Ziad Aboultaif

[Public Safety, November 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' Bill C-83 allows serial killer Paul Bernardo to be transferred out of maximum-security prison, and Liberal policy allows child killer Terri-Lynne McClintic to have access to children through a mother-child program. This is shameful. The Liberals' “soft on heinous killers” policies are devastating to the victims' families. Will the government immediately reverse these policies?

[Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, November 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are tired of the Liberals' incompetence and high taxes. They want the Prime Minister to call an election so they can show him the door, but the leader of the NDP keeps propping him up. The NDP leader said “the Liberals are too weak, too selfish and too beholden to corporate interests to fight for people,” but he keeps propping them up.

Merriam-Webster tells us a hypocrite is “a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings”. Does that describe the leader of the NDP? More than 24 times he has voted for the carbon tax that is sending Canadians to food banks in record-smashing numbers. There have been more than two million visits in a single month. Every day the Prime Minister remains in power, it is because of the leader of the NDP.

They must call a carbon tax election and let the people decide.

[Committees of the House, November 7th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, it seems the government does not want to be responsible for any of its actions whatsoever. Everything is other people's fault. Liberals take no responsibility whatsoever for what they do. They create the problem. They are sitting there, trying to defend themselves, and blaming all other parties. If they are transparent, and if they tell the truth and do the right thing, no one wants to stall Parliament. They are doing this because they believe in what they are doing, and they want to stall Parliament and the democratic process because they are not transparent.

[Privilege, October 28th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know how the multi-billion dollar scandal government can face others and ask them to do something that it does not do itself in the first place. It is very unfortunate, but knowing the nature of the government, and of the member who asks the same question over and over again, the answer is simple. They should be transparent and tell Canadians what they are hiding about that $400 million. They need to tell the truth about what they have done. Then we will have a chance to discuss other things. Otherwise, they have had scandals, worth many billions of dollars, that Canadians are fed up with.

[Privilege, October 28th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians deserve to know the truth about the $400 million, the waste of money, and the mismanagement of their wealth, the taxes that they work hard for to pay to the government. That is what Canadians expect.

The government can try to change the channel as much as it wants. Is it going to happen? We know exactly what Liberals are looking for, and we know what they are hiding. Canadians are not fooled by the government. Hopefully, the truth and the sun will come out to uncover the scandal that is deeply rooted in the government.

[Privilege, October 28th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the $400 million could be more. That is why the government is fearful of releasing any source of information on this, hiding behind certain things that it believes that it can convince Canadians of.

The first responsibility for decision-makers, policy-makers and representatives of Canadians is to tell the truth. We are supposed to be managing the money and wealth of Canadians properly and not wasting it on friends and people who support certain parties. The government is in the position of hiding everything so Canadians do not know the truth. If Liberals are really being transparent, they should do that.

I believe the $400 million, unfortunately, may not be the full amount. There could be more. There is a lot of stuff that Liberals have been hiding, and Canadians deserve the truth.

[Privilege, October 28th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has been propping up the government for the last two years, on good and bad issues, to get to this stage. The government felt so comfortable to do whatever it wished to do. Of course, it was supported heavily by the NDP.

The NDP should ask the government, as they were partners with a kind of marriage, over two years, and they are still working together, to do the right thing, which is to release the documents and tell the truth. That will solve the problem.

[Privilege, October 28th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my Bloc colleague for his question.

The government has started asking the opposition parties to do something. The Liberals should ask themselves to do what is their duty, which is requested and expected by Canadians. That is the first thing. They have to look in the mirror and ask themselves to do this. That is what the Conservatives expect from this debate.

As soon as the Liberals do that and show the level of transparency expected, then we will have a resolution to this crisis, which they created. This is a fire that the Liberals made, and they want to send the fire department to put it out.

That is the government that we are dealing with. Until the Liberals are responsible enough and transparent enough to do what is right, we will have a problem.

[Privilege, October 28th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the ask is mutual. The government has to be responsible, answer questions, tell the truth and uncover what it is trying to cover up, such as the scandal of $400 million of taxpayers' money.

The member is a symptom of a government that expects everybody to do its dirty work. This is a government that hides things every day and that has been a government of secrecy since day one. It is a majority government in the House, and it continues to do that with the NDP members.

This is a political gain. The Liberals are talking about political gain. There has never been a government in Canadian history that always wants to look for opportunities for political gain, with ID politics and everything it has done so far. Shame on the government for questioning members about this.

To change the topic, let us get the answer to this question: Where is the $400 million?

[Privilege, October 28th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, members opposite may think that we are here to talk about the production of documents, something that has engaged the House for weeks now. I suspect that the Liberals have set themselves to tune out any words I say and perhaps instead are watching cat videos on their phones.

The documents in question are really not the issue here, and the government knows that. The government does not want its own Liberal members to understand what the issues are. It wants them to keep watching cat videos in the hopes that they will not realize just how much contempt their leader and their ministers have for them and for the House.

