Marty Morantz

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that there were people appointed to SDTC under the current government's watch who directed hundreds of millions of dollars to themselves. That is the point.

The other point is that the Liberals can say they shut SDTC down, but they are not taking the next step. When someone is a victim of a crime, they call the police. If they are a perpetrator of a crime, they want to avoid that at all costs. I will allow people watching the debate to decide which one it is.

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, that is what this is all about. There were Liberal appointees at SDTC, the green slush fund, who literally directed hundreds of millions of tax dollars to themselves. The only way we can find out exactly what happened is for the government to produce the documents that the House called for and that the Speaker ordered. Until we receive those documents, we will never know. It just begs the question, that it must be really bad for the government to not give up those documents so that we can actually see where hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars actually went.

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I made my point. I would like to table this, though. Do we have consent?

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, if the member had wanted to do the right thing, he could stand up and apologize to Canada's Jewish community for making that post. I would like to ask for consent to table his tweet.

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, let me just read it. “When it comes to foreign political interference nothing matches the Israeli lobby who are all over parliament and NDP conventions. No surprise that Israeli media throw their support behind Poilievre, who is mired in his own foreign interference scandal.”

My question—

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I said the tweet was anti-Semitic, and it is. The member is feeding into anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He said that when it comes to foreign political interference, nothing matches the Israel lobby—

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, looking over at that member, it is difficult for me to respond because he is sitting next to the member from Timmins—James Bay, who actually tweeted out a highly anti-Semitic tweet just the other day—

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I love that question, because we have an excellent candidate in Winnipeg North, Rachel Punzalan. She has been door knocking relentlessly, and I have no doubt that she is going to be the next member of Parliament for Winnipeg North. Do members not all agree?

Rachel is great. She is going to be here, and she is actually going to do something that the member for Winnipeg North does not understand. She is actually going to stick to the facts and get things accomplished for her constituents, not just speak ad nauseam about nothing.

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, there are people who are going to be voting in the next federal election who were not even born when former prime minister Harper was elected Prime Minister. That is how far back they have to go to dig these things up. I always also question that.

It just seems odd to me. We can go back and look at other governments, and some things go well and some things maybe do not always go so well. However, they will pick on something that did not go so well, and say that that was bad, so what if this is bad? In other words, they are defending their malfeasance. They are saying that they did it, so it is okay that we did it. That is absolutely shameful.

We should be striving for more. Governments should be striving for more, and that member should be striving for better.

[Privilege, October 22nd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the members are heckling me. I know the member for Winnipeg North likes to heckle. It is too bad they do not let anyone else in that caucus talk except for him. He probably holds some kind of record for the most words spoken in the House. He could be down in the Guinness book of world records for that.

This is a pattern. The Prime Minister used Jody Wilson-Raybould. He is using the member for Winnipeg North. He is using all these Liberal members to protect him, but it is as though there is cognitive dissonance at play. They are signing letters for him to leave and then they are coming into the House and protecting him. We cannot make this stuff up.

Then, of course, there was the WE Charity scandal. The Prime Minister wanted to help out his friends at WE Charity by giving them an untendered billion-dollar sweetheart deal after they paid large speaking fees to his family members.

A bit closer to home, in my home city, the Liberal government once again refused to release documents, which sounds familiar, relating to the Winnipeg lab and those who work there. We have spoken a lot about foreign interference in the House of Commons lately, and this is a prime example of it. The Prime Minister knew about the shady dealings that were taking place and still refused to come clean. In fact, the Liberals were so worried about these Winnipeg lab documents that they sued the former Speaker. They actually went to court to try and stop the Speaker from releasing documents, which ultimately ended up getting released.

This whole debate about security clearance is interesting. I have security clearance because I was the sub on the Winnipeg labs subcommittee. I actually read all the documents months before I knew about the Communist Party spies in the Winnipeg lab. I knew about all that, but for six months, I could not say a word. I was muzzled. When the member opposite from Winnipeg North gets up and asks me the question, “Why won't the Leader of the Opposition get a security clearance?”, that is going to be my answer. So, I am going to pre-empt the question right away. He does not need to ask me, because he knows very well that we can have all this information, but if we cannot talk about it, we cannot hold the government accountable, and that is the reason, not the tinfoil hat conspiracy reasons that member holds for why the Leader of the Opposition does not want to get security clearance. His reason is to protect Canadians, to protect taxpayers, from the malfeasance of this Liberal government.

Back in 2015, soon after Canadians granted the Liberals a majority government, the Prime Minister said that:

The reality is that this system requires a high degree of openness, transparency, and accountability in order to maintain Canadians' confidence in our democracy and system of government.

I can assure Canadians that our party always follows all the rules and that it also supports all the values and principles associated with those rules.

Whatever happened to that? Where is that transparency, those sunny ways that the Prime Minister promised? They are gone, and I really wonder what it would take for Liberal MPs to do the right thing. They have been strung along by this Prime Minister for years, one excuse after another, one con after another. I look across the aisle to the government benches and I see several Liberal members who may have believed in the Prime Minister at one time. I wonder what they believe now. If the WE Charity scandal, the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the Winnipeg lab scandal, the ArriveCAN scandal and all the other scandals, all of which cost Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars, were not enough for them to stand up to the Prime Minister and say, “enough is enough”, what will cause them to finally do the right thing? Canadians have been taken advantage of by this Prime Minister, and those who are sitting in the Liberal backbenches are idly standing by, just allowing it to happen.

So, I ask my colleagues across the aisle, just as I said earlier, just as Polonius said to Laertes, will they be true to themselves? Will they stand up in the House of Commons and refuse to sit idly by while the Prime Minister keeps increasing taxes on Canadians for the benefit of wealthy Liberal friends and insiders? Will they stand up and fight for their communities and their constituents who sent them to this place, or will they once again give this failing Prime Minister a pass?