44th Parl. 1st Sess.
September 17, 2024 10:00AM
- Sep/17/24 10:22:34 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, there have been nine years of an NDP-Liberal government with multiple cabinet ministers. The Liberal member heckling, the one who just asked the question, voted against the Auditor General investigations into the scandals perpetrated under the Prime Minister. It is a shocking failure of the Liberals' responsibility to Canadians, their fiduciary and moral responsibility to uphold the trust the Canadians put in us when we come here.
Let us get to it. Let us talk about the Liberals' failure to protect Canadians from the corruption of the Prime Minister.
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- Sep/17/24 12:21:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to ask my colleague from the NDP a question. My colleagues and I are very curious to know whether the NDP is willing to assert the supposedly new-found independence that it is talking about and vote non-confidence in a corrupt government that has such disregard for tax dollars and for the public service. I know he mentioned this is something that should have been done in-house. ArriveCAN could have been done in-house, by our professional public servants, but instead there was the mismanagement, the corruption, the scandal that plagues the government. However, the New Democrats refuse to commit to voting non-confidence in that corruption.
Can the member clarify today that they will vote non-confidence in the Prime Minister and the Liberal government, and show whether they are actually tearing up the so-called agreement?
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- Sep/17/24 12:25:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think my colleague knows the border better than anybody else I know in this chamber, having to deal with it from an economic and social perspective, and has shown that on a regular basis. Briefly, he is absolutely correct. What is not talked about enough is the exposure of our personal information that the Conservatives and the Liberals continue to do through this outsourcing that also goes global. We have little control over that. By doing it, they reward friends and there are higher prices, less accountability and more corruption.
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- Sep/17/24 12:30:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, now I will go back to the speech where I was talking about Liberal corruption, and in particular how over the course of the last number of years we have seen an unprecedented level of corruption take place, and that is no more true than in the case of GC Strategies. The report from OGGO specifically talks about the need for the basic level of accountability. In fact, what the motion before us does is take the politics out of it by asking the Auditor General to step in and do a performance audit on GC Strategies.
Most notably, and it has been mentioned in the discussions that have happened thus far this morning, this two-person firm is named GC Strategies not because it is associated with the Government of Canada but because it wants that perception in order to be able to manipulate the process in order to get contracts.
ArriveCAN, specifically, was originally budgeted at $80,000, but ended up ballooning to a cost for which we do not even know the final number, other than that it is probably north of $60 million. That is a level of corruption that is astonishing and that Canadians are demanding answers for.
What is so frustrating is that I hear from my constituents on a regular basis, and from Canadians from coast to coast, that there is a level of frustration and an erosion of trust that has taken place in the institutions that normally, historically, we could have been able to trust. There was a very poignant statement made to me by somebody who did not consider themselves that political. They did not really have a particular party that they championed; they were just a regular Canadian. What they had shared with me is that we used to be a country where if we did not like the guy in charge, we could still respect the office they held.
Unfortunately we have come to the point where the actions of the Prime Minister and the Liberals, supported by the NDP, include a refusal to commit to put their foot down, and not just do press stunts, to actually oppose the agenda they still support. What we see in this country is that there has been an erosion of trust in our institutions.
The fact is that, like the previous member mentioned, this could have been done in-house for significantly less. It could have had the basic level of accountability through the process. The Liberals are saying that they might have made mistakes but that we should just move on. I am sorry, but $60 million spent, and close to $100 million that went to GC strategies with various contracts, showcases the corruption and the scandal at a time when Canadians are going hungry.
Food banks are seeing record usage. We are seeing a level of an erosion of trust, because Canadians look at how the friends of the Liberal Party are getting rich while they are being stripped of everything. The fact is that I know that is the case across this country, and it is so regrettable that the NDP, when given the opportunity, refused to take a stand. I will let Canadians judge that for what it is.
We will have a vote on the issue after question period, asking the Auditor General to take a look and to dig into the details of $100 million. I would like to, if I could, remind all members of this place that whenever the government has a dollar, whether it is the salary that we earn as parliamentarians, whether it is the dollar that goes to pay for the services that public servants provide, whether it is the dollar that is paid out in benefits, whether it goes to things like our military or the RCMP, or we could go down to other levels of government, at the core of every dollar that the government has is the fact, and this is a fact that I would hope defines the respect that needs to be shown for the dollars the government has, that it is not the government's money.
