- Nov/1/22 11:56:19 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for New Brunswick Southwest.
It is important that we are all able to speak to this important issue today and have as many voices as possible. Canadians are facing a cost of living crisis and the cause was made right here in Canada. The $54-million arrive scam is one of a litany of examples of how the cost of government is driving up the cost of living. The more the current Prime Minister spends, the more Canadians are finding things cost.
We are seeing higher prices. Canadians are very concerned as they get that first fill-up of home heating fuel, propane or oil, or their first natural gas bill. When they look at that they see taxes on taxes. They see the carbon tax on there and they are concerned. What are these bills going to look like when they get a fuel delivery in January?
What is the government doing to help control the expenses that Canadians have? Is it committed to cutting taxes? No, it is raising taxes. Is it committed to getting its spending under control. No, it is not. Is it being accountable for the spending that it has undertaken? That is what we are doing today. We want accountability. We want an audit.
An audit is something the government should be able to vote in favour of. When we look at what was spent and look at the public accounts, 40% of the deficit spending the current government undertook was not related to the pandemic. It will say the Conservatives voted in favour of helping people who needed help during the pandemic. We are not talking about that spending. We are talking about the waste, the excess and the insider deals, and there was an awful lot of that.
If we can believe it, when we read the public accounts that were published last week, every single minute of last year the government incurred more than $170,000 of new debt. That is staggering. If two income earners in a family were each making $40,000 to provide a living for their family, they could not put a dent in one minute of the debt the current government racked up that year. It is unbelievable.
Because of that, Canadians are going to pay higher prices for everything. We know they are paying higher prices for their homes. We know they are now going to pay higher prices for their mortgages, on the interest they pay, as well as on credit cards and lines of credit. We know that rent is going up to $2,600 a month for a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver and to $2,300 a month for the same in Toronto.
It is more important than ever that Canadians extract accountability from their government. For it to spend $54 million on this failed app is an egregious number, but I fear the number is much higher. We are hoping to find that out. It does not even know where all of that $54 million went.
When members of the House asked the government for information, it came back and listed some of the contractors. However, there are tens of millions of dollars in subcontracts for which it is not willing to say who did the work or what work was done. Of the ones we do know, and the list was short, it claimed that it paid $1.2 million to a company that claims it did not do any of the work, nor did it get a penny for it. The government said that it was a mistake and that it was actually someone else.
It is bizarre the government was so quickly able to say it made a mistake but did not know where the money actually went. When we are dealing in millions of Canadians' dollars, it is really important to know where we are sending the cheques. When it came to the support measures some Canadians needed, it was less careful. It sent cheques to prisoners, an an example, people convicted of crimes, and to people who did not need the help and who were gainfully employed, making great salaries with great benefits and great pensions.
One needs to wonder why the Liberals were so cavalier with these particular millions. Did they go to someone with an inside connection? We have seen before that folks who appear on the Liberal list end up getting cushy order in council appointments and fat government contracts. I will remind the House of course that we saw a half-billion dollars try to get shovelled out the door to the Prime Minister's buddy at the WE organization, but Conservatives caught it.
We saw when the Prime Minister was found to have broken ethics laws. He was happy to take a vacation to billionaire island, but we caught him. It is really about accountability. We found, through the work of members here and a referral to the Ethics Commissioner, that the Prime Minister had inappropriately interfered in the criminal prosecution of his buddies at SNC-Lavalin. This is another company that does quite well under the Liberals.
Recently, while Canadians are facing this cost of living crisis, there is scrutiny about this $54-million boondoggle. I have talked to, face to face, dozens of CBSA officers, who signed up to protect our country and our borders and to interdict weapons smuggling, drugs and human trafficking, and they are getting asked to be IT support for an app that does not work. They did not find it enhanced their ability to keep Canadians safe. It slowed the lines down. It slowed the movement of people. They can look at a certificate. If the government demanded proof of vaccination, if that was its decision, misguided as it may have been, it could have done that and those customs officers could have verified those documents the same way they verify a passport, without a $54-million boondoggle with all kinds of pork to Liberal insiders.
While that is going on, the Prime Minister jet-sets on one of his many travels and does it in style, of course, with a private taxpayer-funded jet and stays at the finest hotels and charges it to the taxpayer. One thinks he had to go to London and it was important he was there. What does one think a hotel room, one room, should cost for a night for a prime minister?
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- Oct/31/22 3:02:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are very much worried about children, including the fact that, with record-high food bank use, more than one-third of those users are children.
