44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 6, 2024 10:00AM
- Jun/6/24 3:26:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are definitely fighting against having this motion carried and having the production of papers. There are $123 million that the Auditor General has identified that did not follow the rules under the conflict of interest declarations. The SDTC actually continued to use funds to benefit themselves and their friends, and the Liberals stuffed this board with their colleagues. We are talking about patronage, and we are talking about pork-barrelling.
Are the Liberals voting against this because it is another Liberal cover-up? Is it Liberal incompetence? Is it Liberal corruption? Is it Liberal complicity in what could be under an RCMP investigation that ends in charges under the Criminal Code? Is it all of the above?
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- Jun/6/24 3:27:26 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question that my colleague from Manitoba just asked, because I think it speaks to something that should not be controversial: simply asking for us to shed light on the circumstances, asking for these documents so that all Canadians can make that judgment for themselves. If charges should be laid, then charges should be laid. If there are further details that need to be examined, then those further details should be examined.
What is so disgusting is that it seems like the Liberals, propped up by the fourth party in the corner there, a weak NDP, seem to cover up the corruption no matter what the cost is. Canadians deserve better.
This motion is simple. This motion is straightforward. This motion simply asks that we can have the documents so that Canadians can see for themselves where the money in the Liberals' green slush fund went. I think that is common sense. I would ask every member of the House to join in promoting that very common-sense idea.
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- Jun/6/24 3:29:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in the motion before us, 14 days is a very reasonable timeline. These documents exist. They can be tabled so that Canadians can get the answers they are entitled to. When it comes down to it, the corruption, the scandal, the pork-barrelling and the conflicts of interest are an abuse of institutions that Canadians should be able to trust. Transparency is very key.
We have laid out a very straightforward motion that is an important first step in ensuring that Canadians get the answers they deserve.
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- Jun/6/24 3:54:26 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the hon. member said there are some issues at Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Let us go over the basics. Annette Verschuren, the former board chair, as well as being CEO of a Toronto-based energy storage firm called NRStor Inc., participated in approving grants totalling $217,000 to her own company. She refused to recuse herself.
SDTC awarded funding to projects that were ineligible. It did not follow conflict of interest policies for directors 88 times. The legal requirements for the number of foundation members were never met; the board was required to have 15 members, but, by 2020, there were only two. Decisions were also made without quorum. These are not “some issues”. This is a board that is colossally compromised by corruption.
Given facts such as these and more, would my hon. colleague really describe the situation at SDTC as one where there were “some issues”?
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- Jun/6/24 4:16:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak today.
Nine years with this Prime Minister in power has meant nine years of scandals. The scandals are piling up here in Ottawa at an unbelievable rate. There is a new one every day. This week, the Auditor General of Canada discovered that the Prime Minister turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal Party insiders.
This is taxpayers' money, more specifically, $123 million that SDTC awarded to close associates who were not only in a conflict of interest, but in some cases were not even eligible for funding. A total of $59 million of Canadians' money was awarded for ineligible projects, and $76 million was awarded for projects with a connection to Liberal cronies who had been appointed to positions within SDTC.
There is more. The Auditor General's report further indicates that long-standing conflict of interest management policies were completely ignored in 90 of the cases. We are not talking about one or two cases. We are talking about nearly 100 cases where conflict of interest policies were not followed. This is serious.
I was a member of the board of directors of the Port of Québec, and I owned a company. Obviously, the Port of Québec could not do business with my company. It was out of the question. It was not allowed. I do not understand how the members of this organization's board of directors were able to give themselves so much money. It is unbelievable.
More specifically, the SDTC chair, who was chosen by none other than the Prime Minister himself, misappropriated $217,000 for her own personal gain. She blatantly exploited public resources and behaved incredibly irresponsibly with regard to the ethics rules and with regard to the trust of Canadians.
Is no one in the government able to allocate those funds properly? One has to wonder. Who is responsible for preventing this type of scandal? One also has to wonder about that.
Whistle-blowers are the ones who tipped us off. They made sure that we, the official opposition, moved this investigation forward until it reached the point where the Auditor General was asked to investigate to get to the bottom of things.
The Auditor General made it clear that the responsibility lies squarely with the industry minister. This minister failed to adequately monitor contracts awarded to Liberal insiders and, in so doing, he seriously failed in his duty to protect Canadian taxpayers as well as Canadian dollars. He completely neglected the essential task of ensuring that public funds are managed with integrity and transparency. This scandalous situation is equally unacceptable.
The abuse of power and corruption are unacceptable. Canadians deserve much better after nine years of scandals from this Prime Minister. The Prime Minister and his government have betrayed the trust of Canadians with every misallocated dollar. We pay taxes. We send money to the federal government in the hope that the federal government will spend it wisely and, more importantly, offer services and products that we could be proud of. That is not the case right now.
They betray our trust with every dollar wasted and every dollar taken out of Canadians' pockets. Public funds are not there to line the pockets of Liberal cronies or to make the rich richer. Canadians are suffering and are having an extremely tough time meeting their most essential needs, namely food and shelter. While hunger and homelessness are a reality for more and more Canadians, while they cannot even live in dignity, while they are faced with choices such as buying food or paying the rent, living in a motel or living in the street, the government is turning public funds into a slush fund for its friends. How could such an abuse of power happen? How could there be such a misappropriation of funds?
