Madam Speaker, as usual, I am very proud to rise this evening on behalf of the constituents of Oshawa to hold the government accountable for its Liberal corruption. I must say, though, that I am not rising with any pleasure this evening. I have been going back to my riding, trying to explain how the government has corrupted our institutions and corrupted how the government works. It really is a sad example of governance.
We all know that the Liberal Prime Minister could end this. He could end it by releasing the documents uncensored, so that Canadians could learn the truth about the $400-million Liberal green slush fund cover-up. We could be finished with this. However, the Prime Minister has continued the ongoing theme of corruption in his government by refusing to do so. More than 10,000 pages have been censored to cover up the most important information about the Prime Minister's hand-picked Liberal appointees to the green slush fund.
This theme of corruption has also been demonstrated by the Prime Minister's Liberal government through shutting down the rights of parliamentarians to receive certain information through Order Paper questions or through ATIPs. Our parliamentary privileges need to be protected. Our privileges are continually being breached by the corrupt Liberal government.
Today, I would like to address the importance of Parliament and parliamentarians receiving information that Canadians are demanding. The Liberals' scandals are too many to list. Liberal obstruction has become a rule instead of an exception. This past weekend, when I was in Oshawa, people were asking me how much longer they would have to put up with these continued scandals and misappropriation of their tax dollars. Their frustration is at a level that I have never, ever seen before. Oshawa wants to know where their tax dollars are going. Is the money being spent prudently? Are we getting the results that Canadians want and need right now? All we are asking for are the documents to show where the money went. We have all heard that if we want to understand what really happened, we have to follow the money.
Parliamentarians and Canadians have tools to hold our governments to account. One tool, as I mentioned, is access to information, or what people call ATIPs. This is where Canadians can ask for specific emails and follow the trail of money and how we spend their tax dollars. Sadly, the government routinely returns ATIPs sometimes fully redacted, covering up the information that Canadians have a right to know. A second tool that parliamentarians have is something called Order Paper questions, or OPQs. I have submitted several of these OPQs that were returned with incomplete answers and word salads that did not even make any sense. Third, as in this case, Parliament has rights and privileges. The House enjoys the absolute and unfettered power to order the production of documents that is not limited by statute. These powers are rooted in the Constitution Act of 1867 and the Parliament of Canada Act.
That brings us to our debate today. What brought us here? On June 10, the House adopted a motion calling for the production of various documents related to SDTC to be turned over to the RCMP for review. That is in the record. In response to the motion adopted, departments either outright refused the House order or redacted documents before turning them over, citing provisions in the Privacy Act or the Access to Information Act. Nothing in the House order contemplated these redactions.
In response to the failure to produce documents, the Conservative House leader raised a question of privilege, arguing that the House privilege had been breached, due to the failure to comply with the House order. On September 26, the Speaker issued a ruling on the question of privilege raised and found that the privileges of the House had, in fact, been breached.
Let us take a look at this. If this were a private affair and criminal activity were suspected, documents would be turned over and an investigation would be started. In this case, the Auditor General looked at a five-year period, and he found that an incredible 82% of the funding transactions approved by the board of directors were conflicted. This was only over part of the mandate; there could be more. Public office holders are entrusted to oversee taxpayer dollars and not to personally prosper from their work in government. Sadly, however, that is what happened, and the directors of the slush fund were unapologetic.
The minister had replaced the original chair because that chair was criticizing the program, and he put in his hand-picked director. One director was incredibly aggressive with the actions she took. This woman was appointed in 2016 by the Prime Minister, and her name is Andrée-Lise Méthot. She runs a venture capital firm called Cycle Capital in green technologies. Andrée-Lise Méthot's companies, before and during her time on the board, received $250 million in grants from SDTC. Some of that was before, and I will talk about that in a minute, but when she was on the board, $114 million went to green companies that she had invested in. During her time on the board, the value of her company, Cycle Capital, tripled because of getting an SDTC grant. This is a stamp of the Government of Canada's approval that allows for these companies to raise other funds. The House will never guess who her lobbyist was. Her in-house, paid lobbyist for 10 years was the current radical Minister of Environment, before he was elected. While he was lobbying for Cycle Capital, the minister got $111 million. That is incredible, but it is just the example of one director. According to the Auditor General, nine directors accounted for 186 conflicts.
I will speak about another board member who was hand-picked by the Prime Minister, Guy Ouimet. He admitted in committee that $17 million of green slush fund money went to companies that he had a financial interest in. He said it was a small amount of money. In Oshawa, we have people losing their jobs. We have people standing in lines at food banks, and the food banks run out of food before noon. We have seniors living four to a room. However, this hand-picked Liberal says $17 million is just a small amount of money. Our community finds that insulting. It may be a small amount of money to a Liberal elite, but it is not for most Canadians, and that amount of money went up 1,000% in value since the investment was made in 2019. It certainly pays to be a Liberal insider; unfortunately, Canadians, people in my community, are suffering now, and $17 million is not a small amount of money.
It is our job here in the House of Commons to expose the corruption and things we have authorized money for in Parliament. It is our job, and it is time the Liberals started caring about it. The challenge and the concern I have is that this corruption routine seems to have become ordinary business for the Liberal Party. It is why I feel that this is really a sad moment in Canadian history.
I would like to review a few things that Canadians may have forgotten about, some important things that have happened with the government that made Canadians start realizing that it was not business as usual.
