44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 28, 2022 10:00AM
- Apr/28/22 10:21:33 a.m.
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moved that the third report of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, presented on Tuesday, March 31, 2022, be concurred in.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes. Just so everyone knows, he lives in Brockville. He has one of the biggest handles in the entire chamber.
In my role as shadow minister for ethics, a position that I have had for just a few weeks, it has been an incredibly busy time. It comes down to the fact that the Liberals have had quite the record of scandals during their tenure in government.
We were reminded earlier this week of the unethical behaviour of the Prime Minister in that he was found, four times, by the former Ethics Commissioner, Mary Dawson, being in contravention of the Conflict of Interest Act. He was guilty of violating and contravening sections 5, 11, 12 and 21 of the Conflict of Interest Act for taking an illegal vacation. We now know, from the beginning of this week, that the Prime Minister was also investigated by the RCMP for fraud against the government under paragraph 121(1)(c) of the Criminal Code for that illegal vacation on a private island.
We also know that the Prime Minister was found guilty of contravening section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act over his interference in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin and the unnecessary interference and his concerted campaign to pressure the former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Jody Wilson-Raybould, into offering SNC-Lavalin a special plea deal, what is called a deferred prosecution agreement. We have to remember that Jody Wilson-Raybould stood on her principles, stood up for justice, refused to interfere and, because of that, lost her job as the Attorney General of Canada. The Treasury Board president of the day, Jane Philpott, was also fired from cabinet. Both of them were kicked out of the Liberal caucus by the Prime Minister.
We know that this scandal in itself had huge overreaching impacts on the Liberal Party. We know that the principal secretary to the Prime Minister, Gerald Butts, had to resign, along with the Clerk of the Privy Council at the time, Michael Wernick, who also resigned in disgrace.
As I go through this, I go to Bill Morneau, the former Minister of Finance, whom I am going to talk about in just a bit. Along with that, there is also the former Minister of Fisheries, who is now the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure and Communities and the MP for Beauséjour, who was caught up in the lucrative clam scam agreement when he ensured that family members, using nepotism, were awarded lucrative contracts worth over $24 million.
When we talk about Mr. Morneau, the contents of the report that the ethics committee did, tabled here a month ago, and the report tabled in the previous Parliament, concentrated on Bill Morneau and the WE scandal, but even going into that, Bill Morneau as the finance minister was also found guilty of contravening the Conflict of Interest Act for failing to disclose that he had a luxurious villa in the French countryside. He refused to disclose that to the Ethics Commissioner for two years.
The Liberals have a long history of scandal.
As we just witnessed with the Prime Minister's failure on the issue of his private vacation and being four times guilty under the Conflict of Interest Act and investigated for fraud against the government under the Criminal Code, we do not know if the RCMP investigated Bill Morneau over the WE scandal and the contents of the report that we tabled on March 31, on which I also got up on a question of privilege, as you may recall, Mr. Speaker. We have to remember that Mr. Morneau failed to recuse himself from the cabinet table when decisions were made about awarding the WE Charity over half a billion dollars, and gave it preferential treatment.
Mr. Morneau allowed his ministerial staff to work directly with the WE Charity, help them develop their proposals and intervene on behalf of WE at federal, provincial and municipal levels to deliver a program that was beyond WE's capabilities, as we found out through testimony. Additionally, Mr. Morneau failed to talk about how his own daughter worked for the WE foundation.
In the wake of this WE scandal, and in the wake of the work that was done by the ethics committee in the previous Parliament, Mr. Morneau was removed from cabinet. However, it was not just Mr. Morneau who was caught up in this scandal: We know that there were at least 10 videos made by WE that involved the Prime Minister, and we know those were produced by Door Knocker Media and were worth over $217,000, yet the Prime Minister was not investigated by Elections Canada on third-party endorsement and third-party expenditures for campaign-style video productions.
We know for a fact that the Prime Minister made a campaign statement in one of the videos, where he said, “I pledge to work hard for all Canadians.” This is something we hear in the House every day and heard just yesterday during question period with the Prime Minister. He always says he is working here for all Canadians. He also said that he was going to “invest in our youngest leaders: you”. That was a promise to soon-to-be voters, and it was clearly a political message he used in those videos paid for by the WE Charity.
We know that the Prime Minister's wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, received over $20,000 for a weekend getaway in London for the WE Day the organization held in 2020. Just weeks before that, WE was given a contract for half a billion dollars to deliver the Canada student service grant: something that was specifically designed by the Government of Canada, orchestrated by Bill Morneau and implicated by the Prime Minister in ensuring that it was delivered through the WE Charity, which was an organization that had never done anything working with students at this scale during a pandemic.
These facts appear a clear conflict of interest, and have severely damaged public confidence in our democratic institutions, especially here in the Parliament of Canada.
During our testimony, there were calls to bring a number of witnesses who refused to attend. The House ordered, on Thursday, March 25, 2021, that Ben Chin, Rick Theis and Amitpal Singh all appear as witnesses. I want to remind everyone that Ben Chin is the senior adviser to the Prime Minister, and that he received a LinkedIn message from Craig Kielburger of WE that stated, “Hello Ben, Thank you for your kindness in helping shape our latest program with the government. Warmly, Craig”. Mr. Chin responded to Mr. Kielburger, “Great to hear from you Craig; let's get our young working”. Ben Chin refused to comply with the order of the House to appear.
Rick Theis, who is also in the Prime Minister's office as the director of policy and cabinet affairs, met with the Kielburger brothers from WE on May 5, 2020, regarding this new program, and Amitpal Singh, who was an adviser to Bill Morneau in early April, suggested a youth services program would eventually be developed into a tailor-made, half-a-billion-dollar WE Charity program.
All three witnesses were instructed to comply, but instead the ministers told them not to. That is contempt, and that election we just had and this new Parliament do not purge those witnesses from being held in contempt.
I also want to point out that the MP for Waterloo, who at the time was the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth, also perjured herself at committee. She testified that she did not discuss the half-billion-dollar program with the Kielburgers, yet in documentation submitted to the ethics committee, it was clear that she and her staff were working with the WE foundation.
As members can see, when we put in the litany of scandals the current government has been plagued with, and we look at the WE Charity and the scandal here, it is important we look again at this report as well as have the ethics committee do more to study this issue.
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- Apr/28/22 2:37:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is where the Liberal government is not being honest. The terms of reference that it dictated to Justice Rouleau allow him to investigate wrongdoing by police but prevent him from investigating the Liberal government.
We already know the outcome of the inquiry: Protesters are bad, police officers are bad, and the Liberal government is perfect.
As with all the other scandals, it is the turn of police forces to be thrown under the bus. Why?
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