The Liberals were adding more than $171,000 of new debt every single minute of the last fiscal year, and half of that spending had absolutely nothing to do with pandemic supports. Canadians are struggling. The Liberals are making it worse. They had the NDP cheerleading them on trying to max out the national credit card. That is what happens when we have unserious, out of touch, expensive NDP-Liberals who do not care and do not know what Canadians are facing.
Canadians cannot afford the costly coalition. Will they end this inflationary spending?
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- Oct/31/22 3:01:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals' reckless spending is driving up the cost of living for Canadians. It was $6,000 a night for the Prime Minister's hotel room that was charged to taxpayers, and $54 million for the arrive scam with a complete snow job on who got paid. Meanwhile, folks who are getting their first home heating oil or propane delivery are afraid they will not be able to afford a mid-winter fill up. With the costly coalition of these NDP-Liberals, food bank use is at an all-time high as Canadians choose between heating and eating.
Will these Liberals end their inflationary spending?
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- Oct/25/22 2:53:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what this side of the House and the Conservative leader said was to not give a half-billion dollars to the Kielburgers. This side of the House has said not to do insider deals with people like Frank Baylis or the government's buddies at SNC-Lavalin.
We are hearing the same old, tired talking points from the Liberals while they are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of Canadians' hard-earned money, when they can barely afford to heat their homes. Liberals are out of touch and Canadians are out of money. When will Liberals give Canadians a break?
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- Oct/25/22 2:52:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, $54 million was wasted on the arrive scam with millions of dollars missing, $680 million spent on vaccines that were thrown in the garbage after a reckless procurement process and now $400,000 spent on luxuries and hotel rooms for a weekend in London. The Liberal government has no problem wasting the hard-earned tax dollars that it takes from everyday Canadians.
When will the Liberals cap spending, cut taxes and give Canadians a break?
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- Oct/24/22 2:49:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it was the minister's office that signed off on the documents telling Canadians that they paid for that work. Now we know it is not true. Millions of dollars are missing and it is millions of dollars over budget. With the track record that the Liberal government has, Canadians know that it cannot be trusted. Whether it was the WE scandal or SNC-Lavalin, Canadians know that Liberal insiders will always get the track.
Which Liberal insider got this one? Who got rich off the Prime Minister's $54-million ArriveCAN scam?
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- Oct/24/22 2:48:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a company has come forward saying it did not receive a dime of the missing million dollars in the ArriveCAN scam, proving the Liberals provided false information to the House and to Canadians for spending on this app. Are the Liberals going to give Canadians the details of the real contracts for ArriveCAN, or are they going to wait for more companies to come forward and tell us that even more money is missing?
Where are the missing millions? Who got rich?
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- Oct/21/22 2:26:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is quite timely that we are considering Motion No. 59, which calls on the government to work with indigenous governing bodies, service providers to people with disabilities, housing providers and other relevant stakeholders, including the provinces, “in upholding a federal framework to improve access to adaptable affordable housing for individuals with non-visible disabilities”. This is at a time when we are seeing in media reports that folks who have disabilities and folks who are housing insecure, both of whom are unable to get the support they need and unable to find affordable housing, are instead opting for medical assistance in dying. We are in a situation where we are failing Canadians. We are failing Canadians who need us the most.
This is going to require the federal government to get to the table with the provinces. We need to solve this crisis, which is resulting in people opting for medically assisted death because they feel so hopeless. It is incumbent on the federal government and incumbent on its partners to resolve this, because certainly we can all agree that this is not what the medical assistance in dying framework in Canada was designed to do. We can all agree that the folks among us who are struggling in poverty and folks living with disabilities should not be left to feel like death is their only option. We need to offer them hope.
While this motion is laudable, the outcomes are items the government could have included in previous legislation or could be in existing frameworks. Certainly, we would demonstrate to people that this is taken seriously by the government if the Prime Minister were to sit down with the first ministers to discuss health care funding and if we had transparency about the conversations that were going on between the federal housing minister and his provincial counterparts, a relationship that appears strained on the federal side.
It is important that we address this as a House. It is important that we offer hope to all Canadians, including Canadians who are housing insecure, Canadians who are experiencing homelessness and Canadians who are living with disabilities. It is our responsibility as legislators and it is an important conversation to have today. It is also important that the government takes it seriously and advances meaningful steps that will resolve the concerns and crises that Canadians are living with.
