Rick Perkins

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

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, while I am enjoying the member's dissertation and his thin knowledge of the oil industry, this motion is about Interac fees. Perhaps the member could be relevant to the issue we are debating.

[Innovation, Science and Industry, November 6th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, while two million Canadians visit food banks every month, the radical Liberal environment minister continues to benefit from the Liberal green slush fund, where Liberal insiders funnelled $400 million to their own companies. The Journal de Montréal reports that Cycle Capital companies received $275 million from Canadian taxpayers while their founder sat on the slush fund board.

The radical Liberal environment minister was Cycle Capital's lobbyist prior to running for office, lobbying the Liberal government 47 times, including many meetings with the Prime Minister's friend Gerry Butts. The radical environment minister disclosed that he continues to hold a financial interest in Cycle Capital while sitting in cabinet. It pays well to be a friend of the Prime Minister.

While the radical Liberal environment minister is padding his pockets as Cycle Capital vacuums up taxpayer money, Canadians can no longer afford to heat, feed and house themselves. Is the minister's financial gain the reason the NDP-Liberals will not turn over the uncensored documents to the RCMP?

[The Economy, November 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, there is a typical NDP-Liberal Nova Scotian, who thinks that Canadians have never had it so good. He thinks that quadrupling the carbon tax, which he wants to do, is good for Canadians, that increasing housing taxes and job-killing capital gains taxes is also good for Canadians. I will tell the member what The Economist says. It says that Canada is “poorer than Alabama”, which is the “fourth-poorest” state in the U.S. The Economist also says that, over the last five years, U.S. economic growth has doubled Canada's. The Financial Post says that the Canadian standard of living decline is the “worst...in 40 years”.

Will the Prime Minister axe the taxes that are making Canadians poorer?

[The Economy, November 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, Statistics Canada confirmed this week that, under the NDP-Liberals, Canadians are getting poorer. Statistics Canada tracks the prosperity of Canadians, and for eight of the last nine quarters, it reports that Canadians are getting poorer. What is worse, the Royal Bank predicts that the Liberal legacy will continue. This is why more than half of Canadians are struggling to pay for their everyday essentials. Meanwhile, U.S. prosperity grew by 2.8%.

Will the Prime Minister reverse the Liberal recession and axe the taxes that are making Canadians poorer?

[Privilege, November 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, what is really going on here is the inability or unwillingness of the government to hand over documents that are uncensored because they are protecting their friends and trying to hide that the $400-million corruption is really $700 million, according to the Auditor General's math.

What is really incredible is that the Liberals claim they are not speaking. I think the Liberal member for Winnipeg North has spoken about 324 times on this issue. I am glad that this member finally got to speak once.

[Privilege, November 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, prior to elected life, I was in the retail business of selling alcohol, so far be it for me to diminish the great benefit of anybody buying alcohol for their business, but in this case, it is on the taxpayer dime. There is no entitlement like a foreign diplomat's entitlement to have a good time on the taxpayer dime around the country, while Canadians suffer and are unable to afford to heat, eat and house themselves.

As such, I appreciate that Oshawa is suffering, and Oshawa is suffering because we have a failed auto policy by this government as well, which does not seem to care about auto workers, union workers or, quite frankly, any jobs in this country, other than their own and funnelling $400 million to their own companies.

[Privilege, November 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford's raising the elephant in the room.

The elephant in the room is this: Why has the NDP voted 24 times to increase the carbon tax? Why did the NDP, for two and a half years, support every budget of the current government, which put up the cost of everything in this country? Why did the NDP do a fake rip-up of its coalition agreement and then still vote every single time to support the government? Why has the NDP decided, according to its leader this week, that it is in no hurry to go to an election? Might it be that his pension vests in February?

[Privilege, November 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great question in the context of the early excuse that the Liberals used for not turning over the documents in the green slush fund. They came up with a fake charter argument, saying that the only way documents could be turned over to the RCMP was if the RCMP went to court, which is one way in a police investigation. However, the other way is when someone owns or runs a business and discovers that perhaps something has happened to the money, that an employee has taken money from their company. The individual who owns or runs a business not only can turn that information and the documents over to the police, but is morally bound to do so. In this case, we, the House of Commons, on behalf of the taxpayer, own the SDTC foundation. The government is the owner of that business and therefore has the obligation to turn the documents over to the police.

[Privilege, November 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Nepean sits on the industry committee with me and does ask thoughtful questions at committee, but unfortunately that was not one of them.

The reason it was not one of them is that for things to go down, they have to have gone up. Under these Liberals, interest rates soared because they have doubled the debt of the country and because they put too much money into the economy through their deficit spending.

The member also mentioned that rent has gone down 7% in Toronto. Rent has gone up 100% in Toronto, but the Liberals are proud that it has gone down 7%. I am thrilled that the member for Nepean thinks that a 93% rent increase is some sort of great record to go to an election on. I am looking forward to the Toronto MP saying, “Re-elect us, rent only went up 93%.”

