Rick Perkins

[Privilege, October 8th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I listened intently to the speech by my colleague, the member for Bay of Quinte, and he touched on all the key points. I would like him to elaborate a little more, if he could, on the claim that there is only one way for the police to start an investigation, as the government House leader likes to look at the bottom half of the Speaker's ruling and not the top half. The Speaker ruled that there is a prima facie case of a breach of privilege.

What that means, for people at home, is that the documents the House requested have not been provided. Charles I lost his head as King of England over the issue of defying the House. I am not saying that this is what should happen to the Liberals, but the fact is that the Crown is defying the House order, and Liberals have been found in breach of that, essentially in contempt of the House.

Would the member comment on why they think that is the only way the police can go? If we were an employer, like I know that member was, we would have turned over the documents to the police, would we not?

[Innovation, Science and Industry, October 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, every time I meet with a Liberal, I have to check for my wallet. They just took $400 million of taxpayer money and funnelled it to Liberals in the green slush fund. Why are they ignoring an order of the House? Why are they preventing us from getting to the business of the House, since they will not turn over the documents to the RCMP?

If the Prime Minister will not end the cover-up, will he at least call a carbon tax election so Canadians can get the green slush fund money back?

[Innovation, Science and Industry, October 8th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, there is so much Liberal corruption that they are covering up their cover-up of the $400 million corruption of the Liberal green slush fund. The Speaker ruled that the NDP-Liberals violated a House order to turn the green slush fund documents over to the RCMP for investigation. How much worse is the corruption that the NDP-Liberals are refusing to respect the order of the Speaker, pushing aside all the work of doubling the housing costs that the Liberals have done, inflation and crime? We can get back to the business of the House if the NDP-Liberals just end the cover-up and turn the documents over to the RCMP.

Why will they not?

[Foreign Affairs, October 7th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. On September 26, the Speaker said the following in the House:

The House has clearly ordered the production of certain documents, and that order has clearly not been fully complied with.

You then went on to say that you “cannot come to any other conclusion but to find that a prima facie question of privilege has been established”.

I would like to table the—

[Privilege, October 4th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I am going to put a little more detailed flavour on this so that people watching understand. The chair of SDTC, Annette Verschuren, who was hand-picked by the Prime Minister, was put in place after the previous chair complained about the government. She tried to get $6.8 million for the Verschuren Centre at Cape Breton University from the slush fund she chaired. The investment committee said it was a conflict. The investment committee also said it would use the employees here to help her get the money elsewhere. The chair actually used the employees of the green slush fund to get a further $10 million for the Verschuren Centre from Industry Canada and ACOA. That is the least of the corruption, but it is a very specific instance of what the Liberals are trying to cover up with their hand-picked chair.

What does the member think about that and why they are trying to prevent those documents from going to the RCMP?

[Privilege, October 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North has clearly not followed all of the facts on this. The member does not clearly understand that a whistle-blower went to the minister's department. For 40 months, while the current minister was sitting in his office, he had an ADM at every meeting at which 82% of the transactions were conflicted. After a whistle-blower was going to the department over three months and became frustrated, as nothing was happening with the minister, that whistle-blower went public, and this appeared in the media. Then, all of a sudden, the minister realized that there was something going on in his department and that he should be doing something.

It is a total falsehood to claim that the minister and the government did anything. They did not do anything until it was out in the public. I would like the member to comment on that.

[Privilege, October 4th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the intervention from the member for Nepean, and as a fellow member of the industry committee, I also appreciate the work he does. He always asks very thoughtful questions and I appreciate that.

I listened intently to the member's intervention on this privilege motion. I know he had an extensive business career before he was elected in 2015. In that situation, when he was an investment banker, if he had found that one of the people who worked for him had taken client money, would he have waited until the RCMP discovered it and applied to the court to get the documents, or would he have called in the police himself and turned the documents over?

That is the essence of and the difference in the argument the government is making versus the one we are making in regard to this production of documents.

[Innovation, Science and Industry, October 4th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the House was listening to the RCMP when the RCMP commissioner said yesterday that he is investigating the corruption with respect to the green slush fund.

The Liberals use the charter as an excuse. The charter does not exist to protect the Liberals and prevent and create obstruction-of-justice opportunities. As Liberals cling for dear life to the secret documents, they obstruct justice. Hundreds of millions of dollars have already been funnelled to Liberal cronies. What is the true number? Is it billions of dollars? Is it $2 billion?

Will the Liberal who is obstructing justice and knows the true amount of the—

[Innovation, Science and Industry, October 4th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, there is breaking news: The RCMP commissioner has confirmed that the Prime Minister's hand-picked directors of the green slush fund are under criminal investigation. What we have now is the Liberals' not only defying an order of the House to produce the documents and turn them over to the RCMP, but also obstructing justice by refusing to co-operate with the RCMP investigation. Nine green slush fund appointees have been implicated in funnelling $400 million to their own companies.

Are the Liberals obstructing justice so their cronies can avoid jail?

[Privilege, October 3rd, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the member for Calgary Midnapore has done amazing work dealing with the McKinsey scandals of the Liberal government, the ad scam scandal and many others. I actually have a spreadsheet in the office to try and keep track of them. As for the spurious argument of the government members, they will not provide the documents over a House order because somehow they think that the only way the police can investigate a crime and ask for documents is if the police do it. This is totally false.

The member is an experienced diplomat. If in her time as a diplomat in Canada, I am not saying that this happened, but if it ever did happen, and she discovered that an employee had absconded with taxpayer money from an embassy or from a mission, would she have to leave that employee in place to continue to do the work until the police discovered that that was going on and went to the courts to ask? Would she as the employer responsible for that money actually have a responsibility to contact the police, provide the documents and information? Is that not another way? Is that not what Parliament is doing here? Essentially it is Parliament on behalf of the taxpayers that owns this foundation where $400 million had disappeared and been funnelled into Liberal insiders' pockets.