44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 6, 2024 10:00AM
- Jun/6/24 10:41:04 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have an Auditor General's report that may very well end up with an RCMP investigation and perhaps criminal charges, and the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader cannot even defend it. There is nothing the member can defend in the Auditor General's report.
Did the Auditor General get anything wrong? Was she wrong when she said that $76 million in taxpayer money was paid out in direct conflicts of interest? Was she wrong when she said that $123 million in total was misappropriated? Was she wrong when she said that $59 million was given out to companies that did not even qualify? No. The member wants to tell us not to worry, that Canadians should take heart that it is worse in some other parts of the world. That is not good enough.
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- Jun/6/24 11:13:19 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the appetite for Canadians for corruption is very low, but specifically, right now, given the fact that the financial burden of Canadians is becoming quite high, this corruption, after nine years of this Liberal government, is just becoming far too much for Canadians.
We know that of all the individuals being investigated, we are asking the RCMP to look into this one individual, who may or may not be investigated, as it is very concerning. A former industry minister, Navdeep Baines, appointed the chair of the board. Subsequent members to the board, who he knew at the time, had conflicts of interest and doled out $140 million of taxpayer money where directors voted 186 times in instances with conflicts of interest. However, more concerning to Canadians with the burden of the cost of living is that this minister got a million-dollar job with Rogers Communication at a time when he promised cellphone bills would be down 25%, and this government subsequently promised 50%. Rogers has posted its best profit ever off the backs of Canadians.
Canadians demand an answer. Why was this appropriate for this government to treat this individual and others this way and for the further corruption coming from this story and others?
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- Jun/6/24 11:51:30 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, earlier today, we had a Liberal member stand up and say that the government has done what it set out to do. When one looks at 186 breaches of conflict of interest in SDTC alone, the government definitely set out to do what it wanted to do, which was to reward Liberal friends with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Does my colleague see that particular issue as well with the current government?
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- Jun/6/24 12:07:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the proof is in the reports that were identified, brought in and have lingered for years, even the external ones that had to be approved by the minister's office to be investigated, as well as the fact there was somebody from ISED sitting on the board of directors. How could the government not know this was happening? It was like having a front row seat on the Titanic and for some reason having no idea what was going on. I can say that the cozy relationships, the appointment process and all those different things, unfortunately clouded some really good work that could have been done. That is why we need to clean this up, to make sure that the workers and taxpayer money are going to be respected.
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- Jun/6/24 12:21:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think what the member was really trying to get at in his speech is that it seems like this type of corruption, this level of corruption, is ingrained in the government. Toward the end of his speech he was referencing that even during the pandemic the government was taking taxpayer money and sending it off to Liberal insiders.
Does the member agree that this is not just a one-off with the government, but that this is actually part of what it is at its very core?
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- Jun/6/24 1:31:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, life has become much more difficult for Canadians. However, for the Prime Minister and his well-connected Liberal friends, life has actually never been better. I rise today in the House to speak to the Conservatives' opposition day motion calling on the government to deposit all relevant documents pertaining to SDTC within 14 days of the adoption of the motion.
Let us go back in time and remember the year 2015. When the Prime Minister took office, he promised a new wave of governance, transparency and accountability that, in his words, Canadians had never seen before. However, he did the complete opposite. He established a culture of secrecy, and his stewardship of taxpayer funds ended. SDTC is a prime example of that. The essence of the motion is accountability.
At this point, it is appropriate to repeat the words of the assistant deputy minister of the industry ministry. He was not aware he was being recorded speaking to a whistle-blower, and this came to light. This is in relation to the $40 million that was handed out during the pandemic to well-connected friends because they were having it tough. Life was tougher for these companies and the board decided that $40 million would be sufficient.
The deputy minister said, “It was free money”. He then made an analogy with the controversy that brought down the Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin Liberal government in the early 2000s. He said, “That is almost a sponsorship-scandal level...giveaway.” We now hear from the Auditor General that $40 million is not even close to the amount of taxpayer abuse. Canadians deserve to know how their taxpayer dollars are being utilized and misused, especially within organizations such as SDTC, which are supposed to play a crucial role in our environmental and economic landscape.