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- Oct/21/22 11:40:16 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, yesterday The Globe and Mail revealed that the Liberals are claiming millions in payments to vendors for their ArriveCAN boondoggle that never actually happened. It was a $54-million app, with millions unaccounted for. Canadians are left wondering if there are more fake ArriveCAN payments listed. First it was ThinkOn Inc., then, later in the day, Ernst & Young came forward to say the government is claiming false billing.
Do the Liberals want to revise the figures they signed off on?
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- Oct/20/22 3:02:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we heard some responses from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, but we did not get an answer.
This is very clear. The Liberals said the app was going to cost $80,000, and then they said they gave this company $1.2 million out of a total $54 million in this boondoggle. The company they say they gave $1.2 million to said they were not given a dime.
We asked who got rich and the Liberals do not know the answer. Here is a new question for them: Who is lying?
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- Oct/20/22 2:58:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, CBSA is concerned and Canadians are concerned because the Prime Minister's scandal-plagued record speaks for itself. This app, when it started out, was supposed to cost $80,000 and the expenses ballooned to more than $54 million. It wrongly quarantined and forced into house arrest 10,000 Canadians.
It is a boondoggle. It is a failed app. The government lost $1.2 million. Who got rich?
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- Oct/20/22 2:57:43 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, news broke this afternoon that one of the companies the government says it gave $1.2 million to for its ArriveCAN boondoggle says that it did not get a dime. Where is the $1.2 million? Who got rich?
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- Oct/19/22 8:25:17 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the question is very simple. Will the parliamentary secretary furnish the House with a list of vendors who received contracts for the $54-million ArriveCAN app?
What is the secret? I do not know how much prep needs to be done for the member to say that transparency is important. It is what this government has promised to do in the past and what it seems unwilling to do today.
If the member wants advance notice of me asking him and his government to do the right thing and be transparent, consider this notice in perpetuity. I will always come to this place and demand answers for Canadians and demand accountability, and $54 million to design an app that arbitrarily and wrongly quarantined Canadians and forced them under house arrest is unacceptable. We want to know who got rich.
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- Oct/19/22 8:16:49 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it cost $54 million at a time when Canadians are facing record food price inflation. Conservatives are asking, “Who got rich?” Where did the $54 million that was spent on the failed ArriveCAN app go?
We heard from some members of the government that they believe this app was responsible for saving tens of thousands of lives. I can tell members what that app did to at least 10,000 people, which was to put them wrongly under house arrest, in a forced quarantine, in spite of their compliance with public health guidelines in Canada. This $54-million app was built by one web designer while he was having his turkey dinner over a weekend, and tech experts saying the upset limit they would have given to an application like this would have been in the low seven figures, if they exceeded a quarter of a million dollars.
When we raised this issue of this $54-million app with an unknown number of subcontractors, whose identities the government refuses to reveal, the Prime Minister said that $54 million was just petty. He is not worried about $54 million at a time when Canadians are having to choose between nutritious food for their children and putting gas in their vehicles to get to work. They are just dreading the day they know they are going to need to turn the thermostat on as the mercury plunges.
It was $54 million. We could heat a lot of homes and feed a lot of families with that kind of cash, but we heard that it was petty. We disagree. What we want from the government is transparency. It has rescinded the mandatory use of this app, for now, but still left in place seven figures of fines for Canadians who used an app we know did not work correctly. We know we saw thousands of people punished because of errors in what is one of the most expensive apps going.
We saw the wonderful app reviews ArriveCAN had in the App Store, so one wonders how much of that money went to pay for fake reviews for an app that was, by most accounts, terrible and demonstrably unjustified.
What we are looking for from the government is not the assertion by the Prime Minister that $54 million is a petty sum of money. What we are looking for is transparency. We are looking for the names of the vendors and details of the services they provided for $54 million. Canadians deserve that kind of transparency. If we are going to ask Canadians to have confidence in their institutions, to be able to trust government, then the government needs to do the right thing and be transparent.
Will the parliamentary secretary stand today and commit to providing Canadians with the details of those contracts? Who got rich?
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Madam Speaker, the minister knows that Ontario, as an example, has five programs that help low-income children access dental care. Dental care is a program that should fall under a provincial mandate for health.
I am very curious as to why the minister would not have collaborated with the provinces to enhance the programs instead of creating another program, more bureaucracy, more red tape, duplication and triplication of programs. Instead of helping more people in a more streamlined way, the Liberals just seem to be adding more layers of red tape when they could just be helping Canadians.
