Don Stewart

[Privilege, October 24th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the 186 companies would not represent 82% of the green technology space in Canada. We have a very large green technology space in this country, from coast to coast to coast, and it would be much more than 186. They did receive an oversized funding amount when 82% of that fund went to those 186 companies.

[Privilege, October 24th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I was about to say that, when I worked in that field after graduation, I was involved in environmental waste containment projects. They were exciting projects, such as building sewage lagoons, mine tailings dams, solid waste containment and even waste water retention ponds. It was magical. Maybe that is not exciting to most, but it certainly was to our customers; the engineers, who are a difficult to excite crowd; and others who benefited. Yes, it is true: We all want clean water and clean air to breathe.

We were selling real products; they were being sold and installed by real people in real environmental projects. Materials were manufactured in Canada and sold throughout this country and in the United States. That means GDP for Canada, exports and productivity. These products were considered new technology at the time; therefore, while early adopters were happy to embrace them and realized their environmental and economic benefits, others were not so sure.

As such, we went to the government for help, but this was not a green slush fund; we had no contacts to get easy money. We did not have a slate of directors who were investors, who had contacts or who were sitting on the SDTC slush fund board. We applied to the government for research dollars and had testing carried out at our universities to prove the products. We conducted strength testing at the University of Western Ontario, as it was called then, and later at Queen's.

Why do I tell that story? How could my career possibly be germane to the House? It is because, as we heard earlier, 82% of the projects that were sampled by the Auditor General were conflicted. If we apply that rate of malfeasance over the universe of projects, we come to a staggering $832 million of questionable funding. If we add the opportunity cost back to that $832 million, we are very close to $1 billion of taxpayer money funnelled to sketchy destinations.

However, there is more: $58 million was spent on 10 ineligible projects in the sample. That scales up to $104 million if we factor up to the full size of the universe of projects in question. How many projects like the one I described above, that I was involved in and that was undertaken by the small business I worked for, were displaced because of the highly questionable awarding of funds by the board of the green slush fund? Certainly, because the money was misallocated to ineligible projects, good ones did not get funding. Some of these potential projects may well have been home runs.

That is forgone GDP, jobs and tax revenue. Does this not suggest to everyone in this place that oversight of this fund was weak at best and potentially criminal at worst? Does this not make one think that we may need a change in the management of the government's spending writ large? I see some heads nodding. We may need some people with real financial expertise in charge of the books. This is green technology science. This is not rocket science.

Getting to the bottom of this scandal may not be easy, but it is a journey worth taking. This is not $400 million that we are talking about. That is the number that has been confirmed. It only represents 226 projects of the 405 that were funded. As I stated earlier, this is $832 million plus opportunity cost, so we are very close to a billion-dollar scandal. One billion dollars could buy a lot of Girl Guide cookies.

One thing that is concerning for Canadians is the level of corruption in the board and the Governor in Council appointment to the sustainable development technology fund, otherwise known as SDTC. People at home are calling it the green technology slush fund.

Another thing is the federal government's refusal to produce key documents on this matter, which is stifling public scrutiny and raising red flags about accountability. When government actions, particularly those concerning the use of public funds, come under scrutiny, it is the right of every Canadian to demand clear answers, but we are not getting clear answers from the government, which leaves one to ask what it is hiding.

Who are the Liberals protecting? They are protecting their friends and associates who benefited. The fact that we are still discussing this and asking for a disclosure that was demanded by Parliament is bewildering to this rookie MP. Maybe I should not be surprised. When I consider the long list of Liberal scandals, there are almost too many to count, but I will name some here for good measure.

We will start with the SNC-Lavalin affair. This political scandal involved an attempt at political interference in the judicial system by the Prime Minister of Canada and the Prime Minister's Office. Ultimately, the company changed its name, partly to distance itself from its tarnished brand.

In no particular order, next we have the ArriveCAN affair, affectionately known as “arrive scam”. In this one, the federal government spent over $50 million on an original contract of $80,000. It spent $54 million. I am not making this up. A group of programmers created that app over a weekend, so this one is out of control. The GDP is under attack. Ten thousand people were erroneously forced to isolate. I may have been one of those because officials made me isolate for longer than I needed to.

There is the Aga Khan scandal. The Prime Minister was found to have broken no fewer than four provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act when he vacationed over Christmas on the posh private island in the Caribbean owned by his good friend the Aga Khan. The Prime Minister was the first prime minister in Canadian history to break federal ethics rules.