[Privilege, November 1st, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, once again, happy birthday yesterday, plus one. It is always a happy day.

I normally would be pleased, and I am always pleased, to rise in this place, even when it concerns a $400-million Liberal scandal. For those who are watching and just tuning in, perhaps I could recap. We are in the 66th hour of a Liberal filibuster on the refusal to provide documents to the House of Commons. This was demanded in June and voted on by a majority of members of Parliament, representing a majority of Canadians, in terms of the $400-million scandal identified by the Auditor General with regard to the Liberal green slush fund. Hand-picked directors of the Prime Minister funnelled that money to companies they own.

Just to give us some perspective, the Liberal filibuster began at the end of September. It is the longest in parliamentary history. The previous one, over yet another Liberal scandal, was only 16 hours. This issue has seized the House simply because the Liberals are redacting, as it is called, documents ordered by the House. What is redaction? Redaction means that they are censoring them.

The House of Commons ordered the production of documents on this scandal. Over 10,000 pages were provided. Most of them went through a lot of black ink toner cartridge because there was so much blacked out in them. They had to bring in new photocopiers in the PMO. This was ordered by the PMO, by the Prime Minister's own department, to breach the rules.

The Speaker found what is called a prima facie case of privilege. What that means, for those watching, is that the ultimate authority above everything else is the House of Commons' ability to order documents to be provided by government, to hold the Crown, the cabinet, to account for its actions. The cabinet is defying it.

What could we do with $400 million instead of funnelling it to Liberal insider companies as the Liberals have done? I will get into it. I am sure that it is not $400 million. I may be mistaken. It may be closer to $700 million, and I will explain that in a minute.

What we could do in my province of Nova Scotia with $400 million is build a thousand homes. However, the priority of the Liberals was to funnel it to their own companies so that they could enrich themselves while Canadians line up in record numbers at food banks and while people in my riding have to live in trailers and campers in camping parks because they cannot find housing. Those thousand houses that could have been built with that $400 million in Nova Scotia would be enormously helpful.

I will just tell us how extensive this cover-up is. We had the architect of the Liberal green slush fund, former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains, in the industry committee this week. Some may remember him. He was the industry minister for the Liberals from 2015 to 2021. He directly appointed all the corrupt Liberal insiders to this board, who then funnelled money to their companies. At committee, we asked him some pretty straightforward and simple questions. If I could, I will read from Hansard from the committee meeting this week.

I asked a simple question of former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains. I asked him where he worked. He said, “As I've indicated, the topic I was asked to speak on was Sustainable Development Technology Canada”. Again, I asked where he worked. He said it was on the public record.

Indeed, it is on the public record. While he was industry minister, he was responsible for lowering cellphone fees. The Prime Minister gave him the mandate. We all know that we have the most expensive cellphone costs in the world, according to international studies. Can we guess who former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains works for? He was too embarrassed to say, or perhaps those at Rogers ordered him not to say it at committee because they were too embarrassed to have him mention their name and that he worked there. However, he works for Rogers, which is the most expensive cellphone company in the world. He just kept saying that it is on the public record.

He was a good Liberal who always followed the talking points from the PMO. I suspect that he was following talking points from Rogers saying to please not associate Rogers, this most expensive cellphone company, with the Liberal corruption scandal that he was in charge of.

We had testimony from the former chair whom Navdeep Bains appointed, who he was warned had a conflict. He said to her, and to everyone in SDTC, that it was okay and they would manage the conflict. They managed the conflict of that money into their companies. The former minister himself said that was okay. That appointee, Annette Verschuren, said in committee that she never applied for any job in her life. She said Navdeep Bains called her twice to talk her into running, putting in an application and becoming the chair of the board. She said, even though he knew she was conflicted, he called her twice. I asked him if he called her twice, because that is what she testified to, and he said he did not remember.

Then I said the former CEO of the Liberal green slush fund testified before the committee that former minister Bains called her and told her to vet the candidate. She said they could not have this person as a candidate for chair because SDTC did business with her companies. If she were picked, she would be the first chair in the 20-year history of SDTC who had a conflict. Bains said it was okay and to ask her if she wanted to do it. He was warned again. Whether we believe it or not, there was actually somebody who worked in the Liberal Prime Minister's office, who was doing communications in a nice patronage job in the Liberal green slush fund. She warned the minister's office that he should not appoint this person because of the conflict. It was still ignored. This was not some mistake or some hands-off occurrence where they did not know what was going on because they are an incompetent minister who does not follow anything in their department.

I then asked Navdeep Bains if he remembered going to cabinet to get another $750 million of taxpayer money for the Liberal green slush fund. He said it was in the budget. I said that the things in the budget have to have the minister's approval. I asked if it had his approval, but he did not remember. We have a Liberal who does not remember giving away $750 million of taxpayer money. I guess that is just pocket change for the Liberals. It is either that or he was just unwilling to admit that he was part of this scheme.