This past Tuesday, the Auditor General released a damning report that spoke to what Conservatives had been saying all along: The Prime Minister has turned SDTC, which was supposed to stand as a federal foundation supporting small and medium-sized businesses in the clean-tech sector, into a green slush fund for Liberal insiders. A staggering $123 million was misappropriated for projects that were ineligible, that were marred by conflicts of interest or that should simply never have received funding in the first place.
What is even more concerning is the revelation that conflicts of interest directly influenced approval decisions, resulting in a whopping $76 million awarded to projects with connections to the Liberals and their associates within the SDTC.
I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Battle River—Crowfoot.
On top of this, $12 million was disbursed to projects that not only lacked eligibility but also harboured conflicts of interest. The government's response, or I should say lack thereof, is also troubling.
Despite the government repeatedly boasting about Canada's robust ethics and conflict of interest laws, the AG findings expose a consistent failure to adhere to those standards. The disconnect from the government between rhetoric and reality is stark. The AG herself emphasized that her recommendations will only carry weight when the government starts walking the talk and following the rules that are already in place, indicating a clear need for action rather than mere lip service.
The members opposite can deflect and debate all they want, but the facts remain indisputable. Long-standing conflict of interest policies were flouted in 90 instances, with one egregious case involving the Prime Minister's hand-picked chair siphoning off $217,000 to her own company.
These revelations not only erode public trust, but also underscore the urgent need for accountability, transparency and a genuine commitment to upholding the ethical standards that Canadians rightfully expect from their government.
I wish to remind the House that this is far from the first time that the integrity of SDTC has been called into question. Before the Auditor General even launched into her investigation, whistle-blowers recorded hours of conversations, revealing that the federal bureaucracy itself had lost confidence in the leadership at SDTC.
The House should remember that a secret recording of a senior civil servant, the deputy minister, slammed the outright incompetence of the government. The whistle-blowers who filed compliance against SDTC had hoped for a management overhaul and a full-fledged investigation. They alleged conflicts of interest and cases of mismanagement.
Doug McConnachie, the assistant DM, emphasized that the situation at SDTC was “sloppiness”, “laziness” and “outright incompetence”. Despite these damning assessments, the government continued to permit the same management team to remain in place, asking them to rectify the very problems they created. I cannot make up this lunacy. That was the decision of the government.
During this time, common-sense Conservatives voiced that those involved in bad decision making were certainly not the best candidates to apply coercive of measures. However, as per usual, the Liberals did not listen. This decision not only undermines whistle-blowers' efforts but also raises serious questions about the government's commitment to accountability and transparency.
Now here we are, around a year later, with the findings of the AG to prove what Conservatives and Canadians knew all along, and what the Liberals thought they could keep hidden under the rug. The government's handling, or lack thereof, of the issue has been nothing but a series of broken promises and attempts to contain its image rather than addressing the root problems at hand.
The issue goes beyond mere management. It is about the misuse of taxpayer money and the government's failure to uphold the highest standards of ethical governance for which Canada is known.
The only word that resonates within the Liberal Party is “secrecy”. Canadians deserve to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Taxpayer money was squandered, and taxpayers deserve answers. The current approach taken by the NDP-Liberal government is akin to asking the fox to guard the henhouse.
The Auditor General's decision to launch an investigation last year was a step in the right direction, but it should not have come to this. We are thankful for her work, but report 6 on SDTC is one piece of the puzzle. In response to the report, the government has axed the green slush fund. The Liberals want Canadians to move on and forget about the mismanagement, their corruption and blatant conflict of interest breaches. They want us to focus on other issues. We will not let that happen.
On behalf of our Conservative leader and our next great prime minister, and for the transparency of Canadians, the Conservatives stand today to order the government, SDTC and the Auditor General of Canada to deposit all relevant documents related to the program within 14 days.
