Mr. Speaker, those who are tuning in may be curious as to why we are debating the wasteful spending of $400 million, a funnelling of $400 million of taxpayer money to the companies of Liberal insiders, appointed by the Prime Minister.
What could we have done? The member for Barrie—Innisfil spoke very eloquently about what could have been done with $400 million of taxpayer money to solve the food and housing crises. As we know, food bank usage has doubled. We know that the carbon tax is a major contributor to food inflation. We know that the food professor, Professor Charlebois, spoke this morning at the industry committee about the impact of these policies on increasing folks' borrowing.
It is a terrible thing that we have to be here because the Liberal government is filibustering and hiding from the taxpayer documents that three parties of the House, the majority of members, have demanded to be turned over. It is parliamentary privilege. It is the ultimate parliamentary privilege. The Liberals have come up with lame excuses. They have given up on their charter arguments, which were dismissed after we pointed out that, like any other business, it is a business that the government owns. When we find potential criminal activity, we turn it over to the police. In addition, the police could do this.
The Liberals have claimed that they are unable to do this. If they could not do it, then why did nine departments turn over unredacted documents? However, the hypocrisy is that 19 have not. The most egregious one is the department of industry, which was responsible for the Liberal green slush fund. It has redacted almost every single document it has sent, and it has many it has yet to send. What is it hiding? We know it is hiding more and more diversions of taxpayer money.
I will tell members why. The Auditor General only sampled a small portion of the transactions, 226 of 420 transactions in that five-year period. We asked the Auditor General if she would audit all of the 420. Do members know what the Auditor General wrote back? The Auditor General said she did not need to because her sample, under accounting standards, is statistically valid for all 420. That means that over $700 million of the $836 million under that period would have gone to Liberal insiders. There has been no scandal bigger than this in terms of a diversion of taxpayer money to insiders of the government in the history of this country if we are talking about $700 million.
These Liberals have no shame. The Liberals are insensitive to the pain of Canadians while over two million people a month are lining up at food banks, a number that is growing every month; while people cannot pay their mortgages and rent; and while we have a carbon tax, which is driving the cost of everything up, that the Liberals intend to quadruple. They care nothing about the pain of Canadians. They care about covering up the funnelling of hundreds of millions of dollars to Liberal insiders' companies while they enrich themselves and Canadians line up in food banks in record numbers. They are having their Marie-Antoinette moment of letting them eat cake. We all know what happened to her. There was also King Charles I, who defied Parliament although Parliament's reign was supreme. Do colleagues know how it was supreme? King Charles I lost his head over the issue of trying to say that the King, who, in this case, is represented by the government, was superior and more important than Parliament.
Why is it that the Liberals are doing this when a majority of Canadians, represented by a majority of MPs in the House, have demanded this? Why would the Prime Minister's personal office, the Privy Council Office, have said to redact the documents and blank them out, contrary to the House, and contrary to the Privacy Act? The Privacy Act says that, if the House wants unredacted documents, it can get them. Why do the Liberals not want to do that? It is because they are covering up for their cronies and their insiders. They are covering up their corruption.