Madam Speaker, it is an honour to speak today to this important motion. Sometimes it gets lost in this place when we are talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars or a billion-dollar green slush fund. What does it all mean? I was thinking about that as I was driving to the airport this morning. I passed a Tim Hortons that had trucks lined up there. Construction workers were on their way to work hard all day, as well as a nurse who was commuting to the hospital to take on a shift in very hard circumstances. I drove by the many farms that line my riding of Fundy Royal. The farmers were up and at it.
This is a government that is all too happy to tax the hard-working Canadians who make this country what it is and make everything work. It taxes them when they earn income, it taxes them when they save and it taxes them when they spend. We can imagine how irate it makes overtaxed Canadians when they hear about this kind of waste, this kind of mismanagement and this kind of absolute corruption from the government.
Canadians are fed up after nine years of the Liberal government's corruption and, indeed, obstruction. This debate today is evidence of that. At the core of the issue being debated today is the hundreds of millions of dollars that was funnelled to connected Liberals on the board of Sustainable Development Technology Canada, SDTC. It has now become known as the Liberals' billion-dollar green slush fund. That is because the government turned the SDTC into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. There is no surprise there. During an investigation, the Auditor General was not given full access to documents in order to assess the full scope of corruption that had been taking place. In June, the House voted to call on the government to provide all relevant documents directly to the RCMP. That made abundant sense, but now the government is defying the will of this House. It is refusing to hand over documents after the public learned of hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars that ended up lining the pockets of Liberal-appointed board members. However, it gets even worse. Canadians did not know about the corruption that was taking place, but the Liberal government had been aware of the board's unethical practices for years. The government let it continue, regardless.
Canadians deserve accountability from their government. That is why this debate today is so important.
SDTC was established in 2001 as a federally funded non-profit and for many years it carried out its mandate of helping Canadian companies develop and deploy sustainable technologies, so how did we get here? How are we in the mess that we are in today? When did the corruption and conflicts start to take root? It will be no surprise to anyone in this chamber that they started to take root under the Liberal government.
In 2018, the minister responsible for SDTC was former Liberal industry minister Navdeep Bains. He was not happy with the chair of the board at the time because the chair was publicly expressing concerns with government legislation. As we know, with a Liberal government, if there is one thing it cannot tolerate, it is any criticism of its actions. We all know that the Liberal government does not take criticism well at all. We know, first and foremost, that the Prime Minister does not take criticism very well. That was fully evidenced this week as well. Thus, in 2019, the former industry minister began appointing new executives to the board of SDTC, despite the fact that many of these new executives had conflicts of interest. Therein is the root of the challenges that we are facing here now and exposing for Canadians. The minister went so far as to appoint a new chair of the board of directors who was already receiving SDTC funding through one of her companies.
To be clear, I will say that SDTC had never had a chair with interest in companies that had been receiving funding until this point. However, the minister proceeded with this appointment despite being fully aware of this serious conflict of interest. We now have a chair of the board tasked with overseeing the very same funds her company was receiving. We do not need a degree in ethics to see that this is not right. The Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office were even warned of the risk associated with appointing a conflicted chair; however, no action was taken.
The whole scandal is a sad reflection of what Canadians have come to expect from the Prime Minister. We all know that he will do whatever suits him and his friends, regardless of right or wrong. We have seen this time and time again. I do not want to rehash all these things, but they are pretty instructive. Whether it is taking vacations on a billionaire's island, violating ethics; pressuring the Attorney General to look the other way when SNC-Lavalin was facing prosecution and, indeed, firing ministers just for doing their job; or trying to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to the WE Charity, despite conflicts of interest involving his own family, the entitled Prime Minister has a track record of these kinds of actions.
Greed, corruption and obstruction have become not just a pattern for the Prime Minister; rather, they have become his playbook. As with any government, it is up to the Prime Minister to lead by example and to set the tone for his ministers as to how they should be expected to conduct themselves. The Liberals' green slush fund is just one example of how ministers have followed the Prime Minister's lead when it comes to disregarding rules around ethics and conflicts of interest.