There is a culture of dishonesty and fraud that has taken over this Parliament. Ethics and Liberals, oil and water do not mix.
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- Jun/6/24 1:46:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is woefully wrong in the approach he takes. He indicates this was arm's length, and initially it was established as arm's length. However, when we have the Prime Minister handpicking the chair to sit on the board and to excuse numerous, close to 100, conflicts of interest, it is no longer arm's length. It becomes another Liberal-friendly entity, and taxpayer monies were misused, consistently, year after year.
To the member's point that the government reacted swiftly, that is garbage. It did not happen. The Liberals only reacted when they were embarrassed by these whistle-blowers coming forward and releasing details of all the conversations with the ADM. Then it was, “Whoops, we got another scandal on our hands, better tamp this down as quickly as possible, call for investigations.” That is my response.
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- Jun/6/24 2:45:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canadians have long known that the carbon tax costs them more than they get back. Who else knows this? The Liberals do. That is because the Parliamentary Budget Officer revealed this week that the Liberals commissioned a report that confirmed what Canadians already know, that the carbon tax costs families more than they get back. Now the Liberals refuse to release the taxpayer-funded report. Let us end the carbon tax cover-up.
When will the minister quit using unbelievable talking points and release the secret report that proves once and for all that Canadians are right?
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- Jun/6/24 2:52:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there has been $123 million handed out to ineligible companies. There have been 186 conflicts of interest, and 76 million taxpayer dollars have been given out to well-connected Liberals. After nine years of the NDP-Liberal government, it is clear that the Prime Minister is not worth the cost or the corruption of his billion-dollar green slush fund.
Conservatives are calling for the evidence of corruption to be handed over to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, so will the NDP-Liberal government end the cover-up and call in the Mounties?
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- Jun/6/24 5:12:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in support of our Conservative motion that calls on the Liberals to end their cover-up and produce for the House, as well as turn over to the RCMP, all documents relating to corruption and self-dealing with respect to the Liberals' billion-dollar green slush fund, otherwise known as Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC.
The staggering level of corruption, conflicts and self-dealing was revealed in the Auditor General's report that was tabled in the House earlier this week. It is a direct result of a culture of corruption embedded in the rotten Liberal government. That is demonstrated by the fact that, before the Liberals took office, under the previous Harper Conservative government, SDTC was functioning well. That is evidenced by a 2017 report of the Auditor General that went back into the Harper era and gave SDTC a clean bill of health.
The ethical spiral downward at SDTC occurred exclusively under the watch of the Liberals, and more specifically, under the former minister of industry, Navdeep Bains, and the current minister of industry. To put a timeline on when that began, I would submit it happened when Navdeep Bains, the Prime Minister's good buddy, decided, for purely political reasons, to fire the Harper-appointed chair of SDTC, who had presided over it when it received a clean bill of health from the Auditor General, and replace that chair with Ms. Annette Verschuren.
There was a major problem with the appointment of Verschuren because she had a major conflict of interest, namely that her company was receiving money from SDTC. That is a major conflict of interest that Navdeep Bains was warned about multiple times, including by Annette Verschuren herself, who, to her credit, said that she had a conflict of interest. Navdeep Bains did not care and, conflicts of interest be damned, he appointed Annette Verschuren as chair. The culture within any organization begins at the top, and the culture that was set by Navdeep Bains at SDTC was a culture where conflicts of interest did not matter.
Looking back at what has transpired since that time, and the decisions that Navdeep Bains made, both with respect to the appointment of Verschuren, as well as several other directors, it is now evident to me that Navdeep Bains wanted to turn SDTC into a slush fund where Liberal insiders could rig the system to line their own pockets by ripping off taxpayers. That is precisely what has happened at SDTC, and Navdeep Bains is the architect of that.
