James Bezan

[Privilege, November 26th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, no, there was not. We wrapped up our war efforts in Afghanistan and were downsizing our military efforts in Iraq and Syria. Sure, we rolled down those operations, so defence spending dropped. When the Library of Parliament looked at the numbers, actual national defence expenditures in the department right now by the Liberals is 0.95%.

[Privilege, November 26th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, first I would like to set the record straight. We know from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who just did some recalculations, that the Liberals' projections of increasing spending up to even 1.7% is a falsehood because they did not base it on the same GDP numbers the Department of Finance uses.

I would also like to point out that the Library of Parliament discovered that when we actually compare apples to apples, when we were looking at actual national defence numbers, when we were in a time of peace in 2014 and there was no invasion in Ukraine happening yet—

[Privilege, November 26th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am rising today to speak about the green slush fund scandal, which we have been debating here for some time. Particularly, I am speaking to the subamendment, which would change the amendment by adding “except that the order for the committee to report back to the House within 30 sitting days shall be discharged if the Speaker has sooner laid upon the table a notice from the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel confirming that all government institutions have fully complied with the order adopted on June 10, 2024, by depositing all of their responsive records in an unredacted form”. I stress “unredacted”, because we have to stop this cover-up.

This order was originally given by the Speaker back on June 10, and here we are discussing the question of privilege on the green slush fund that the Liberals had set up to allow Liberal insiders to enrich themselves and to spend almost $400 million from taxpayers on themselves and on other Liberal friends, and they violated rules that were identified by the Auditor General. There was $58 million that the Liberal-appointed board on the green slush fund shovelled out on projects that could not demonstrate any environmental development benefit or green technology.

As a former chair of the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, I know that the Sustainable Development Technology Canada organization had been, up until the Liberals under the industry minister and going back to Navdeep Bains when he was industry minister, functioning perfectly in helping small green-tech funds get angel investments and direct government support to bring new products into the market to reduce our carbon footprint and to ensure that we were having clean land, clean air and clean water. However, trust this Liberal government with its history of always enriching Liberal insiders and friends, and the corruption, which goes back to when I first got elected, when we were still dealing with the ad scam, then the SNC-Lavalin scandal and the WE Foundation, which all look pretty minuscule compared to this $400 million.

There was $58 million given to projects that did not even qualify under the rules of SDTC, and another $334 million. Over 186 times, projects were awarded to board members themselves, who were in a conflict of interest. They were sitting on the board, appointed by the then Liberal minister of industry, Navdeep Bains, who originally appointed most of these people, and they were failing to observe the rules laid out. When the Auditor General looked at how dollars were being spent by SDTC, she found that 186 times these Liberal insiders, these board members, failed to recuse themselves when they were giving money to themselves, to each other and to others who were connected to the board members.

Finally, there was another $58 million that was handed out without even putting in place proper contribution agreements, which were meant to ensure that dollars were being spent properly. There was no follow-up, no follow-through; it was money taken and stuffed in their pockets. Luckily, the Auditor General found out because of some brave whistle-blowers.

We have been talking about how the current industry minister was blamed by the Auditor General for failing to do sufficient monitoring of SDTC and failing to look at all the alerts and red flags that were going up. He decided to turn a blind eye. We know that Cycle Capital, one of the companies that received dollars, went to the direct benefit of the Minister of Environment, who had shares in Cycle Capital, and we have seen those shares now increase exponentially because of the supposed benefit of these government dollars, these hard-earned dollars from taxpayers, that funded SDTC, which they then turned into a green slush fund to allow them to continue to benefit.

We have seen the Liberals get up in this place over the past few weeks to argue that we should not be debating this here, even though it is our right and responsibility as parliamentarians to stand up against any questions of contempt of Parliament and violations of privilege, which the Speaker found there was. The Speaker is asking for Parliament to pronounce itself, and we believe that these records, since it clearly looks like there was criminality involved, need to be investigated not just by the public accounts committee and Parliament, but by the RCMP and other police agencies.

A whistle-blower clearly stated:

The true failure of the situation stands at the feet of our current government, whose decision to protect wrongdoers and cover up their findings over the last 12 months is a serious indictment of how our democratic systems and institutions are being corrupted by political interference.

He thinks:

...the current government is more interested in protecting themselves and protecting the situation from being a public nightmare. They would rather protect wrongdoers and financial mismanagement than have to deal with a situation like SDTC in the public sphere.

He also said:

Just as I was always confident that the Auditor General would confirm the financial mismanagement at SDTC, I remain equally confident that the RCMP will substantiate the criminal activities that occurred within the organization.

I stress the “criminal activities” of this organization and those who were participating.

Liberals have said we would be violating charter rights, but the reality is that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was set up to protect individuals from the government, not protect the government from Parliament. The Liberals can no longer hide behind this veil, falsely using the charter as the reason these documents should not be turned over to Parliament and the RCMP. We need to get to the bottom of this.

The Liberals can put an end to this once and for all. As the subamendment says, the order to report back to the House is not required if the government hands over the documents. That way, first, we can fulfill our fiduciary duty to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used legally in this case, never mind wisely. Second, the RCMP can take these documents and start an in-depth investigation of the scandal at hand.

