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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 318

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 27, 2024 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 318 - May/27/24
Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)
  • May/27/24 11:57:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his excellent speech. We have heard many excellent speeches from Conservative colleagues tonight about the importance of the energy sector, jobs and opportunity. After nine years of the Liberal government, it is clear that its policies are not working, and it is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. We will get to that, but in the context of the bill, certainly, it is not worth the cost. However, the good news is that, after nine years, there is hope on the horizon. Canadians know that it was not this way before the extreme NDP-Liberal coalition took power, and it will not be that way once we have a restoration of common-sense leadership in this country. Could the member share a little more about the promise associated with a restoration of common-sense leadership in this country and how his constituents are reacting to that?
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Context: House Hansard - 318 - May/28/24
Mr. Garnett Genuis (Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, CPC)
  • May/28/24 12:09:03 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is now clear that the costly, crooked, cover-up coalition engaged in corrupt practices in the arrive scam scandal. The Auditor General's report revealed that the government rigged the process, which was that senior officials sat down with the well-connected insider firm, GC Strategies, and discussed and arranged the terms of a deal, which GC Strategies would then bid on. It was able to rig the process, discuss the terms of the deal, which it then bid on and, surprise, got the contract. However, we still do not know why the NDP-Liberal coalition went to such lengths to favour GC Strategies. Let us paint the picture. GC Strategies is two guys who work out of a basement. They do not do any actual work on projects; they simply receive the contracts and then subcontract them and take massive commissions along the way. It would be as if the member for York—Simcoe and I went out and started Lake Simcoe Enterprises, did no work but just got contracts and passed them along. That would be a good deal for us, but it would be a bad deal for taxpayers. Why is it that the government did not simply hire the IT professionals to do the work rather than going through a couple of middlemen sitting in their basement who know nothing about IT and whose only business is to go on LinkedIn, find people who can do the work, then get the contracts, find the people to actually do the work, and collect millions of dollars in commissions in the process? However, the government chose the two people from GC Strategies. The government chose this company to be the favoured son of Liberal corrupt procurement. Why were they chosen? We still do not have an answer to that. Maybe the parliamentary secretary will be able to explain it to the House. Frankly, we have seen that the government, the Prime Minister and the people working under him, have persistently rigged the process to reward insiders and punish taxpayers, and the process is broken. We will hear Liberals say, “Well, those Conservatives will make cuts. What will they spend less on when they are in government?” I will tell members; it is not rocket science. If there is a two-person firm that receives the contracts then passes them along and does no work in the process, it seems pretty uncomplicated. I mean, it would be ideal to cut out the contracting in general and have the work done inside government, but at least cut out the middleman. GC Strategies has rightly gotten a lot of attention. It has done very well under the current government. It was founded in 2015 and has done extremely well under the NDP-Liberals. However, there are over 600 different companies doing IT middleman contracting and subcontracting, doing so-called staff augmentation for the public service. This is out of control, and it involves massive amounts of money. There has been a dramatic growth in public service spending but also a dramatic growth in contracting out at the same time, and a substantial amount of the contracting out is going to do-nothing middleman companies and is going to advice from professional services. Why is the government spending so much and getting so little for Canadians?
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