he was directing while in cabinet. He was a minister of the Crown, and he owned and directed a company that was bidding on work from the government that he was a part of. He was making a generous salary from the taxpayer as a cabinet minister and was also double-dipping through this pandemic profiteering company.

This is a company, as members will recall, that falsely claimed to be indigenous-owned. The former minister himself made all kinds of contradictory claims, finally admitting that it was not true that he had any kind of indigenous identity. However, in the process, the Liberal Party claimed that he was indigenous, and his company claimed to be indigenous-owned based on claims he had made and claims the Liberal Party had made on his behalf. This false information was put forward to try to allow this company, owned by a minister of the Crown, to double-dip and benefit from contracts that came from the government. It is really unbelievable the extent to which the former minister went in misrepresenting his identity and to which the Liberal Party supported him by misrepresenting his identity, and he has continued to benefit from his ownership of Global Health Imports.

It is important to emphasize for the House that this scandal is not over. The minister has now left cabinet and has said that he would like the opportunity to defend himself and respond to the allegations. That is great. I think he should have the opportunity to come to committee and testify and answer important questions, because we certainly need to get to the bottom of what happened here. However, the company he owns is still eligible for government contracts in spite of the fact that we now know, as the minister has admitted, that the claims made by Global Health Imports that it was Indigenous-owned were totally false. Despite knowing that this was an instance of indigenous identity fraud, that company continues to be eligible to bid for government contracts.

It is, frankly, disgusting that the Liberal government does not take the growing problem of indigenous identity fraud seriously. It is very serious, and does not just apply to procurement. Having engaged with many indigenous leaders on this issue over the last few months, I know there is a broad-based concern about indigenous identity fraud. People who are not indigenous, often elite insiders seeking more power and benefit for themselves, pretend to be indigenous in order to gain some kind of advantage. It could be access to academic opportunities, access to platforms and recognition, or any number of things. In this case, we are talking about access to government procurement, which are opportunities that were supposed to be aside for indigenous entrepreneurs. However, now we have people pretending to be indigenous who are not indigenous trying to steal those opportunities. The minister's company did this.

Although the minister is out of cabinet, he remains a member of the Liberal caucus and his company continues to be eligible for these contracts, so the double-dipping persists. It is time to end double-dipping, end the corrupt grift that has gone on under the government and stop the member for Edmonton Centre's company Global Health Imports from double-dipping and bidding on government contracts. It is time to have a new government that stands for the interests of everyday Canadians.

[Public Services and Procurement, November 20th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, it is really unbelievable that the government persists in its arrogant pretense that everything is totally fine. The member did not at all mention the fact that today, a minister of the Crown left cabinet because his company was trying to abuse this program. She said, “extremely rare instances of bad actors”. That is completely the opposite of what we were told by the Assembly of First Nations and by many other indigenous leaders.

The government is not listening. Indigenous leaders are telling us that abuses are rampant in this program, that there are companies that have received hundreds of millions of dollars through abuses. They are not indigenous but they are benefiting from this. We have a member of the Liberal caucus who is a bad actor in this whole process.

Again, will the government show some humility and stop pretending everything is fine, listen to indigenous leaders and actually recognize that there is a big problem?

[Public Services and Procurement, November 20th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I said a few weeks ago that the Liberals' indigenous procurement scandal was the biggest scandal we have seen yet, and I think Canadians saw why today. A senior Liberal cabinet minister from Alberta with multiple different areas of responsibility, the member for Edmonton Centre, left cabinet because of the Liberals' indigenous procurement scandal. Now members across the way think this is funny. It is not funny.

The Assembly of First Nations has told committee that a majority of the contracts that are supposed to be going to indigenous entrepreneurs, supporting economic development in indigenous communities, are going to shell companies. Indigenous leaders have been repeatedly testifying at committee that there is rampant abuse in a program that is supposed to benefit indigenous entrepreneurs and communities. People are pretending to be indigenous. There are shell companies and there are abuses of joint ventures, where virtually all of the benefit goes to a non-indigenous company. This is the abuse that has been happening, and we have been talking about it for months.

However, it has just recently come out that a company owned by the former minister of employment, who just resigned, was pretending to be indigenous in order to try to get government contracts. Therefore not only is there rampant abuse of the program by people who are not indigenous but are pretending to be indigenous or trying to take advantage of the program in other ways, but also there is a former member of the Liberal caucus who owns a company that pretended to be indigenous-owned when it was owned by a minister of the Crown who is not Indigenous.

The former minister repeatedly misrepresented himself. The Liberal Party, in its public statements, identified him as indigenous and said that he was part of the Liberal's indigenous caucus. Every other member of the caucus still identifies as indigenous, but he acknowledges that he is not, even though he was a member of it. In various situations, he falsely represented himself as being indigenous; this was part of a political story he wanted to tell, but it was also the basis on which the company he owned pretended to be an indigenous-owned company and tried to get contracts on that basis.

The former minister's company is not the only instance of abuse. Again, the AFN is saying that it happens with the majority of companies getting the contracts. There are companies like Dalian Enterprise and a Canadian health care agency, which got over $100 million each and where there were very clearly abuses of joint ventures. These are companies that were taken off the indigenous business list but nonetheless profited significantly while they were on it. This is absolutely disgusting.

Indigenous peoples in this country are experiencing unacceptable levels of poverty. The government came in with high words about reconciliation, yet here we are today. The Liberals came in promising reconciliation, and nine years later a minister of the government is leaving cabinet because he pretended to be indigenous and used that pretense to try to advance the commercial interests of his own private company by getting contracts from the government. The government defended him for far too long. He remains a member of the government caucus, and his company remains eligible for government contracts.

Will the Liberals show some contrition tonight and recognize how badly they failed on reconciliation—

[Committees of the House, November 20th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, this is unbelievable, if we listen to this member. He says that when Conservatives were in power, yes, things were going well in terms of housing, but it was not because the Conservatives were doing a good job. Then he says that now, after nine years, things are going poorly for Canadians, but it is not the government's fault. This member would have us believe that these dynamics—