The Speaker has ruled that the Liberals have violated an order by the House to turn over evidence to the police for a criminal investigation into the latest Liberal scandal, which involves $400 million. In essence, the government is telling us that it knows best and that the will of the House can be ignored no matter what the Speaker and the members say.

However, as the Prime Minister said in his mandate letter to the previous government House leader, “Canadians expect us to work hard, speak truthfully and be committed to advancing their interests and aspirations. When we make mistakes—as we all will—Canadians expect us to acknowledge them, and most importantly, to learn from them.”

It is time for the government to speak truthfully. It does not want the documents released, not because it is concerned about the legal process but because it is embarrassed. The Auditor General has found that Liberal appointees gave $400 million of taxpayers' money to their own companies. This involved 186 conflicts of interest. The government is concerned that providing the documents would reveal even more corruption.

The issue is about $400 million of wasted or stolen taxpayers' money, while Canadians cannot afford to eat, heat their home and house themselves. The government's embarrassment is understandable. The implication of what has so far been revealed is that Liberals were illegally benefiting Liberals, advancing their own interests and aspirations instead of the country's best interests. What was supposed to be a way of fighting climate change was instead a way to line the pockets of people who had Liberal connections.

After nine years of the current government, Canadians are not surprised by the climate hypocrisy; however, there is no reason for them to accept it. The Prime Minister has apparently forgotten his own words about admitting mistakes and learning from them, or maybe he thinks he and his government are so perfect that mistakes are impossible so there is nothing to acknowledge and nothing to learn.

The government seems to think there is a problem with the opposition parties in this matter. The Liberals say that the work of the House is being tied up and that if the opposition would just allow a committee to deal with the matter, then we could get on with more important business. The government wants to know why the opposition cannot see that.

When Liberal cabinet ministers make statements like that, they seem to have checked their collective brain at the door. What is more important for the House than to establish that the government does not dictate to the elected members? When the House makes an order and the Speaker affirms the order, the government does not get to say no.

I realize it would be more convenient for the Liberals if the opposition did not exist. That may be why its first idea at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was to suggest that it be given free rein to act without parliamentary oversight. The government wanted the opposition parties to go home and allow it to work without oversight. That is not the way parliamentary democracy is supposed to work. I would hope that the government MPs who were here at the time look back on that period with a certain amount of embarrassment that they were persuaded to agree to such a thing.

This was, after all, supposed to be the most open and transparent government in Canadian history. In 2013, the newly elected Liberal leader, today's Prime Minister, said, “Political leadership is about raising the bar on openness and transparency.” Eleven years later, the government has a reputation for secrecy. The Prime Minister will not release the documents. What is he trying to hide?

The Prime Minister seems to have forgotten his own words, or maybe he was just saying something he did not believe in order to get elected. Canadians believed him when he said, “For me, transparency isn’t a slogan or a tactic; it’s a way of doing business.” In 2024, Canadians doubt the truth of that statement. Obviously it was a slogan and a tactic designed to fool the public.

Canadians are no longer fooled. If the Prime Minister and his government believed in transparency, there would be no need for me to be speaking today. They would have released the documents already. Instead they look like a criminal with something to hide.

The supposedly open and transparent government is defying the will of the House. The Liberals' actions show just how hollow their idealistic words are. If the Liberals want to move the work of the House forward, something we all would like to see, then the path forward is simple: Obey the will of the House, accept the ruling of the Speaker and provide the documents.

What happens to the documents is not the Liberals' concern. They are not the Law Clerk. They are not the RCMP. The government should not be telling others what to do with the material. The Liberals have already shown that a cover-up is their preference. They must end the cover-up and hand over the evidence to the police so Parliament can get back to working for Canadians. Why do they continue to defy the will of the House and the ruling of their own Speaker?

It is probably worth mentioning again why this is an issue. The Auditor General of Canada found that the government, led by a Prime Minister who boasted about transparency, turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada, SDTC, into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. A recording of senior civil servants slammed the outright incompetence of the Liberal government, which gave 390 million dollars' worth of contracts inappropriately.

The Auditor General also found that, first, SDTC gave $58 million to 10 ineligible projects that on some occasions could not demonstrate an environmental benefit or development of green technology. Second, $334 million was given to over 186 projects in which board members had a conflict of interest. Third, $58 million was given to projects without ensuring that contribution agreement terms were met. The Auditor General made it clear that the blame for the scandal falls on the industry minister, who did not sufficiently monitor the contracts that were given to Liberal insiders.

By not complying with the Speaker's ruling, the Liberals have paralyzed Parliament, making it impossible for anyone here to address issues like the doubling of housing costs, Liberal food inflation, and crime and chaos. Given the Liberal record, I wonder whether that is their plan. With the level of incompetence they have displayed over the past nine years, I would not want to talk about housing, crime or the economy either, but maybe we should.

After all, after nine years of the Liberal government, Canadians have never been less safe. Insane catch-and-release policies are putting dangerous repeat violent offenders back onto our streets. The reckless experiment of taxpayer-funded hard drugs has created crime, chaos and disorder across Canada. Statistics Canada has revealed that since 2015, violent crime is up by nearly 50%. Homicides are up 28%, while sexual assaults, auto theft and extortion are up 74%, 45% and 357% respectively.