Next, we have the WE Charity scandal. This one in particular I did not like because my daughter actually participated in raising money for WE Charity. My daughter Charlotte raised over $10,000 to build a school in Africa by carrying water through the streets of Toronto—St. Paul's and generating donations by doing just that, so this one hurt. However, the Prime Minister granted his friends at WE Charity a project to oversee a $1-billion program for student employment grants. Do we not have government employees who do the same thing?

There are two common elements we can quickly identify through this partial list of government scandals. Members can identify their own, and these are the two that I have picked. If members have a few in mind, I invite them to keep them quiet and see if they match up with mine. The first one is friends in high places in the Liberal government awarding their Liberal friends at the expense of taxpayers. The second is a complete lack of ethical behaviour.

What we do not see is transparency. Transparency and accountability are the cornerstones of any functioning democracy. They are the twin principles that ensure those in power act in the best interests of the public rather than serving their own narrow political or personal agendas. The concept of transparency is not just theoretical. It is embedded in laws and regulations that compel governments to disclose information, especially when there are questions about the misuse of public funds.

Parliament has this power. Parliament has asked for the documentation. Therefore, the documentation must be produced. The government's accountability to its people is not optional. This is a fundamental responsibility.

A 2024 CanTrust index poll revealed that less than 25% of Canadians trust the Liberal Prime Minister and the government. Is that a surprise to anyone? That number might be high since this poll was conducted back in February, but it makes sense. When the government refuses to release key documents, especially in response to serious allegations, it erodes public trust. It undermines the very fabric of our democracy. Without transparency, how can citizens know that their government is acting in good faith?

Let us look at this from another angle, and I promise again that I am not making this up. I will give a bit of a timeline of how we got here. In 2018, the then Liberal industry minister decided he did not like the chair of SDTC, which was Mr. Jim Balsillie, because he was criticizing the government. The chair of SDTC was asked to stop his criticism, and he did not.

In 2019, the then Liberal industry minister decided to appoint a new chair, but this one already had conflicts of interest. He did this even though the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office were warned of risks associated with appointing a conflicted chair. The new chair had ownership positions in companies receiving green slush fund SDTC funding.

The funding floodgates opened. Conflicts of interest were managed rather than outlawed. SDTC members began to award funds to companies where other board members held ownership. The following example is the one I love the most. If someone does something so audacious, maybe no one will suspect a thing. I think that is called hiding in plain sight. The founder and beneficial owner of Cycle Capital, Andrée-Lise Méthot, voted for Cycle Capital investments to receive a significant amount of green slush fund funding while she sat on the board of the Liberal green slush fund.

In fact, before and during her time on the green slush fund board, Ms. Méthot's companies received $250 million. Cycle Capital's lobbyist, before he came to the House, was none other than the radical Minister of Environment. One might ask, “So what?” In the year before he joined the Liberal government, he lobbied 25 times, and the green slush fund board gave over $100 million to the Cycle Capital companies. Then, when he was part of the government, he participated in talks that gave SDTC another $750 million to deploy, of which 25% went to Cycle Capital. We do not know, but he may or may not still own shares in Cycle Capital. It is a really good trade where I come from.

I spoke earlier about my career as an environmental engineer, but I actually spent most of my career in finance. That is another reason the misappropriation of funds in this green slush fund scandal speaks to me. When I was in the financial and investment industry, fund managers were generally paid dependent upon how their funds performed. The better someone's fund did, the more they would get paid. The better their fund did, the more assets they would attract, and again, the more they would expect to be paid, all else being equal.

What I find peculiar about this fund and the way it paid its principals is that they were paid based on the dollar volume of grants they made. I swear I am not making that up. The more money that was allocated, the more that was spent, whether it went to a good project, a bad one, a medium one or some other, the more money that was paid to those individuals. Rather than scouring the country for the best projects, the easiest thing to do, the path of least resistance, was to allocate funds to projects that were already known to the board, regardless of the expected return to the taxpayer. We call that a fiduciary duty.

For a government that loves to virtue signal about its care and vision for the environment, its behaviour when it comes to deploying funds is contradictory, as I just detailed. The government says one thing and does another. This matters, and here is why: Instead of investing taxpayer dollars in the most promising projects and companies, the Liberals appointed a chair, and her board funnelled taxpayer dollars to projects and companies that were run by their friends or into companies where they had a financial interest. This is the kind of situation we are taught to avoid in a business education. This is why we have ethics classes in business and financial education. Perhaps the financial leaders on the other side of the House missed those classes.

The misallocation of money and capital leads to the destruction of capital in this country. This leads to a loss of Canadian competitiveness, a reduction in productivity and a decline in GDP. We are seeing all these economic measures play out now in our economy, and we are worse off as a country for it. The green slush fund is not responsible for all of that, but the green slush fund and its grant allocation principles are emblematic of the attitudes and principles of the Liberal government over the last nine years. Good money put toward programs with admirable goals is great, but lacking in the financial know-how and financial management expertise to succeed is a waste of taxpayer money.

