44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 27, 2024 10:00AM
- Feb/27/24 10:03:17 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to table the Conservative dissenting report to this report.
Conservative members on the Standing Committee on Public Accounts demand action be taken, given the incompetence of government ministers when it comes to building a hydrogen industry in Canada. The commissioner found that the government's plan is not transparent or clear and that it relies on policies that have not been announced and are not in effect. The truth is, the Liberal government does not have a real plan or real strategy to make hydrogen a greater part of Canada's energy supply. Instead, both departments relied on unfounded assumptions, incomplete modelling and faulty data to present an ideal scenario that is not realistic.
Our Conservative dissenting report provides five recommendations that demand accountability through accurate costs, a consistent framework and a real long-term plan. Aspirations are not a plan.
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- Feb/27/24 10:46:36 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, when the member talks about accountability, what he has said is not really true. We need to put this into perspective with respect to what was taking place in a worldwide pandemic. Governments around the world were responding as much as they could. In Canada, I would like to think that we provided the types of supports that Canadians and businesses required, and there were all kinds of government expenditures.
We have a civil service, which is second to no other, and there is a process that needs to be followed, particularly for procurement. When the government has been made aware of issues related to it, it has been very transparent about it. Internal work has been done. Things have been been pointed out by the Auditor General, and the government is working to rectify those issues.
Is it not a responsible way for a government to react when it finds out, to take specific actions? That is exactly what this government has done.
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- Feb/27/24 11:30:59 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I was on the committee that looked into the spending. We looked at Baylis Medical. We looked at Palantir. We looked at WE Charity. We found no evidence on Baylis. There were certainly many questions about WE, but the question about the spending on ArriveCAN, to me, is a question of a lack of oversight. The $59 million could have been spent on 32 different contractors.
Where was the accountability? Even in the midst of a pandemic, when we were trying to get money out the door to get tools that could help, this is an issue of a fundamental failure of oversight, and I think that is the question we need to focus on.
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- Feb/27/24 11:47:01 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise, and I will be sharing my time with the member for Courtenay—Alberni.
The question of how public money is spent or misspent is a fundamental question of an obligation for parliamentarians, because the Canadian people do not need to pay attention to everything that happens in Parliament. However, they need to know that there is accountability and that we respect their hard-working money being spent properly and through the right channels.
I have many years of experience in the House dealing with all the smut and corruption files that have come along. I was elected in my first year as the Liberal government was telling us that Jean Chrétien's golf balls were going to keep the country together. Fortunately, the Canadian people did not believe that. That was the first scandal I witnessed. I have lost track of all the scandals.
We can take misspending and put it into various categories. There are simply the tawdry ones, like with Bev Oda, who seemed to rack up as many bills as possible every time she travelled until people finally became fed up. There was the issue with Mike Duffy and Nigel Wright, where Mike Duffy was claiming all kinds of outrageous claims because he was a bagman and raised money for the Conservatives. We were presented with this bizarre case that it was okay to offer a secret bribe, but it was a problem to receive the bribe.
Those scandals did not just belong to the Conservatives. There was Mac Harb, a Liberal, who had this amazing grifter scheme. He was not eligible for travel, so he bought this dodgy little broken down cottage just 100 kilometres outside of Ottawa because if he lived 100 kilometres outside of Ottawa, he could hit up the taxpayer for all kinds of travel, even though, I was told, there was not even running water at that cottage. Mac Harb had to pay back $231,000.
People deserve to be outraged by that abuse, and it raised questions in the Senate of where the accountability is to make sure that the people who are there are doing their jobs. I remember Tony Clement and the $50 million that was taken out of border funds so that he could buy sunken boats and build a fake lake in Muskoka. That was an abusive process. It was not criminal; it was an abusive process.
There was the issue with Arthur Porter, which was one of the more concerning scandals I have witnessed over the years. Stephen Harper appointed him as head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and made him a privy councillor. We then, of course, found out he was involved in what CBC said was “the biggest fraud investigation in Canadian history”, and he ended up dying in Panama in a jail.
Those are elements of criminality, “griftership”, tawdriness and of people just misusing the public funds.
The ArriveCAN thing needs to be put in perspective of the time, and then analyze it from there. When we were hit with the pandemic, we were dealing with a completely unknown crisis that none of us had faced, and there was certainly a need to get a response out the door quickly.
Who did the best job at that? It was our public servants. They basically spent that Easter weekend in 2020 creating a program to get the CERB dollars out to people who were not able to work and to keep them going. It was the Public Service who did good, amazing work during that time.