Over the years, we have witnessed Liberals continually violating the basis of our democratic institutions and abusing taxpayer dollars. All we need to look at is how they misspent money during the pandemic and how dollars were handed out during the arrive scam. It turns out that we had to call one of the creators of the arrive scam app to the bar because he refused to testify. We know that hundreds of millions of dollars were never accounted for. We were told that the arrive scam app could have been easily produced for under half a million dollars, but instead it cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The lack of proper governance and the lack of putting in the proper checks and balances allowed the arrive scam to happen.

That is what has happened with the green slush fund. The Liberals did not carry out their responsibility as a government to ensure taxpayers' dollars were being used for what they were meant for in the various programs and operations of the government. The Liberals allowed SDTC to take those monies to benefit themselves, benefit a minister and benefit close friends and allies of the Liberal Party. We have to continue to raise this issue and ask questions. We will continue to push for it until the Liberals turn over the money.

However, are we surprised? We know the Prime Minister put pressure on the first indigenous justice minister and attorney general of the country, Jody Wilson-Raybould, to provide a “get out of jail free” card for SNC-Lavalin. Instead of taking the advice of his then attorney general, who was fulfilling her responsibilities, he first demoted her to Veterans Affairs and then fired her. That shows the lengths the Prime Minister will go to ensure that his friends in large elite corporations, the Laurentian elites, are always taken care of before ethics, rules and the law are followed by the Liberal government.

All too often, we see the Liberals abuse our democracy, and it is starting to play out among Canadians in the issues being polled. Not only have they lost confidence in the Prime Minister, who now has the lowest level of support and lowest approval ratings of any prime minister in the past 30 years, but they have lost confidence in the democratic process of Parliament and government. It is because of the erosion caused by the ongoing mismanagement and corruption of the Liberals and the way they have divided Canadians every step of the way.

The Prime Minister of Canada has three primary responsibilities. One is to keep Canada safe. However, we have seen how the government has turned its back on police officers. A police officer was stabbed in the neck in Winnipeg over the weekend in a confrontation. It is the Liberals' soft-on-crime policies that have made our streets less safe. The Liberals have also hollowed out our military. We are short over 15,000 troops because of the woke policies the Prime Minister has brought forward. People are leaving in droves and we are having trouble getting enough back to replace them. Our ships are rusting out, our fighter jets are worn out, our army has been hollowed out and everybody who works in the Canadian Armed Forces is burnt out. He has failed to protect Canadians.

The Prime Minister's second responsibility is to manage the relationship with the United States. We are seeing how that is going right now because of the Prime Minister's mass immigration and the problems that has created at our southern border, the U.S.'s northern border, with people going across the border illegally. In some cases, as reported, people who have crossed into the U.S. from Canada have been charged for wanting to commit terrorism in the United States. That is because of uncontrolled immigration, and it does not bode well with the Americans. We also have the out-of-control fentanyl crisis, which the Liberals have failed to address. As we continue to see these types of issues, how do we protect Canada when we are not properly managing our relationship with the United States?

The third responsibility of the Prime Minister of Canada is to keep Canada united. However, the Liberal government has consistently and always divided Canadians by race, religion, ethnicity, east against west, and urban against rural. With every policy the Liberals bring forward, they calculate that those divisions play well into their political future.

When we look at why the Liberals do what they do and why they always have corruption scandals, like the one we are dealing with here, it is all due to the reality that the Prime Minister and his cabinet have not stepped up to the plate for the right reasons. Instead of protecting Canada, the Liberals have decided to hollow out our military and disrespect the police officers across this country. They have constantly underfunded what is needed to properly keep us safe. They are taking those dollars to invest in themselves, and the green slush fund is a prime example of that.

When we finally have a carbon tax election and Canadians have a chance to vote for change, we will be able to see how the hard-earned dollars Canadians pay in taxes every year were misappropriated, having gone to helping out friends like those who work at Sustainable Development Technology Canada. We remain concerned about the overall state of the country that the Liberals, under the Prime Minister, are leaving us with. It is going to be a lot of work, and we know that, but we are prepared to do that work as Conservatives with our great leader. We have a fantastic leader in the official opposition.

As members know, the green slush fund, SDTC, was a federally funded non-profit that received roughly $100 million a year. Over the last four years, the $400 million we are talking about has been used to the benefit of Liberal insiders and friends and has even been used to the financial benefit of the Minister of Environment. We know all those people were put in place by former industry minister Navdeep Bains, who fired the previous board because its members would not do what he wanted.

The Auditor General has done her work and found wrongdoing. She found that board directors refused to recuse themselves from conflicts of interest and awarded themselves 186 different times in the amount of $334 million, which was to their own personal benefit. We know these problems persisted and that the Minister of Industry turned a blind eye. We know this through the Auditor General's investigation and audit, and the whistle-blower believes there was criminality.

We are confident, as the official opposition, that the RCMP will be able to conduct its investigation if it receives unredacted documents. That is why the motion, amendment and subamendment press the government to do the right thing and provide the documents. It can put an end to this debate on the privilege motion.