In addition to appointing a chair of the board with an existing conflict of interest, former minister Bains appointed two board members who would go on to engage in behaviour in breach of the Conflict of Interest Act. They approved funding to companies in which they held ownership stakes.
Canadians, the hard-working taxpayers that I mentioned at the start of my speech, know that we cannot have a situation where individuals are awarding contracts and funding to their own companies. This is so basic. It should go without saying, but we cannot take these kinds of things for granted with the current government. It is not rocket science. The board members' behaviour was obviously unethical and even contravened long-standing rules against conflicts of interest.
The Liberals did not intervene to stop the corruption. Instead, they allowed SDTC to enter into a five-year, $1-billion agreement with the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. It was around this time that the Prime Minister appointed a new industry minister, who still holds this role today. As his predecessor did, he would allow the SDTC to continue its unethical practices.
Two years ago, whistle-blowers started to raise their concerns internally. The Privy Council Office, the top bureaucrats in the country who were tasked with assisting the Prime Minister and his cabinet, were briefed on the funnelling of taxpayer dollars to board members' own companies. It is so unfortunate, as is often the case with the government, that we have whistle-blowers putting their own careers on the line in order to expose the government's wrongdoings instead of having ministerial accountability.
Despite being well-informed of the misappropriation of funds and breaches of conflicts of interest, the Liberals still allowed the corruption to continue. In fact, it was not until September 2023 that SDTC's funding was finally suspended, nearly a full year after whistle-blowers first raised the alarm of possible corruption.
After years of the Liberals knowing exactly how board members were lining their own pockets, why did they decide to suspend SDTC's funding now? What had changed? Why, after all that time, was some action taken? It was not the unethical practices of the board, the hundreds of millions of dollars that went into their own companies or the disregard of conflicts of interest rules that ended up forcing the Liberals to suspend SDTC's funding. Rather, it was the fact that the whistle-blowers made their allegations public.
After inaction from the government over months made it clear that nothing was going to change, the whistle-blowers had to go public. That is the only reason any action was taken. Shortly after SDTC's funding was suspended, the Auditor General announced that she would be conducting an audit of SDTC to support parliamentarians in the oversight of government activities and the stewardship of public funds.
While the Auditor General conducted this audit, Conservatives in the House of Commons worked to better understand the full scope of corruption that had been allowed to take place under the Liberal government and the amount of taxpayer dollars that were being misappropriated.
In February, after months of allegations of corruption, Canadians learned that multiple board members were under ethics investigations. In one case, we learned that a board member was placed under an ethics investigation for funnelling $400,000 through SDTC to a company that he owns. Another case was uncovered in which a former board member admitted to funnelling funds to a firm that they had a stake in. Another member of the board funnelled money to not one, not two, not three, but four companies that they had ownership stakes in.
Conservatives exposed the fact that the CEO and at least two directors used the fund to direct money to their own firms. The Liberal-appointed chair, a friend of the Prime Minister, confirmed that she used SDTC to give her own company more than $200,000 in grant money. After nine years under the Prime Minister, his government's policies have left Canadians with less money, while Liberal-appointed board members of his billion-dollar green slush fund took taxpayer' dollars to line their own pockets.
While Liberals are making off like bandits, everyday Canadians are struggling. We need only to look around us in all the communities we represent. Food bank usage has increased every year that the Prime Minister has been in office. Members should think about what I just said. I know we throw this information out, but what a terrible track record for the Prime Minister. For the nine consecutive years that he has been Prime Minister, food bank usage has increased every single year. That is absolutely appalling.
Two million Canadians are now visiting food banks every month. According to Food Banks Canada, food bank visits have gone up 90% since 2019. The cost of housing has doubled under the Prime Minister, and tent cities are popping up everywhere. In communities where tent cities were never a thing, they are everywhere. This was unthinkable just a few years ago, and it is now the norm across the country. In New Brunswick, in the riding I represent, and right across the country, we have tent cities in every city and in many communities throughout our great country.
Why is this? Why is this happening under the government? Is it some great coincidence? No, Canadians know that this is a direct result of the oppressive actions that the government has been taking against taxpayers. As one example, the Liberal carbon tax has jacked up the cost of everything from home heating to gas and groceries; this makes a real difference in people's ability to make ends meet.