Meanwhile, the Liberals' failed experiment funding hard drugs with taxpayer dollars has increased drug deaths by 184% since 2015. In London, Ontario, the chief of police has been clear about the unfolding disaster, saying, “Diverted safe supply is being resold into our community. It's being trafficked into other communities and it is being used as currency in exchange for fentanyl, fuelling the drug trade.”

In British Columbia, the Vancouver Police Department noted that around 50% of all hydromorphone seizures were diverted from the Prime Minister's taxpayer-funded hard drugs program. Since 2015, nearly 45,000 Canadians have died from drug overdose. It seems that everyone except the current government can see the problem.

When it comes to housing, the Liberals know they created a problem, but they do not know how to fix it. Housing has become unaffordable in Canada because we are failing to build enough homes for Canadians. This was confirmed by a recent report from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC, which showed that Canada is still building fewer homes than in the 1970s, when Canada had half the population it has today.

National housing starts declined by 13% between August 2023 and August 2024. There has been a 25% drop in housing starts in Ontario. In Toronto, housing starts in August 2024 had a massive 48% decline over 2023, while Vancouver saw a drop of 34% year over year.

The Liberals' housing hell is not limited to Toronto or Vancouver. Across British Columbia, housing starts dropped by 31%, and in Victoria housing starts decline by 33%. Manitoba and Saskatchewan housing starts have dropped by 14% and 12% respectively during the first eight months of this year compared to the same period in 2023. Winnipeg's housing starts are down by 16% over the same period, while Ottawa had 17% fewer new housing projects. Housing remains unaffordable in Canada, in spite of the Liberals' giving billions of dollars to the same gatekeepers who caused the housing crisis in the first place.

Since last year, food prices in Canada have risen overall by 3.9%, with meat up by 9.5% and margarine up by 9.9%. The price of baby food has increased by 5%. These price increases hit seniors and low-income Canadian families the hardest. According to a recent poll by Angus Reid Institute, more than one-third of Canadians have struggled to afford enough food to feed their family. This is unacceptable.

Our food prices are an afterthought for the Liberal government. While inflation may have slowed, food prices are not going down, and the Liberal's carbon tax further restricts producers' competitiveness through added transportation costs. It is fair to say that Canada's food security is at a tipping point.

These are definitely not topics that the Liberals want to address. Since they have no plans to fix anything, they instead tie up the work of the House, hoping that Canadians will not notice. The Liberals try to pretend that they are standing on principle, instead of being open and transparent. They are trying to convince Canadians that covering up wrongdoing is a virtue. Canadians do not believe them.

The Liberals say it is all the opposition's fault, while they continue to do the wrong thing as they ignore the will of the House of Commons and the authority of the Speaker. Instead they are trying to deflect the issue and are pretending the order is somehow improper. What could be more proper than the House of Commons' demanding accountability from the government? There is 800 years of constitutional tradition backing that up. The Prime Minister may not like it, but we are not here to do what he likes; we are here to do what is right.

The government's House leader has said this debate is, “something every single Canadian should be extremely alarmed about.” I agree. Canadians should be alarmed and concerned about a government that thinks it is above the law. Canadians should be alarmed by a government whose ministers do not seem to understand what constitutes a conflict of interest. Canadians should be alarmed by a government that illegally rewards its friends. Canadians should be alarmed by a government that tries to cover things up while claiming to be open and transparent.

Parliament needs to be respected by the government. The documents must be released. It is not the government's responsibility to consider what happens when the documents are released. It can let the law clerk and the RCMP worry about that. That is not the Liberals' job. The Liberals' duty is to release the documents and to stop their contempt of Parliament, which is the democratic system that they claim to uphold.

When a party that claims to be the most transparent government in Canadian history refuses to respect the will of the House of Commons, Canadians are right in wondering what the party is trying to hide. We know there is something questionable about the $400 million. How much more is there? Canadians deserve to know the truth, no matter how much the Liberals want to cover it up.

We all know why we are here. The Liberals' selective amnesia is not fooling Canadians. The Auditor General found evidence of serious mismanagement at SDTC, and maybe even criminal activity. The Liberals response to this, as with so many other things, is to cover it up and pretend there is no problem. Maybe, from their perspective, there is no problem. After all, apparently the funds in question went to those with Liberal connections. How can anyone see a conflict of interest in awarding contracts to a few friends?

The Liberals need to remember that this is not their money. The $400 million did not come from the Liberal Party. It came from ordinary Canadians who are struggling to put food on the table as they are being carbon taxed to death. They deserve better. The Prime Minister is fond of telling the media and the House that Canadians will forgive him for not taking direction from the Conservatives. His ministers frequently use the same line. It makes for a nice media clip.

However, the Prime Minister and his ministers really should take direction from Conservatives respecting Parliament, ethics and transparency, not to mention crime, housing, taxation and balancing the budget. No, I do not think Canadians are going to forgive him.