It is the money of taxpayers, hard-working Canadians who pay a percentage of their income and a percentage of the things they buy, whatever the case is, to the various taxes that exist, which goes into government coffers. Those are hard-earned dollars. The sweat, the work and the blood of so many Canadians go into earning those dollars, and it is bewildering how little respect those Canadians are shown, because it is Canadians' money. Therefore when we talk about a two-person firm getting $100 million, most of which was in sole-source contracts, friends of the Liberal Party who wine and dine Liberal staffers and Liberal elites, it is astonishing the arrogance with which the government and the other parties that support it approach this lack of accountability.
There is the work that the OGGO committee has done. I know that my colleagues, including an Alberta colleague who chairs it, have done a tremendous amount of work exposing some of the corruption and the need for accountability. In the case of the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, often referred to as the mighty OGGO, there is a simple request to call in the Auditor General, the non-partisan auditor who can look at the books. I would suggest that in a country like Canada, that should not be controversial, and it is so regrettable that opposing corruption has become something that the Liberals try to turn into controversy.
I stand here as a representative of about 110,000 people, over 53,000 square kilometres in beautiful East Central Alberta, proud to stand up for accountability, for the people I represent and the hard-earned dollars they send to Ottawa to steward with the most basic level of accountability, which they and all Canadians deserve.
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- Sep/17/24 12:40:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, for the member to somehow suggest that calling for accountability is anything other than the very basic job a parliamentarian or a Parliament should do exposes to all Canadians the problem that exists within that party. Canada deserves better than the corruption that the member supports.
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- Sep/17/24 12:41:46 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I talk a lot about the need for good governance. We often see examples from the Liberals that are the antithesis of that. I know the member and his party are open to continuing this coalition-type arrangement that exists here. I would hope the member would stand strongly against supporting the corruption we see across the way.
However, at the very base of all of this is what has happened over the last 10 or so years. Consultants have been used in government for as long as government has existed, but the proliferation of that under the Liberals, the $20 billion that has been spent on consultants, is not resulting in good policy; it is not resulting in benefits or services being offered to Canadians. We need that basic level of accountability, but the Liberals simply refuse it.
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- Sep/17/24 7:29:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the Liberals have had many chances to do the right thing for Canadians: remove corruption from their spending. It is shocking that they actually put it in their budgets, and we have called on them to cut the corruption and save Canadians some money.
One in four Canadians is going to be using a food bank this fall. That is a heartbreaking number for me to hear, knowing that in my communities, like Brockville, Gananoque, Prescott and South Grenville, food bank use has doubled. While there are still many generous people in the community who are giving food and funds, it is also just not going as far as it used to. Even the food banks are struggling with life after nine years of the NDP-Liberal government.
We heard from the hon. member for Cypress Hills—Grasslands today, who talked about the devastating effects of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister's carbon tax. The Canadian Trucking Alliance in the last week spoke out about the costs that they are incurring, the billions in increased costs for them that will have to be passed on to consumers because if we tax the farmer who grows the food and the trucker who ships the food, it is of course a tax on the person who sells it, and the person who buys it is paying that tax.
Canadians are having a hard time getting by, and we do not think it will get any better with Mark “carbon tax” Carney now advising the Prime Minister, knowing his affinity for making others pay. He follows a different set of rules, jet-setting around just like the high-carbon hypocrite at 24 Sussex, the Prime Minister.
Canadians are struggling, and we hear often the Liberals' caution about Conservative cuts. Conservatives are going to cut the corruption. We are going to cut the scandals and we are going to cut the waste.
Just look at the billion-dollar green slush fund. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were misappropriated that we knew about just when we started out, and now the chair of the fund has been found to have been in a conflict of interest. Another government-appointed board member as well is being investigated.
The $60-million arrive scam, two guys in a basement, is how we found out that there is grift, a 30% markup on everything the government outsources. It is spending more than $21 billion in a year outsourcing, and we find out that oftentimes 30% of that is just going to Liberal insiders who line their pockets.
Common-sense Conservatives have made a commitment to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, and Canadians deserve that. They deserve a carbon tax election, and we are ready to put that motion before the House at the first available opportunity. In the meantime, the Liberals need to do one thing: The parliamentary secretary can stand and say that they will cut the corruption from their budgets and stop the madness.
Canadians deserve better.
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