Mr. Speaker, as this is my first time rising in this place for a speech on a particular subject, I would like to thank the people of Barrie South—Innisfil for electing me for a fourth term. I take their support with great humility and responsibility as well. I certainly appreciate the support.
I am going to be splitting my time with the member for Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley.
It is almost as if we were watching the movie Men in Black with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. There were times when they had a pen-like device; they would actually press a button, and it would flash a white light. Everybody who saw that light forgot what had gone on in the past. It is almost as if the Liberal Party were using that light to make everybody, not just in this place but across the country, forget what has gone on in the past.
As we relate to the GC Strategies situation today, a lot has gone on in the past. Words that end in “bility” seem to have been lost in this place, such as “responsibility”, accepting responsibility. "Accountability” is another word that has been lost in this place. Certainly ability has been lost in this place as well as among the Liberal government.
In the private sector, the people responsible for the situation would be fired. They would be publicly shamed and never hired within industry again. That is how egregious the GC Strategies situation has become. Again, the Liberals have avoided all accountability and all responsibility for actions by labelling themselves as a new government, when in reality, not only are the ministers responsible for the failure still around, but many of them have been promoted into different positions.
During the campaign, I would go around talking to people. We would talk about the Liberals and the history of the last 10 years. I would say to them that even if new wax is put on a car, it is still a 10-year-old car. That is where the Liberal government was. It still has dents and engine problems. It has lots of problems, and a new wax was not going to change anything. The government is not a new government. We can shift people around. We can change titles and pretend that it is not the same Liberal government that has been driving our country into the ground over the last 10 years, but it is.
This would not be tolerated in the private sector, so why are we tolerating it in this place? All we are asking is for the government to take accountability, support the motion to claw back the fraudulent spending and ensure that Canadians, hard-working taxpayers, are able to get their money back. Is that a hard ask? It is not, especially in a situation as egregious as this.
Let us go back and look at what happened with GC Strategies, which is, again, reaffirmed in the Auditor General's report from the other day. I happened to be in the lock-up. I listened to the Auditor General. Having gone through all of this in the previous Parliament, I was shocked once again by just how deep the rot goes and how systemic a problem this is within the current government. There are no signs that it is going to change.
In 82% of the contracts that were received, the government failed to verify that the fees paid did not exceed market rates. This deliberately allowed room for the government to overpay for contracts and waste taxpayer dollars. The government chose, 82% of the time, not to verify whether it was overpaying. It was overpaying on these contracts yet still awarded GC Strategies $92.7 million in contracts, with $64.5 million being paid out, and yet there is nothing to show for it. There is nothing to show for the corruption or the fraud that occurred.
The project was supposed to cost only $80,000, and yet it ballooned to $64.5 million, 80,000% over budget. Even the Auditor General says that she does not know what the true cost would be because she does not have access to certain record-keeping, etc. This is also not considering the cost to investigate, spend time, and have taxpayer dollars investigate it and uncover the depth of the scam instead of working to improve this country.
I think of the thing that really bothered me. As the most recent chair of the ethics committee, where we were studying foreign interference, the impact it was having on our country and the fact that many parts of our institutions and some political parties as well had been infiltrated by foreign interference, there were a lot of things that disturbed me. The security lapses that occurred were probably one of the things that really disturbed me throughout the whole saga.
A sample of the contracts, and this was reaffirmed again the other day by the Auditor General, showed that 33 out of the 35 contracts required security clearance, with 50% of those contracts not able to show that all contract resources, including the subcontractors, had the appropriate security clearance prior to collecting the award. Obviously, we have heard about the implications of foreign interference and the fact that there are regimes that are trying to infiltrate and are successfully infiltrating our institutions, such as Parliament and other areas.
The government could not even guarantee that the security clearances were not having an impact on what was going on, and in knowing the damaging facts and the evidence that would come in light of the Auditor General's report, the Liberals were quick to issue a seven-year ban on government contracts to GC Strategies. It was not lost on me and should not be lost on members that this seven-year ban happened on the Friday before the Auditor General's scathing report came out on Tuesday morning.
Whether that speaks to the government's having a heads-up and trying to get ahead of the story is certainly in question, but the ban was not issued out of the goodness of its heart but rather to overcompensate for its prior lack of accountability, responsibility, variability and traceability in their work on and with GC Strategies. There are those words with “bility” again.
Why not, and this is a fair question, issue a lifetime ban on the company? Why not issue a specific ban on Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony to ensure that the people involved do not reincorporate under a different name and continue with their grift on the government? They can, in effect, change the name, start another company, and even after these seven years, or perhaps within it, they can come back to the government and start issuing contracts again.
This sets a tone. Obviously, the GC Strategies scandal has set the standard and tolerance for this kind of behaviour, signalling that the government can be taken advantage of and exploited at the expense of the taxpayer. It has completely undermined Canadians' ability to place their trust in their own government, old government or new government, and the government certainly needs to make an example out of GC strategies, signalling a new message that this level of fraud and incompetence will not be tolerated.
My concern going forward, quite frankly, and I spoke about this in August 2022, is what we just saw with the main estimates, where we are seeing $26 billion in additional increases for contractor costs. My concern is that the kleptocracy is going to continue within the current government. If someone is a friend, a family member or a lobbyist who is connected with the government, they are going to benefit to a great degree, and without mechanisms of accountability and transparency, and our ability to provide oversight as an official opposition and as all opposition members in this place, it is going to be awfully difficult for us to keep track not only of where the $26 billion is going to go but also what has happened in the past, the history of the past.
As we have seen with GC Strategies, the government has shown itself not to be transparent and not to be accountable at times when it needs to be. This is not a new government; this is an old government with new wax on the car.
