Mr. Speaker, here is what The Globe and Mail said: “But the actual cause is the [Liberal] government's contemptuous refusal to hand over an unredacted set of documents that the House ordered it to produce in a motion passed in June.”
It went on to say, “The House has already lost more than a fifth of the 122 sitting days scheduled in 2024. If this goes on to the end of the year, Canadians could see half of Parliament's sitting days erased”, and I will add that this is because of the intransigence and the cover-up of the Liberals.
It goes on to say:
There are a few ways this could end. But there is only one right way, and that is for the Liberal government to respect the will of the House and hand over the documents. Anything else would be a disgraceful blow to Parliament's ability to hold government to account.
It goes on to say:
...it's not hard to suspect that, were the reference to the RCMP not in order, the Liberals would find other excuses not to hand over the documents that might well embarrass them...even if the [PROC] committee ruled the government had committed a violation, the upshot would still be that the Liberals were able to thumb their noses at the House's right to demand the production of government documents.
It must be really bad. We know about the financial interests of the radical Liberal environment minister. Since that radical Liberal environment minister joined cabinet, the company that he owns shares in has received another $17 million from taxpayers. The value of Cycle Capital has gone up 600% since he started to lobby his friends in the PMO to get money into the company that he owns shares of. I would have thought a person with strong ethics, on becoming Minister of Environment, would have sold the shares in an environmental venture capital firm to ensure no actual, or appearance of, conflict, but as we know, from the two Randys onward, that is not much of a concern.
Early on, we heard lots of excuses from the government house leader in a vain attempt to say only the police can ask for documents or turn over documents. Of course, that was disposed of quickly by most members of the House who said that any company that discovers inappropriate action is free to turn over its documents to the police for investigation, which is what we are doing here.
However, the Prime Minister's department, called the Privy Council Office, said for departments to use the Privacy Act to exempt and censor the documents. However, the Privacy Act actually says that, for a body that can order the production of documents, such as Parliament, the Privacy Act cannot be used as an excuse to exempt information. If a body that has the power to demand documents has that power, the Privacy Act does not apply, yet the Prime Minister's office uses that as an excuse to direct every government department to do differently.
Just in case anyone is saying that this is kind of arcane, there is an act that created this organization: the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology Act. Section 7 of the Conflict of Interest Act says, “No public office holder shall, in the exercise of an official power, duty or function, give preferential treatment to any person or organization based on the identity of the person or organization that represents the first-mentioned person or organization.” An example of a “public office holder” is somebody who has been appointed by the government to the board, while being on the board is an example of the “exercise of an official power”. What that means in “lawyerese” is that, if someone sits on the board of SDTC, they cannot profit by being on that board.
What did the Auditor General find out? The Auditor General did an audit for five years of SDTC. She did a sample of only about half the transactions, 226 transactions, that the board approved, and the Auditor General found that 186 of the 226 transactions, in other words 82% of all those transactions, were conflicted. That was not a mistake. That was not bad lawyerly advice. That was people coming in and out and voting for each other's stuff.
That is a culture of conflict of interest driven by a chair who was appointed by Navdeep Bains, over the objection of the then CEO because the chair's company was already doing business with SDTC. The chair said not to worry, that they can manage the conflicts. Well, the way they managed conflicts was to take 82%, or $400 million, and stuff it into their own pockets. One of the beneficiaries of that was the accelerated value of those shares of Cycle Capital owned by the Liberal environment minister. Perhaps that is the reason the government will not release the unredacted documents. Perhaps they show the extent to which that minister is involved in this corruption and the unethical breaches of acts of Parliament.
The minister at the time, Mr. Bains, has appeared before committee. His deputy at the time, a fellow named Knubley, appeared this week. For those who remember Hogan's Heroes, there was a character called Sergeant Schultz. Sergeant Schultz always said, “I know nothing” when confronted by Hogan on things. Well, former minister Bains could not remember anything about SDTC, even though he appointed all of these people, and even though one month after former minister Bains left cabinet and joined CIBC, one of the people who worked at SDTC went to work at CIBC. However, he does not remember anything.
The deputy minister, Mr. Knubley, could remember the résumé of Annette Verschuren, the Liberal-appointed chair, back to grade six. He could remember everything she had ever done. He could remember his ADM Noseworthy and everybody who sat in on every board meeting. They worked together since Meech Lake, for 40 years. He could remember everything in his career.
Mr. Knubley said that ADM Noseworthy had been there to be his eyes and ears on what was going on and that not every deputy minister believes in that, but he did, so he had a person there all the time. I asked whether, when 82% of the time the board members were voting for money for their own companies, ADM Noseworthy, as his eyes and ears, had told him about it and if he had told the minister. Mr. Knubley answered that he did not remember. He did not remember having discussions with him on it. Then, he said that he did remember that the act needs to be changed and that he had specific ideas about how the act needs to be changed. I asked if the act needs to be changed to allow for conflicts of interest, since it does not allow for it now, and he said that he was not that familiar with the act.
These folks were covering up for the Liberals, and that comes straight from the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office. We have been unable to locate the director of appointments who approved all of these people. The minister of industry of the day, Navdeep Bains, claimed that they made him do it. It was the devil that made him do the PMO appointments and he was just a puppet. The Prime Minister said they have freedom, but apparently not. Navdeep Bains said he did not appoint anyone; he was just doing what the PMO told him to do. What we have here is a situation where absolutely nobody in the Liberal government is responsible yet again. This time it is for the $400 million being stuffed into Liberal pockets and the 29,000 blacked out documents are probably hiding more corruption that we are unaware of.
This is not a one-off incident with the government. It is a corrupt government, and it has been a corrupt government. It is led by the Prime Minister at the top who has been twice found in ethics breaches by the Ethics Commissioner and Conflict of Interest Commissioner. We remember the Aga Khan incident and the Prime Minister's going for free vacations to billionaires' Caribbean islands on his private jet. He did not declare it, saying “Oh, sorry, I forgot. He is a friend of the family, so I am excused. I can get freebies from people I call friends of the family.”
Do members remember the second one where the Prime Minister's family members got paid by the WE Charity while his minister of finance was sending taxpayer money to the WE Charity? The Prime Minister's mother was getting paid by them. His brother was getting paid by them, and the minister of finance's daughter was getting paid by them. They were found in breach of ethics rules. Of course, everybody remembers the blackface incident, and of course, the Prime Minister experienced that differently.
In 2019, there was also the SNC-Lavalin scandal, which resulted in the firing of the first first nation justice minister because she told truth to the fake feminist Prime Minister. He fired this female indigenous justice minister. We know about the sole-source contracts the minister of trade had for her companies and her own campaign manager. We know about the Minister of Public Safety appointing his sister-in-law as the ethics commissioner as a way to cover up their Essex stuff. Everybody is aware of arrive scam, that app that was supposed to cost $60,000 but cost millions and millions of dollars.
The list goes on. I would be remiss if I were to not mention the other Randy, although which Randy, I am not sure. It is the now former employment minister, the other, other, Randy, Randall or Randy. It is very confusing. One of the Randys has now left cabinet to go and look for the other Randy. I think he will find the other Randy with the killer of O.J.'s wife. There is about the same credibility here.
What we have, wrought from the top, is a Prime Minister who leads by example and who does not believe in ethics, so why should any of his appointees? The result is that $400 million that was shuffled to Liberal insiders.