The reduction of our productivity and competitiveness in GDP is not an accident. This is the result of an overall mismanagement of the economy by the Liberal Prime Minister and the Liberal cabinet. At the heart of this issue is public trust. Canadians trust their government to act in their best interest, to steward public funds responsibly and be forthright about how decisions are made. When this trust is broken, it is incredibly difficult to rebuild, except perhaps with a new government. The refusal to release the green slush fund documents erodes this trust. It sends a message to the public that the government is not interested in being transparent and that accountability is a secondary concern.

[Privilege, October 24th, 2024]

This is a big tent party, and—

[Privilege, October 24th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure and a privilege to rise in this place to promote and defend democracy, as well as to demand transparency and accountability from the government.

Before I begin, as a new member, I would like to thank the members of my team in Toronto and in Ottawa, who have helped me get up the learning curve to serve the great people of Toronto—St. Paul's: Chelsea, Ryanne, Jessie, Karen and Brooke. I thank them very much for their efforts. I have been stopped in the streets by strangers in St. Paul's who have thanked me for their good work and the work they do for other constituents.

We are on the 14th day of a debate that did not need to happen. It would not have happened if we had a government that was interested in accountability and transparency. Alas, here we are.

If the government would hand over the documentation that has been asked for and allow the RCMP to do its job, Parliament could move on. However, that is not the case.

I may be new in this place, and I may have a babyish face, but I was not born yesterday. The government's excuses for not providing the unredacted documents have changed several times since Parliament began asking for them; that makes me question the authenticity of the excuses. The government members said they were protecting charter rights; they then said the RCMP did not want the documents. It feels as though the government keeps flip-flopping to keep the documents hidden.

I have a particular interest in the government green slush fund scandal; we all do. It has already been established by the Auditor General that there was something awry with this fund, but we have all already heard a lot about that. I will talk more about that later.

One reason the green slush fun is interesting to me is that I used to work in the environmental field. Yes, that is true. In fact, I have a degree in civil and environmental engineering from Queen's.

[Privilege, October 21st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I have a fact: It is a $40-billion deficit. If we take 1% of that, that is still $400 million.

Is this a case of the government being unable to handle large numbers like $40 billion, let alone another $400 million?

[Privilege, October 21st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I am still trying to understand how much $400 million really is and what it represents. I think Canadians at home would also like something more relatable so they can put this into context.

What could that money actually buy? It can buy 80 million cheeseburger Happy Meals, which is about two for every Canadian; 161 million double-doubles, which is a week's worth for every adult Canadian; or, for the good people of Toronto—St. Paul's, 170,000 months of rent, or about five months for every renter in St. Paul's.

If the government used taxpayer money to give away the equivalent of 80 million cheeseburgers, how can we trust it with any of our funds?

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, $400 million is a lot of money, and it is hard to comprehend how much that really is. It is 4,200 GMC Sierra trucks. It is 66,666,666 Girl Guide cookie boxes, that is, if you do not break the 0.6 repeating. For people in Toronto, it is 15% of the TTC budget.

If the government could not run this program, which had admirable goals, without basically giving the money away, how can we trust it with any programs we have in Canada?

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the examples the member gave are akin to insider trading. That is the world where I was trained, and that is a criminal offence. That is what is going on here, in my view.

I am dumbfounded at the lack of transparency, which would clear this whole thing up in about 35 seconds, if we are talking about efficiency. I am an engineer, and I love to see efficiency. If those on the other side of the House would produce the documents, we would be done.

Are we to believe the government is actually protecting Canadians' rights?

[Privilege, October 10th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am new in this place, but I was not born yesterday. Putting this into perspective, $400 million is equivalent to 3,000 Teslas, 26,000 Maple Leafs tickets or 360 homes in Toronto. It is plain to see what is going on. There were bad things done with Canadians' money and they are being hidden.

The examples you gave me are akin to insider trading. That is the world I come from—

[Public Safety, October 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, in March of this year, Samidoun paraded through my riding to intimidate our Jewish community. Now we see videos of Samidoun members in our streets calling for the death of Canada, shouting “Long live October 7” and calling Hamas terrorists their heroes while they burn the Canadian flag. The government has done nothing to put a stop to these pro-genocide, anti-Semitic, anti-Canadian mobs who threaten our Jewish communities nationwide.

Will the Prime Minister commit to protecting our Jewish communities and label Samidoun a terrorist organization?