However, there were a number of scandals that came up during that period, and ArriveCAN fits into that because it is a question of the lack of oversight and accountability. Certainly, Canadians deserve to know how a contract worth $59.5 million, divided up through 32 companies, for a program that did not work was allowed to go ahead. We ask ourselves how that was possible.
I would like to share with my colleagues some of the recommendations that came out of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, which looked into some of the other elements. We looked at Baylis Medical, at Palantir and at the Kielberger brothers. At the time, again, the government wanted to get a youth program out. There was $500 million to $940 million set aside for the Kielberger operation without competition and without very clear oversight. What the committee found was that the incredible access Marc and Craig Kielberger had into the inner workings of government gave them an advantage no one else had.
I would encourage any of my colleagues to read the Ethics Commissioner report on the former finance minister, Bill Morneau. It makes for a pretty shocking reading that these guys had an all-access pass into the corridors of the Liberal government and were not even registered to lobby. That certainly was a major factor in bringing down Mr. Morneau.
I want to raise this because if we have these scandals, we need to learn from them. We need to learn how money was misspent. We need to learn why there was no oversight, so that this is not repeated. Otherwise we become a laughingstock of repetition of failure from insiders, from misuse of public funds and from contracting out.
With respect to the contracting out that was to be done with the WE group, I am going to read what the all-party committee said. This is not my opinion but that of all of the political parties that participated. It reported this back to Parliament:
The Committee was unable to find any due diligence reports that actually tested the credibility of the claims made by the WE Charity. This group had never undertaken a project close to this magnitude and it remains unclear whether they had the means to ensure that students across the country could be put to work with credible results.
It was going to be given $500 million initially, and there were no due diligence reports that we could find anywhere. Then we found out that the money was going to be funnelled to a shell company initially set up to deal with some of its incredible real estate holdings. How is it possible that the Government of Canada would transfer between $500 million and $940 million to a shell company? Who was taking the enormous risk then? It was the Canadian people. I am going to read from the all-party committee report again:
The Committee is of the view that the decision of the Liberal government of Canada to sign a contract worth over $500 million with a shell company “WE Charity Foundation” is deeply troubling. The WE group stated they used the shell company to limit their liability. In reality, this procedure had the potential to put a huge investment of taxpayers funds at risk because the deal was with a shell company with no assets.
How does a G7 country sign on to something that concerning?
I am raising this because of the whole thing about ArriveCAN and the Auditor General's not being able to find anything on how the money was spent. One of the most disturbing factors is that after 10 months of study, we had to report to Parliament that we had no idea how the finances of the supposed children's charity worked. We could not tell the Canadian people who controlled its multitude of corporations. We did not even know all the companies that it controlled. We could not tell the difference between its so-called charity work and its for-profit work, or tell what its ownership structure was, yet the government, without doing due diligence, was going to sign over between $500 million and $940 million.
The report states:
The Committee notes that over the 10 months of its study, it was unable to get a clear picture of the financial structure of the WE group. We were unable to ascertain a clear division between how monies flowed through the charitable wing and their for-profit operations. We were also denied information on the ownership structure of their multitude of side companies. If the government of Canada is to sign future contracts or contribution agreements with WE Charity, its affiliates or subsidiaries, such clarifications must be required.
I raise that because we are looking at a very similar thing that happened with ArriveCAN. Where was the oversight?
This is the other question I am going to end on. We spent 10 months trying to get the CFO of WE to testify, just to tell us what was happening. We were told not only that he was on medical leave but also that he had a brain aneurism that, if we asked him questions, might cause his death. Certainly nobody in Parliament was going to wish that someone die under the pressure, but the WE group could not come up with anybody else who could explain its very complex financial structure.
On May 15, 2021, we received a letter from Mr. Li saying that he was too sick, had not been doing any work and was completely uninvolved, yet we found that in that period, in the state of California, there was a registration renewal in November 2020 on which he signed off as CFO. There was a New York state filing on which he signed off as CFO, an Internal Revenue Service report in 2020 and a Washington State report. All of these were signed off on by Victor Li, yet our committee was told that he was so fragile and sick that he could not even read documents. We were not in a position to do a criminal investigation, but we had to report back to Parliament that there had been a major failure of fundamental accountability.
Has the government learned lessons from what happened with the WE brothers, or do we have to repeat these tawdry, dumbed-down abuses of public funds because the accountability mechanisms that should have been there were ignored and the Canadian taxpayer is on the hook? I will be here all week.