We all remember the SNC-Lavalin affair. Unfortunately, the allegations of political interference led to criminal prosecution, and the Prime Minister's response and handling of the situation really impacted judicial independence and the rule of law. We will remember that when the Prime Minister's justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, was asked to do something improper, she stood up to the Prime Minister and as a result was basically pushed out of cabinet and government. Ultimately, this resulted in a situation where three prominent female Liberals left. We are talking about Jody Wilson-Raybould, Jane Philpott, one of the more competent ministers of health, and my neighbour and friend Celina Caesar-Chavannes. She even wrote a book about it.
The way the Prime Minister interfered in this affair forced Canadians to look at their institutions and judge how they were functioning. The Prime Minister does not have a problem going on vacations, but what he wanted to do is cut a deal with SNC-Lavalin, granting a contract to a company that gave money to his family members and handing out billions of dollars to Liberal insiders and consultants. This is just one of a long list of instances of the Prime Minister using government funds to benefit himself and his friends.
We all remember the WE Charity scandal too, in which the Liberal government awarded a contract to WE Charity. This charity had huge ties to his family. There were huge ethical conflicts of interest, and there were parliamentary investigations and findings. One of the reasons I am saddened tonight is that it impacted the public's trust in the government. Despite the Prime Minister admitting he did something wrong and despite the Ethics Commissioner finding that he directed his staff to explore options for providing the money to WE, he was not found guilty. However, we know that his then finance minister, Mr. Morneau, had an entirely different experience with the WE Charity scandal.
I want to talk for a few moments about the COVID-19 response and the spending during that response, because many businesses in Oshawa went bankrupt. People lost their businesses and homes. There was huge criticism over the amount of money, how it was spent and how things were managed, but we still have not evaluated the government's support for these programs and how effective they were. There seems to be a lack of transparency in spending and accountability measures, and we have not looked at the public health implications and long-term effects. However, we do know that the actions taken were extraordinary and the amount of coercion and force the government utilized was unprecedented.
I am hearing over and over from Canadians that they should have the right to make personal medical decisions. However, as we saw, sadly, the government and the Prime Minister made deliberate decisions to go beyond guiding and protecting Canadians, to a point of punishing people who chose not to get COVID-19 vaccines, not because there was evidence that punishing them would make Canadians safer, but because he thought that scapegoating a small and unpopular minority of Canadians would make him more popular. The sad thing about that approach, as we remember from the election, is that the Prime Minister politicized a health issue. I want to give kudos to a Liberal member of Parliament, the member for Louis-Hébert, who stood up to the Prime Minister and stated on the record how disappointed and sad he was that the Prime Minister had decided to politicize Canadians' personal health decisions.
I want to bring to the attention of the House yet another example of the government obstructing parliamentarians and disrespecting our parliamentary privileges. Even today, we are trying to get information in regard to the pandemic response.
My colleague from Provencher asked an Order Paper question, Question No. 2745, in regard to Pfizer contracts and what Health Canada did not answer. All he wanted to know was when the former minister of public service and procurement, the former minister of health, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada received the contract. He also asked when Health Canada, the Public Health Agency, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Transport were briefed on the contents. Unfortunately, he received no answer.
In the United States, there is a different system. Quite often, they go to the courts. Here in Canada, we do not have the same type of system. Canadians expect us, as parliamentarians, to use our privileges to get answers for them. Sadly, the government gives word salads or returns redacted documents.
I would like to take a moment to talk about the ArriveCAN scandal. ArriveCAN is something that was also implemented during the pandemic. I remember talking with the Privacy Commissioner in committee; he had extreme concerns about implementing something along the lines of the ArriveCAN app because of privacy issues.
We talk about the situation and the amount of money that was wasted on ArriveCAN; this is just part of it. There are huge controversies surrounding the effectiveness of this app, including privacy concerns and, of course, the costs associated with it. I remember that the Privacy Commissioner basically said, “Well, this is something that could be utilized for a very short-term period.” However, the government continued on and on, even though the evidence showed that the vaccine and the government's approach was not actually stopping the transmission of COVID-19. The Privacy Commissioner recommended that the data collected should be destroyed, but the Public Health Agency continues to utilize it.
Canadians are worried about their privacy, and here we have an app that not only cost way more than it should have but also affected Canadians' ability to travel. We have to look at this in case there is another pandemic or emergency. In that situation, the Prime Minister had no problem continuing with his family vacations. This demonstrates the perception of elitism and privilege toward the public health message, and his own adherence to the rules. In other words, it was something that he wanted Canadians to follow, but he did not want to follow it himself.
Another really important incident, where there was a similar situation to that we have today, was the Winnipeg lab scandal. I still do not think we have gotten to the bottom of this.
We have to say, “When does it stop?” The Conservative leader is calling for a carbon tax election because it is not going to stop. The Liberals are at a point now where they do not even realize any ethical breaches. It has become the regular way of doing business. The response is basically saying, “Gee, I am sorry”, and then going on and doing it again and again.
In the Winnipeg lab scandal, we saw officials from the Communist Party of China having access to some of our most vital biosecurity materials. We see that how the government handled it affected our relationship with China. Canadians are now very aware of Chinese interference, which, I guess, will be another speech that we have to manage.
It is a sad but appropriate day. Parliament needs to do its job because that is what is expected.