For years, Navdeep Bains, as the former industry minister, and the current minister turned a blind eye to all kinds of conflicts of interest, and tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money was being funnelled improperly out the door at SDTC. The only time the minister pretended to take some interest in the corruption at SDTC was when a whistle-blower sounded the alarm over nearly $40 million in so-called COVID relief payments being approved by the board. The Auditor General, in her report, determined that those COVID relief payments contravened the contribution agreement with the Department of Industry, and that there were 66 cases of conflicts of interest in which board members voted to approve funds that were funnelled into companies that they had an interest in.
I have to note that Annette Verschuren, the chair, actually moved both motions to funnel monies into her own companies from SDTC. The rot and corruption was blatant. They were not even trying to hide it. However, it gets a lot worse than the COVID relief payments, because the Auditor General found 186 cases of conflicts of interest involving board members and consultants. In 90 cases, board members voted to approve funds that were funnelled into companies they had an interest in and benefited from, and they did not even so much as declare a conflict. Some $76 million went into those companies, voted for by board members at SDTC.
It is not just $76 million, and I should not say “just” $76 million. Tens of millions of taxpayers' money was also funnelled into companies of SDTC board members while those members served on the board. I note, for instance, that the Minister of Environment's good friend and former colleague Andrée-Lise Méthot, at the time as she served on the board, benefited to the tune of $42.5 million in SDTC funds, which went into her companies. Then there are Guy Ouimet, another board member, whose companies received $4 million in funding from SDTC, and Liberal insider and former Liberal staffer Stephen Kukucha, whose companies received $25 million from SDTC when he served on the board.
This speaks not only to major and serious conflicts of interest, but to the fact that members of the board broke the law. They broke the Conflict of Interest Act. Board members are public office holders. They are bound by the Conflict of Interest Act and the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology Act, which the Auditor General determined. The Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology Act very expressly, in subsection 12(2), provides that board members shall not profit or benefit from decisions of the board, and they profited handsomely.
In addition to that, $59 million improperly went out the door to projects that contravened the contribution agreement with the Department of Industry, and that is just scratching the surface because those are only the projects that the Auditor General audited. The Auditor General concluded that there were likely many more projects to which money went out the door improperly. Through it all, an assistant deputy minister sat in on each and every board meeting in which these decisions were made, when board members had conflicts of interest and when money went out the door in contravention of the contribution agreements, and former minister Bains and the current minister did nothing. The current minister turned a blind eye until he was caught.
One current senior industry official said that things are so bad at SDTC, he compared them to “a sponsorship-scandal level kind of giveaway”. Based on what we know from the Auditor General's report, which likely just scratches the surface of the corruption and self-dealing at SDTC, it looks to be a lot worse than the sponsorship scandal. We are talking about potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that were improperly funnelled out the door from which board members profited.
In closing, let me simply say this is why it is time for the Liberals to end the cover-up. It is time to turn over the documents to the RCMP. It is time to call in the Mounties.
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- Jun/6/24 5:28:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years, the Liberal-NDP government has demonstrated a pattern of corruption. Just this week, the Auditor General confirmed widespread Liberal corruption in her shocking report on the billion-dollar green slush fund at Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Specifically, the Auditor General found that SDTC did not follow conflict of interest policies in not one, not 20, not 50, but 90 cases.
The government spent nearly $76 million on projects connected to Liberal insiders and their friends appointed to run the slush fund. It also spent $12 million on projects that were both in a conflict of interest and ineligible for funding. In one instance, the Prime Minister's hand-picked slush fund chair siphoned off $217,000 to her own company. Its pattern of disregard and disdain for the Canadian taxpayer is outrageous.
The Liberals would like Canadians to believe that this is arm's length and has nothing to do with them, which is patently false. Our motion would order the Auditor General to turn over all documentation related to the green slush fund scandal to the RCMP. The only question now is whether the NDP will vote to protect its political master from that investigation or follow the Conservatives' lead to ensure that this corruption is fully investigated.
The AG has the evidence that the RCMP needs to investigate. It is time to do the right thing. Canadians deserve to know the truth.
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