Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Winnipeg South Centre for that question to my colleague from Foothills, because he just got a lesson handed to him.

I rise to add my voice to the important discussion we are having to hold the Liberal government to account for its refusal to provide documents in response to a House order. In particular, with this subamendment, we want to ensure that reasonable time is given to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to hear from witnesses and report back to the House. That debate, as we all know, has been a long one. However, the substance of the motion, amendments and subamendments matters because of the crucial issue we are dealing with: accountability in handling public funds, specifically those allocated to Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC, as it is known in the House. It is perhaps better known to Canadians as the Liberal green slush fund.

The aim of this debate, and the reason we must continue our efforts to hold the Liberal government to account, is transparency. It is to obtain files, agreements, conflict of interest declarations and minutes of SDTC's board and project review committee. This is not an unreasonable request. Ensuring that public funds are managed with the highest standards of integrity is the role of all of us in this place.

The Speaker ruled that the Liberals violated a House order to turn over evidence to the police for a criminal investigation into the $400-million Liberal scandal. However, compliance with this order has been far from acceptable. Many government entities either failed to produce the documents required or submitted versions so heavily redacted that they are practically useless. The Liberals' refusal to table these documents has left Parliament paralyzed, hindering our ability to do the work we were elected to do. I will have more to say on that later. For right now, at issue is the question of why the Liberals have refused to comply with the binding House order to produce documents related to SDTC.

We know that the Auditor General conducted a thorough investigation into SDTC's governance after a whistle-blower came forward. She determined that these complaints were rooted in serious issues within SDTC, and her investigation shockingly uncovered, as many of my colleagues have said, nearly 400 million dollars' worth of contracts that were inappropriately awarded by the board of directors, all of whom had multiple conflicts of interest.

The mishandling of SDTC, or the green slush fund, was stark. This program was designed to support innovation in sustainable technologies. Originally established in 2001, it operated with few issues under both Liberal and Conservative governments, that is until the Prime Minister took office.

The Auditor General released a damning report earlier this year revealing that $123 million had been misappropriated by the board of SDTC. The report outlined serious governance failures, including 90 instances where conflict of interest policies were not followed. It allowed $76 million to be spent on projects connected to friends of the Liberals who sat on the board, $59 million to be awarded to projects that were not eligible for funding and $12 million to be spent on projects that were conflicts of interest and were straight up ineligible for the funding. This represents a real betrayal, the betrayal of public trust. It represents a failure of effective oversight. It represents a culture of corruption that has troublingly flourished under the Liberal government.

I, like so many Canadians, am tired of watching the Liberal government drift from scandal to scandal, as just outlined by my colleague from Foothills, wasting millions of taxpayers' dollars along the way. This is not to mention refusing to be completely transparent when the Liberals are finally caught and held to account.

We were reminded of the lack of transparency and forthrightness at the public accounts committee just the other day, when the former Liberal minister overseeing SDTC made little effort to meaningfully answer even the simplest of questions. Throughout his testimony, Navdeep Bains said 16 times that he could not recall, did not know or did not receive details about the activities of SDTC, but he was only the minister in charge. With so little attention given by the minister overseeing the fund, it is almost no wonder that so much mismanagement and so many conflicts of interest have been identified.

Despite what we have heard from some Liberal members, I want to emphasize that pushing for transparency is not an attack on privacy or due process. Instead, it is a call for accountability. Adding the Privacy Commissioner and other key figures as witnesses in this investigation is an important way to ensure a fair and thorough review.

Former minister Bains, choosing to ignore several warnings about her conflicts of interest, proceeded with the appointment of Annette Verschuren as SDTC chair after removing the previous chair. Under the watch of this Liberal appointee, conflicts of interest were tolerated and managed by the board. For example, board members would grant SDTC funding to companies in which they held stock or positions. Former minister Bains appointed five more board members, who engaged in similar behaviour by approving funding to companies in which they held ownership or seats on the board. Meanwhile, officials from the Department of Industry, Science and Economic Development sat on the board as observers and witnessed 96 conflicts of interest but did not intervene.

In January 2021, former minister Bains was replaced by the current minister, and in November 2022, whistle-blowers began raising internal concerns with the Auditor General about the unethical practices of SDTC. In February of last year, the Privy Council was briefed by whistle-blowers and two independent reports were commissioned. Then, later in September 2023, the allegations became public. However, it took the industry minister a month to move to suspend funding to the organization.

An Auditor General investigation followed, and her investigation made it abundantly clear that the failures uncovered by SDTC lie squarely at the feet of the former Liberal minister of industry, who failed to ensure proper oversight or governance. Instead, he turned a blind eye when it was revealed that public money was being funnelled to Liberal insiders, which brings us to today.

The Liberals continue to cover up this scandal by not tabling the requested documents on SDTC. It is notable that the Privacy Commissioner, unlike many other officials, followed the House's direction and produced unredacted documents. This is significant because the Privacy Commissioner understands the balance between transparency and privacy rights better than perhaps any official. He is someone who understands the stakes and the intricacies involved, and he found it reasonable to release unredacted documents. However, we are continually met with the Liberal government's objections to these disclosures, which its members claim could infringe on privacy rights or cause other harms, not to mention the harms they are already causing. If the Privacy Commissioner, the foremost expert on such matters, deems it acceptable to release these documents, it strikes me as fair to question the sincerity of these objections.

Let us return for a moment to the Auditor General's findings, which are very serious and concerning. Her office randomly received a subset of SDTC's contracts and discovered troubling patterns in the majority of them. Her findings indicate that a significant portion of the funds managed by SDTC may have been misallocated through conflicts of interest, mismanagement or perhaps even misconduct. Canadians have a right to know if their tax dollars are being spent appropriately and effectively.

The government's reluctance to provide the full unredacted documents requested by the House should give us all pause. By bringing forward witnesses, including the Privacy Commissioner, the RCMP commissioner and key members of SDTC, we can deliver the further transparency that Canadians deserve.

The fact is that Liberal appointees gave nearly 400 million tax dollars to their own companies, which involved 186 conflicts of interest. That is nearly $400 million being wasted, or stolen, while so many of our fellow Canadians cannot afford the cost of groceries, gas and home heating.

I want to dwell on this point for a moment. The House continues to be paralyzed at a time when Canadians need real results. They need action on measures to improve affordability, whether we are talking about food, fuel or housing, and action on measures to get tough on crime. The NDP-Liberals are trying to create a false choice. They are telling Canadians that they should not be held to account for $400 million of wasted or stolen tax dollars. They are telling Canadians that Parliament can only return to other business by letting these troubling details fall by the wayside. That is the false choice.

Parliament could return to other important business immediately if the Liberal government were to simply provide the documents it has been ordered to provide. It is that simple. It can just end the cover-up and hand over the evidence to the police so Parliament can get back to work for Canadians. The government needs to end the cover-up and let us talk about affordability for Canadian families.

After nine years of the Liberal government, life costs more and work does not pay. The Liberal carbon tax has driven up the cost of everything. Families were left to pay $700 more for food this year than they paid in 2023, forcing them to eat less, skip meals, buy less food or buy less healthy food just to make ends meet. The government needs to end the cover-up and let us discuss what happens when we tax the farmer who makes the food, and the trucker who ships the food, with a carbon tax. Spoiler alert, we end up taxing the Canadians who have to buy the food.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance says that the Liberal carbon tax added $2 billion to trucking costs this year, a number that will rise to $4 billion by 2030. However, these figures only account for long-haul trucking. The total cost to the trucking industry is likely significantly higher, and these higher costs are inevitably passed on to consumers.

Larry Maguire

$573,261.00