Every Canadian who goes grocery shopping would tell us that they have seen a remarkable increase in the cost of food. I know the Prime Minister would probably like to explain it as some kind of international phenomenon. The fact of the matter is that food prices have risen 36% faster here in Canada than in the U.S. over the last four years. What is the difference? It is the government's greedy carbon tax, which takes from those who are the least able to afford it.
Reckless spending under the government saw inflation reach a 40-year high. According to Statistics Canada, this country is currently faced with the biggest gap between rich and poor in our recorded history. While Canadians worried about how they would pay their bills, feed their kids and keep a roof over their head, Liberals worried about protecting their friends on the board of SDTC.
For months, Conservatives have been peeling back the shocking layers of corruption concerning the Liberals' billion-dollar green slush fund. In an effort to stop more damaging information from coming out, the Liberals and NDP members on the ethics committee tried to prevent a whistle-blower from sharing their testimony at committee. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars had been misappropriated, yet the NDP-Liberal coalition wanted to silence the whistle-blower, who had originally unveiled evidence of corruption and who courageously came forward with serious allegations while testifying at committee.
In June 2024, the Auditor General of Canada released her scathing report. After the Auditor General's analysis of how SDTC had been conducting its business became public, the industry minister abolished the organization and transferred its funds to National Research Council Canada. This action by the industry minister is in stark contrast to how Liberals had previously approached the corruption going on, which was to do nothing and say nothing. After years of complacency, what was in the Auditor General's report that was so bad that the government was finally forced to act?
First, the Auditor General found that SDTC had demonstrated significant lapses in governance and in stewardship of public funds. This was not just a serious allegation; it was backed up by volumes of evidence. Of the SDTC projects examined by the Auditor General, she found that nearly 20% of the funding went to companies that were ineligible to receive it. The projects did not meet the government's own criteria for funds but were approved anyway. The ineligible projects received over $58 million of hard-working taxpayers' money.
The Auditor General was given a sample of 226 transactions to examine for the purpose of the audit, and 82% of the transactions were conflicted. This was not a one-off. It was not just a slight deviation from the norm; 82% had conflicts. The price tag of the conflicted transactions totalled $330 million.
The Auditor General's investigation uncovered $390 million in funding that was awarded to projects that were either ineligible to receive funding or were awarded to projects in which board members were conflicted. This is not just a scandal of epic proportions; this is pure, unbridled corruption.
Following the release of the Auditor General's report, the House passed a motion calling on the government, SDTC and the Auditor General to send all documents related to the Liberals' billion-dollar green slush fund directly to the RCMP. Instead of abiding by the will of the House, federal departments either outright refused the order or turned over documents that were heavily redacted, citing provisions of the Privacy Act or the Access to Information Act.
The problem is that neither the Privacy Act nor the Access to Information Act permits federal departments to redact documents that have been specifically requested by the House. The House has the absolute and unfettered ability to order the production of documents, which is not limited by statute. These are powers enshrined in the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Parliament of Canada Act.
The government's reaction to the motion as passed by the House has been absolutely unacceptable. In fact, the government's response went so far as to breach the privileges of the House. The Conservative House leader raised these concerns as a question of privilege last month, and the Speaker agreed to look into the facts of the case that Conservatives had laid out.
After examining the events that had transpired, the Speaker ruled that the privileges of the House had in fact been breached. The Speaker's ruling on the question of privilege has led us to the debate we are having today. The debate is about more than just respect for Parliament; it is also about respect for democracy and about accountability to taxpayers and our constituents, who send us here to Ottawa to work on their behalf.
The government is doing everything it can to withhold the documents, so it begs the question of what the Liberals are trying to hide. They are willing to sacrifice their entire legislative agenda rather than simply comply with the will of Parliament and hand the documents over to the RCMP.
The Liberals must have weighed the pros and cons of the situation and decided it was more important to withhold the documents than it was to do the work their constituents elected them to do. The Liberals have no one to blame but themselves. They can choose to respect the Speaker's ruling and the will of the House, or they can continue to obstruct the work of Parliament.