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- Feb/27/24 12:01:48 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is a good question.
I have a lot of questions about the Conservative leader's positions. For example, to me, his decision to vote against supporting Ukraine was unacceptable.
The leader of the Conservative Party claims to be the leader of accountability, except when it comes to connections to lobbyists. With the Conservatives, it is an open bar for lobbyists.
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- Feb/27/24 12:35:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have to believe that it smarts a little to know that one's value in this place has been bargained away simply to prop up the failed Liberal government.
We want to talk about standing up for Canadians, rather than their hunger for power. They should be standing up for Canadians and supporting us in bringing accountability to this place when it comes to wasteful spending, which they continue to claim they oppose.
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- Feb/27/24 12:50:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member is the chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Does the committee have any plans to investigate accountability for the Phoenix pay system? It was planned by the Conservatives to cost $310 million and now has cost more than $2.6 billion, with more than 200,000 public servants still facing problems with their pay. Is the committee going to investigate that Conservative boondoggle?
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- Feb/27/24 12:51:50 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to start by emphasizing that every dollar the government spends is important, and the government, in all ways and in every way possible, tries to ensure that there is a high sense of accountability and transparency for it. That is something we have seen virtually from day one when this issue was first brought to light, and I want to amplify that and make it very clear.
The Government of Canada and the Prime Minister have been clear on this. We will ensure that there is a sense of true accountability on this issue, because every tax dollar spent is important. We have taken this very seriously, virtually from day one, in terms of the things the government needs to do in order to be able to support Canadians.
We have to put this issue in its proper context. This was at a time in which we had a worldwide pandemic going on; government expenditures started to increase dramatically. This was because the Prime Minister and the government decided to have the backs of Canadians from coast to coast to coast, in every region of this country. This meant that we had to create programs from virtually nowhere, such as the CERB program, which literally put thousands of dollars in the pockets of millions of Canadians at a time when we needed to be there for Canadians.
The government developed programs to support small businesses. Whether it was by providing the wage subsidy and loan initiative programs, coming up with the financial resources to be able to protect Canadians, providing indirect support through ideas such as ArriveCAN or ultimately providing supports for mental health, other long-term health care and so forth in a wide area of departments with different responsibilities, we took those initiatives seriously. We will continue to push for accountability for those monies that were, in fact, being spent.
However, today's debate is really nothing more than a Conservative stunt. I would challenge the Conservatives, in terms of asking why they are taking this whole cut, paste and post mentality on social media to mislead Canadians on important issues.
There is no doubt that procurement has always been an issue, even when I was an MLA in the Manitoba legislature. There is no surprise there. We have to ensure that there is more accountability in the ways in which the government acquires the things it requires.
If we want examples, we can go back to other federal governments, whether Liberal or Conservative. If we go to the provincial levels, we will find the same thing.
When something such as ArriveCAN comes up, what is important is how the government reacts. We have seen not one, but several ministers engage, in one form or another, with addressing the issue of the tax dollar and how it might have been abused. We believe that it has been abused.
That is the reason we are seeing the types of statements coming from the government: We want to protect the tax dollars and the integrity of the system. However, that is not the agenda of the Conservative Party. All one needed to do was listen to what the Conservative leader had to say when he opened the debate on the issue. He even admitted it when I posed the question about the importance of bumper stickers, because he went with his top four bumper stickers. He then went into ArriveCAN and bragged about how he is going to make sure his bumper stickers are all over the place.
Every bumper sticker that the leader of the Conservative Party puts out is an attempt to mislead Canadians, because Conservatives tend to think Canadians are stupid. It is really quite unfortunate. That is what today is about. It is a stunt being brought forward in order to generate some scenario so they can somehow tag the government with the word “corrupt” with respect to this issue; in fact, the government has been on top of it virtually from day one.
When I raised the issue in the form of questions and when I heard the parliamentary secretary talk about the company, one thing that came to mind is that there are really two issues here.
There is the issue of procurement and how it works. We have a professional civil service that, I would argue, is second to no other in the world. At times, mistakes happen, but it is about how the government responds when they take place. At the end of the day, that is one of the issues that I think is important for us to talk about.
The other issue is related to the two-person company itself. If we listen to what the members opposite say at committee, and here on the floor of the House, we often hear the comment “Liberal insiders” or “government insiders”. We hear that these two people were made wealthy because they were insiders. That is a bunch of hogwash. These individuals are the very same ones who received contracts when Stephen Harper was prime minister. The company had a different name; it was called Coredal Systems Consulting Inc., but two people from that company are the same two people as in GC Strategies Inc. They are one and the same.