It is parliamentarians who are at the biggest risk of losing the support of Canadians when we fail to act upon things that are not just unethical but criminal in nature. We need to drill down on things that rebuild the confidence and trust between us members, who have been elected, and the people who put us here.

Canadians expect more and they expect better. Every time we stand up in this place, we will talk about corruption and the misuse and misappropriation of the taxpayer dollars that Canadians work so hard for in these difficult times. When the cost of living is out of control because of the carbon tax, housing is getting more and more difficult for so many people, huge deficits and the printing of money are running up inflation and making life more difficult, and crime on our streets is out of control, it is time for change, and the Conservatives are prepared to make that change.

[National Defence, November 26th, 2024]

We know, Mr. Speaker, that the minister loves to fudge the numbers. In reality, the former Conservative government bought five C-17 Globemasters, 17 new Hercules, 15 Chinook helicopters and 100 Leopard tanks; modernized the Auroras and Halifax-class frigates; and fought alongside our American allies against ISIS and the Taliban.

Will the Prime Minister reverse his $2.7-billion cut to our armed forces, finally invest in our troops and put Canada's interests first?

[National Defence, November 26th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, we need a Canada first plan to fix what the Prime Minister has broken in the Canadian Armed Forces. Under the Prime Minister, our warships are rusting out, our fighter jets are worn out, our army has been hollowed out and our military is so short of soldiers, sailors and aircrew that our troops are burnt out. We are short 15,000 troops. Even his own defence minister has described the state of our military as being in a “death spiral”. Defence procurement has gotten so bad under the Liberals that they cannot even supply the ammo and munitions that Canada and our friends need.

Why has the Prime Minister turned Canada into an unreliable ally?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 22nd, 2024]

With regard to the Department of National Defence and NORAD modernization: (a) what are the spending projections year over year for the June 2022 NORAD modernization announcement until completion of all listed projects, broken down by (i) fiscal year, (ii) project; and (b) what are the spending projections year over year for the additional projects related to NORAD modernization with separate funding sources, including, but not limited to, NORAD Cloud-Based Command and Control (CBC2), Crossbow and Air Navigation Aid Systems Replacement (AirNAS), Advanced Short-Range Missile (ASRM) and Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (MRAAM), broken down by (i) fiscal year, (ii) project, (iii) funding envelope, and including any funding committed by the United States?

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, November 22nd, 2024]

With regard to the Department of National Defence and the NATO definition of defence expenditures as “payments made by a national government specifically to meet the needs of its armed forces or those of its allies": what are the expenditures from eligible Other Government Departments (OGDs) included in Canada's defence spending calculations, broken down by (i) department, (ii) fiscal year beginning in 2015, (iii) type or category of expenditure, (iv) dollar value?

[Ukraine, November 19th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, for 1,000 days we have witnessed Russia's unprovoked and unjust invasion of Ukraine. For 1,000 days we have witnessed horrific war crimes and atrocities committed by Russian soldiers. For 1,000 days Ukrainian civilians have been subjected to indiscriminate attacks by Putin's war machine and forced to endure violence and fear. For 1,000 days our hearts have been broken by all the innocent blood that has been spilled on Ukraine's fertile lands.

However, over these 1,000 days we have seen the incredible resilience and bravery of the Ukrainian people. For over 1,000 days Ukraine's armed forces have valiantly outperformed all expectations as they stood firm defending their homeland and Ukraine's very identity. For 1,000 days they have bravely fought for human rights, the rule of law, liberty and their right to self-determination.

As Canadians and as Conservatives, we stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine. Ukraine's future is at stake. We must continue to support it.

Slava Ukraini.

[Committees of the House, November 4th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting to hear the member talk about a fox in the henhouse when the NDP's supply and confidence agreement with the Liberals has allowed the foxes to be in charge of the henhouse for the last two and a half years in their coalition.

I really do believe that nuclear is an important part of our energy mix that is required with everything that we are doing, not just in reducing emissions but also in ensuring that we have a robust and diverse energy supply out there to do everything from powering our laptops and iPhones, to continuing to electrify with more and more vehicles.

We know that renewables like hydro, which we have an abundance of in Manitoba, are not available to everyone out there. If we are going to provide clean energy to small communities, northern communities and remote communities, SMRs are the way to go.

In my riding, we have Whiteshell Laboratories. It is being decommissioned. It is safely disposing of all that nuclear-contaminated waste there, incinerating it and then entombing it. Nobody in the area is one bit concerned about it.

Does the member support the development of small modular nuclear reactors as a way to bring more energy to communities right now that are reliant upon diesel generation, as well as provide that diversity in energy that we need to keep Canada going toward green?

[The Economy, October 31st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows that a tax plan is not an environment plan.

With the Prime Minister's out-of-touch policies and reckless spending, one quarter of Canadians are relying on food banks this fall. Sadly, this includes members of the Canadian Armed Forces who cannot afford to eat under the costly Liberal-NDP government.

Earlier this year, military personnel doing cyber training at Willis College had to rely on food banks because they could not afford to eat. At one point, college staff even had to set up a food bank to support them in the college.

Will the Prime Minister quit making life more unaffordable for our troops and call a carbon tax election?