We have asked, in those documents, for all the documents from the department that the former minister ran, the industry department. Can we guess which department has not complied with the whole order? It is the industry department. Can we guess which department has the most blacked-out and censored documents? It is the industry department. It is rivalled only by the Prime Minister's department, the Privy Council Office, which has also refused to give the truth about its documents. An incredible cover-up is going on.

The way to solve this and break the Liberal filibuster against giving up the documents is for them to give them up without redactions. It is the easiest way for the House to get back to dealing with the issues that Canadians are concerned about, such as the doubling of housing costs, with mortgages and rent, and the tripling of the carbon tax to 61¢ a litre. Is everybody aware that the Liberals plan to increase the carbon tax? I can just see the Liberals' campaign slogan now: “Re-elect us and we will put taxes up to 61¢ a litre.” I think it is a winner. We can just ask Joe Clark how that worked out for him in 1980.

We have a group of Liberals who are so desperate to cover up all the emails between former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains and the current industry minister, who has been responsible for the Liberal green slush fund for 45 months. They are trying to hide those documents. They have kept the House from getting to the business of actually dealing with issues for three months: September, October and into November as of today. We must hold the government to account for failing to deal with two million people a month going to food banks in Canada, for tripling the carbon tax, for increasing the cost of food and for its massively unsuccessful housing decelerator fund, in which it has spent billions of dollars to hire bureaucrats and not built a single house.

We could get to those things if the Liberals would stop filibustering and obey the House order of a democratically elected Parliament. As has been the case for over 400 years, when the House asks for something, the government is compelled to give it. It must really be bad for them to delay what they think is their priority legislation and to continue their filibuster on releasing the documents.

We all know that we would like the House to get on to the plan of fixing the budget. We have a Minister of Finance who has never met a target, nor did her predecessor, former minister “Bill no more”. They have never met a target. She said that the government was going to keep it to a $40-billion deficit, as if it were some sort of a challenge to spend only $40 billion more than the taxes it takes in. She could not even do that. She is over by $8 billion already, and we are not even through the year. We can imagine what it is going to be in the spring, when the final numbers come in about the incompetence of the government's financial ability. Maybe that is why it is delaying the release of the documents, so it cannot be held to account for its incompetence on fixing the budget.

Now let us talk about the government's inability to build homes. It brags about the billions of dollars in its housing accelerator fund, which has not built a house. That is why I call it the “decelerator” fund. My home province is Nova Scotia. The Minister of Housing is from Nova Scotia, but we would not know it. Maybe we would, because he gave $30 million of housing decelerator money to the City of Halifax. How many houses did it build? It built zero. How many people did it hire? It hired 30 more urban planners to make sure it could slow the housing process down. That is why it is the housing decelerator fund. The government is refusing to release the documents on the green slush fund so that it cannot be held to account for its ineptitude on housing.

We know that crime has massively gone up. In the city of Toronto, in the large cities and even in Nova Scotia, we are seeing the massive thefts of cars. People are being told by the Toronto police to just leave their keys by the door so that thieves do not come in and maybe harm them. They are told to let them take their car because that would be easier than them enforcing the law. What would be easier to ensure that this does not happen is to not let people who are charged with the theft of automobiles, who have been convicted time after time, out on bail.

The other election slogan of the government, other than that it will raise the tax to 61¢ a litre, will be to re-elect it so it can allow more criminals on the streets. However, it does not want us discussing those issues in the House. That is why it is not releasing the documents. It needs to stop the crime.

Let us not forget about the tax that is putting the price of everything up: the carbon tax. We believe it should axe the tax, but the government does not want to be held to account for that. Here is what happens. For 20 years, I worked in retail. I can tell members that, when one buys a good from somebody who has to manufacture it, producing that good takes a lot of energy. When it takes a lot of energy, there is a carbon tax on that, which increases the price of buying that good. One of the biggest costs in retail is the cost to transport that good from where it was made to our stores. Can members guess what is used to transport it? It is diesel and gas, not sailboats or bicycles. We cannot use the Minister of Environment's bicycles to truck a container of rum to Nova Scotia; it has to come by truck or boat. That fuel gets taxed, which increases the price. Of course, when one operates 100 or 1,000 mass market retail stores across Canada, can we guess what one's number one cost is besides labour? It is not the rent; it is paying for the energy to operate that store. Because the energy costs are there, the carbon tax is put on that. When we tax the manufacturer or the grower, tax the transportation and tax the retailer, can we guess what happens? The price of everything goes up. According to Dalhousie University, 84% of Canadians say that food is the number one thing they have seen go up.

This Liberal filibuster could end and we could get on to dealing with these issues if the Liberals would stop covering up their green slush fund and release the unredacted documents.