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- Oct/7/22 11:43:56 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what Canadians need is an about-face from the Liberal government on its wasting of Canadian tax dollars, like it did on the $54-million ArriveCAN app. Tech experts are confounded by its costing more than a low seven figures at worst. We know the app was not based in science. It was all based on dividing and stigmatizing.
If Canadian tech experts do not know why the government spent this much money, what we want to know, what Canadians want to know, is which Liberal insiders got rich on these contracts?
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- Oct/7/22 11:42:46 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, this morning I took part in the annual Food Bank Fill Up for the Brockville & Area Food Bank. The executive director Hailie Jack tells me that food bank use is at an all-time high. With food price inflation at 40-year highs, even monetary donations are not going as far as they should.
Canadians just cannot afford more taxes from the Liberal government, so will it today commit to cancelling its plan to triple the tax on gas, home heating and groceries?
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- Oct/7/22 11:13:21 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the tired Liberal government is driving up the cost of living. Families are downgrading their diets because of the inflated cost of groceries. Seniors are watching their savings vanish with the cost of living rising. Young people have seen their hopes and dreams of owning a home disappear because the cost of a home has doubled under the current Liberal government. It is no wonder that people are worried. The Liberal government's answer is that it is going to triple the carbon tax and punish Canadians for just trying to get by.
The Liberals label our farmers as polluters for growing our food and punish them with a carbon tax. The Liberals label parents as polluters for driving their kids to hockey and punish them with a carbon tax. The Liberals label tradespeople as polluters for driving their trucks to work and punish them with a carbon tax. The Liberals label seniors heating their homes as polluters and punish them with a carbon tax.
Conservatives would scrap the carbon tax. We are dealing in hope for Canadians, for their families and for their country.
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- Oct/6/22 6:37:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we have heard the government's rationale for its implementation of the app before, but what we have not heard is an admission that it continued to use the app solely for political considerations. We have even had members of the Liberal caucus say that last year, in the election the Prime Minister called during the pandemic, he used it as an opportunity to stigmatize and divide Canadians. This is not what Canadians need from their government.
Now we are in a time when Canadians want to recover from the two years that we have had. They are experiencing very hard times financially because we have this made-in-Canada Liberal inflationary crisis, and they want to hear from the government, frankly, that it is going to atone for what it has done, that it is going to cancel those fines and that it is going to commit to Canadians that it is not going to take these kinds of coercive measures again. It needs to come clean with Canadians about why it has spent twice as much on this ArriveCAN app than it told them it would, and be transparent about all the contracting around it. We are looking for honesty, transparency and integrity.
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- Oct/6/22 6:30:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to talk about an issue that Canadians have been dealing with for some months now. In the face of restrictions having been lifted all around the world and right across our country, the top doctors in the provinces and territories deemed that the risk to Canadians was such that they did not need to have the restrictions they had had in place early on in 2020 and through 2021, but the government was determined to keep the ArriveCAN app in place.
Now, over the course of summer months, throughout the spring and into this fall, we have challenged the government to demonstrate to us what the rationale was. What were the epidemiological facts they were using to continue the use of this app? Every time we had officials at committee, they were unable to give us a scientific rationale. Was it that waste water levels were too high? Was it that community transmission linked to cross-border traffic was too high? Every time we raised it, they were unable to tell us why they were keeping it in place.
All the while, family reunification was delayed. People were unable to experience the birth of a family member, or unable to bury a loved one, because of the ArriveCAN app and the unscientific border measures that were in place. We learned today that the government has been lowballing the amount of money this ArriveCAN app cost, this unscientific ArriveCAN app.
A lot of questions are being raised in the Globe and Mail today about the ballooning cost of this app, which is shrouded in secrecy by the government. While the government was spending tens of millions of dollars on this app, it was also fining Canadians who were experiencing challenges using it at the border. These were people with the right of entry into Canada, Canadian citizens and permanent residents.
The government collected more than a million dollars in fines from Canadians. It seems very clear that the app erroneously put people under house arrest. People who were not COVID positive and had followed all the rules were put under quarantine by a broken app. These people should not be made to pay for the failures of the government. The government should refund the million dollars, and cancel the collections and fines that it levied. The government should make a commitment to Canadians that it is not going to use these types of measures again. They were coercive measures, as he health minister described them, and there was no scientific basis for the government to do that. The government also needs to undertake being honest with Canadians because the price is double what it told Canadians the cost would be. It has refused to be upfront about the details of all of those contracts.
Canadians deserve their money back. Canadians deserve an apology, and they deserve a commitment that they are not going to be subjected to this again.
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