Therefore, I would say to Conservatives that, as the second part, maybe we should look at how a company gets into a position where it can ultimately do what GC Strategies has done. To me, that is an important issue that I would like to provide answers for to my constituents. When I said that earlier, it upset a few Conservatives; it does not fit within their stunts. At the end of the day, they do not want real accountability. Why? It is because the two individuals in question are not Liberal or government insiders any more than they were when Stephen Harper was the prime minister.
When we look at it, we really begin to understand why the Conservatives do not want me to table the document. The parliamentary secretary to the minister attempted to table it earlier. I am going to attempt to table it now. If we look at the origins of the company, Coredal Systems Consulting Inc., and some of the contracts, I know why they do not want us to table it. It is because the leader of the Conservative Party was in government. He was a parliamentary secretary. Members would not believe the number of grants that were issued when he was in charge of the department. Is it any wonder that Conservatives do not want us to table the document or want Canadians to know? We would not know that by their behaviour, but the reality is that we are talking about a number of contracts.
Let me cite a couple of them. There is a contract dated May 26, 2013. We all know the important role the leader of the Conservative Party played back then. In fact, he was the parliamentary secretary for transport. Guess what? This contract was issued by the parliamentary secretary for Transport Canada, and Transport Canada issued a contract to Coredal Systems.
Coredal Systems is the very same thing as GC Strategies. That one was worth well over $1 million.
They then received another one here for $287,000, again, Transport Canada. I do not know if I should emphasize that the leader of the Conservative Party was also the one responsible in that case too. There are several of them, so let us make the assumption that the ones I am going to be referencing are all contracts for which the leader of the Conservative Party was responsible. We had another one from October 29, 2012. That one was just under a million, $968,000.
Then, if we continue on, I am just going to list off the ones in which the leader of the Conservative Party had a role to play, such as March 29, 2012, well over $200,000, again, Transport Canada. Here is one for well over half a million dollars, March 1, 2012, again, Transport Canada. There is another one on August 9, 2011, going to Transport Canada. Here is another one, July 29, 2011, again, all going to Coredal Systems.
An hon. member: How much?
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux: Madam Speaker, the Conservative member is asking how much they were. That member does not quite get it. It is the principle of this.
At the end of the day, we are talking about the very same company. I am sure that if the member opposite consulted with his constituents, he would find a high level of interest as to how it is that a company can create itself and then receive substantial government contracts through the years, into a worldwide pandemic where there was a great deal of money being spent to protect the interests of Canadians. It would appear that there was substantial abuse.
When I say substantial, I cannot underestimate the potential of how the taxpayer was being taken advantage of. That is why it does not matter what side of the House one sits on. I am concerned about it, as are my colleagues, as is the Prime Minister, as are the ministers responsible.
That is why, when we found out about the initiative, we did not just sit back and try to hide it; far from it. We initiated a number of studies into what had taken place. As I say, this is an example of the government needing to take action to ensure the integrity of the system. I am concerned about the system.
I like to think that, whether it is the national procurement process or provincial, territorial, or any other form of tax dollars that are used during procurement processes, there is integrity in the system. That is why we have had not one but several standing committees looking into this issue and not one but several independent offices of Parliament looking into this issue. That is why we have more than one department looking into this issue. There are literally tens of thousands of pages scattered all over the place on this issue.
To try to give the impression, the false impression, that the government does not take this seriously is absolute balderdash. This government understands the true value of every dollar we receive, because we understand that by using tax dollars in an appropriate fashion, we are able to provide the programming that Canadians want and expect of the government.
We have seen ample demonstrations of that over the years. During the pandemic we created the CERB program and the small business programs. Postpandemic we introduced the grocery rebate and investments in housing, infrastructure and non-profit groups. We hear about the pharmacare program, a program I have been advocating for since 2012 through petitions and other means. There is also the dental program.
We understand the true value of social programs and that is why we put a high value on accountability on tax dollars because we want to support Canadians through these social programs. I commented at the beginning that the Conservatives are more concerned about bumper stickers. We saw that today.
The leader of the Conservative Party has virtually mandated every Conservative who stands up to recite something. I wrote it down. I guess I should know it by memory by now because all of them like to say it. It is the bumper sticker sale going on, on the other side. They have to say, “cut taxes”. That is a must. That is their big bumper sticker. This is what the leader of the Conservative Party was saying when introducing the motion today. In case some people may be wondering about the relevance, I am actually quoting what the leader of the Conservative Party said today in his speech.