The Auditor General noted that Sustainable Development Technology Canada did not comply with conflict of interest policies in a hundred or so cases; spent nearly $76 million on projects with ties to highly placed Liberal cronies in the organization; and spent $59 million on projects that should not have received money. Think about it. There is a special fund that is supposed to be used to help the environment and help the country become carbon neutral by 2050, and it is being used to fund projects that have nothing to do with the green fund. It is quite incredible.
The Auditor General also noted that SDTC also spent $12 million on projects that involved a conflict of interest and were also ineligible for funding. What is more, its chair diverted $217 billion to her own company.
Talk about a total and outrageous lack of accountability. The Liberal government is neither transparent nor accountable. It should always be held responsible for its actions, and it should always answer Canadians' questions, especially when their money is being misappropriated, wasted, invested in a corrupt and negligent way. I think I speak for all Canadians when I say that we need answers. The most important thing is making sure Canadians get answers. That is why we think this matter should be handed over to the RCMP so they can find out the truth.
Once again, we are disappointed for Canadians, disappointed for our country and disappointed in this Liberal government. However, our disappointment merely reinforces and confirms what we already knew. We need to bring common sense back to Ottawa, and we need to do it now. Only the common-sense Conservatives can put an end to the corruption, the irresponsibility and the negligence. Respecting conflict of interest policies does not seem like mission impossible to us. It should not even be an issue. At the risk of repeating myself, it is just common sense.
I took a course in business administration at Université Laval. That was in 2013, if I am not mistaken. Anyone who wants to have a governance role must absolutely ensure that there is no conflict of interest in anything they are going to do. Allocating millions of dollars to one's own companies within an organization like that is completely and utterly unacceptable.
I can guarantee that we will bring common sense back to Ottawa. Serving the interests of those who elected us, representing them properly, answering their questions correctly, ensuring they can live with dignity, all without abusing their money, now that is common sense, and that is what we will stand up for on this side of the House. Nine years of scandals is nine years too long. Canadians deserve to see an end to this long and difficult era of scandals. We want to help bring this chapter to an end. Democracy depends on peoples' trust in their representatives. Without that trust, we have nothing.
Today, we are speaking out against the irresponsible corruption that has taken place at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, an organization where a failure of governance and a continuous cycle of mismanagement have led to very serious violations of conflict of interest policies. This has led to the mismanagement of over $123 million of taxpayers' money. An RCMP investigation is absolutely crucial. As usual, the government claims to be surprised and will waste even more money on overly generously paid consultants to cover up yet another scandal.
We know that the minister was informed years ago that there were concerns regarding Sustainable Development Technology Canada, so why did the problem continue? How did the mismanagement get so out of hand? This investigation is urgent. Action is urgently needed. It is imperative that we take action as quickly as possible. Therefore I move, seconded by the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable, the following amendment:
That the motion be amended:
(a) by replacing the words “14 days“ with the words “30 days”;
(b) by adding the word “and” at the end of paragraph (f), and by adding, after paragraph (f), the following new paragraph: “(g) in the case of the Auditor General of Canada, any other document, not described in paragraphs (a) to (f), upon which she relied in preparing her Report 6—Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which was laid upon the table on Tuesday, June 4, 2024;”; and
(c) in paragraph (h), by deleting all the words after the word “Police”.
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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 5:23:35 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this week alone we had three Auditor General's reports, all of which are an indictment of the management by the government. Frankly, what they illustrate is a culture of corruption.
We have a government that has been in office for nine years, and there has been a consistent pattern of mismanagement, entitlement, self-dealing, conflict and corruption. As bad as SDTC is, it is only one example of the corruption that we have seen from the Liberals. It is why Canadians are so hungry to see the Prime Minister call an election so that Canadians can rid themselves of this corrupt government.
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- Jun/6/24 5:25:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the government turned a blind eye to corruption at SDTC until a whistle-blower came forward and said there were real problems with the COVID relief payments. The Auditor General concluded that there were 66 conflicts and that the contribution agreement was violated. The notion that the Liberals got ahead of this is absolutely false. The assistant deputy minister was there when all of these conflicts occurred and all of these improper expenditures were approved by the board.
They also claimed that they are not to blame because it is an arm's-length foundation. Well, I would suggest they read the Auditor General's report, which found that they completely failed to provide appropriate oversight with respect to expenditures and monitoring conflicts of interest.
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- Jun/6/24 5:26:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member spoke quite a bit about the ongoing corruption. We know that with this particular fund, there was a conflict of interest, and the government seems to lack an ethical compass. It seems like so many of these different departments are not following processes and procedures and have conflicts of interest, with Liberal friends getting ahead. We can go back to the We Charity scandal and the arrive scam. There is just so much.
Can the member speak to the lack of governance, management and ethical compass?
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- Jun/6/24 5:27:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the Auditor General's report with respect to SDTC showcases all that is wrong with the government. We had a situation where the former minister knew that the person he was appointing as chair was in a conflict of interest and appointed her anyway. Then we had ministers who turned a blind eye to the self-dealing and corruption that occurred repeatedly throughout—
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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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- Jun/6/24 7:17:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when we look at the crime rates in the big urban cities in this country and the statistics of where the weapons used in the commission these crimes come from, they are overwhelmingly illegally obtained firearms, most often smuggled up from the United States. If we reallocated the resources and money the government is using to confiscate the legal firearms that were lawfully obtained by the most-vetted citizens in this country, there is so much more that could be done to address the issues and the gaps in the CBSA with respect to border patrol. In addition, we can look at all the other wasteful spending, with the green slush fund and the corruption that has happened with SDTC. These are classic examples of funds that could have been better used for other things, such as tightening up our borders.
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