He said he would cut taxes, but what he does not tell Canadians is that he would cut rebates. When he cuts rebates, he is literally taking money out of the pockets of the residents of Winnipeg North, over 80% of them. I can say the residents of Winnipeg North are very much the working class of Canada. It is very reflective of ridings across Canada. He is taking more money out of their pockets, but would that stop him from using that bumper sticker? No.
The other talking point or bumper sticker that he made reference to earlier was that he would build more houses. Canadians need to know he was the minister of housing and he was a total disaster when it came to housing. He did not do anything on housing. For the first time in 50 years, we have a national government that is investing in housing. No government in the last 50 years has invested more money in housing than this government, nor worked with other jurisdictions. We are building tens of thousands of new homes over the next number of years. I will compare housing any day.
He talks about the issue of fixing the budget. Fixing the budget is code for a hidden Conservative, Tory agenda. It is the far right, the MAGA Conservatives, coming out. That is what that is all about. Someone made reference to the Phoenix disaster. When we first came into government, what did we experience? The Conservative Party had just cut hundreds of civil servant jobs. It said it was going to save millions of dollars and create this Phoenix project. That Phoenix project ended up costing taxpayers hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, going into billions of dollars; an absolute waste.
Of course, the Conservatives talk about their final point, which is to stop crime. We came up with a bail reform bill with consensus across Canada from all different political parties. What do the Conservatives across the way do? They filibuster. That is how they are going to stop crime. Initially, they are not. The Conservatives are the ones who actually held it up. The Conservative Party is all about stunts. Today is a giant stunt. Everything they do and say is ultimately for one goal and that is for the vote, and that is it.
On the other hand, we will continue to work day in, day out to support Canadians prepandemic, postpandemic and during the pandemic. There are many things I could talk about. Thanks for the opportunity.
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- Feb/27/24 1:14:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hear the Liberals continue to talk about the surge from COVID. The reality is that the Liberals had $8.4 billion in outsourcing the first year they were in government that they inherited from the Conservatives. Now they are at $21.4 billion. In terms of the big six consulting firms, the government had $119 million, pre-COVID; now it is $470 million just to the big six.
The argument about a surge from COVID no longer holds water. I will tell members what it is like in my riding. In the Comox Valley, the maintenance of search and rescue helicopters flown by Canadian Forces members has been contracted out to a private company, IMP Aerospace. It is seeing substantial staff shortages due to the low wages paid by the company, resulting in concerns for safety by the public. DND is not ensuring that the contractor is following through with the terms of the contract.
Will my colleague ensure that when it comes to outsourcing and when it comes to public safety on the coast, the government will ensure that those workers are getting paid fairly and that they are being treated properly and there is some actual accountability that is happening?
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- Feb/27/24 1:16:29 p.m.
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I would like to ask my colleague the following question through you, Madam Speaker.
It is too easy. When it comes to the issue that is before us, the ArriveCAN scandal, it is very easy to make all sorts of accusations about what the Conservatives did, just as the Conservatives are falsely accusing the Bloc Québécois of things. However, that does not absolve the current government of its responsibility for the ArriveCAN scandal.
We are not talking about a small measure. This is causing hours and hours of work in committee. The Auditor General went before the media to publicly explain how unprecedented this is when it comes to managing public funds. This is the government's responsibility.
Rather than waiting to be asked questions in question period, what initiative will the government take when it comes to ArriveCAN to ensure that we get to the bottom of the external contracts that were awarded without any accountability or responsibility in terms of public administration?
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- Feb/27/24 1:21:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member says not to look at them. One of the times they were looked at, an individual ended up in handcuffs and went to jail. That was a Conservative member. At the end of the day, we will continue to push for accountability, and the Conservatives will, no doubt, continue with their stunts, unfortunately.
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- Feb/27/24 5:14:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Edmonton West for his amazing work. He is one of the few MPs in this House who takes his fiduciary responsibilities to a whole new level. He actually goes through all the public accounts and makes sure that we are spending money wisely. Here we have, right now, the arrive scam situation with over $19 million going into the hands of two individuals working out of their cottage in the Ottawa suburbs.
We have a Westminster system here where there is supposed to be ministerial accountability, so I would ask the member for Edmonton West this: Who is responsible for it? Is it the President of the Treasury Board; the Minister of Public Services and Procurement; the Minister of Public Safety, who contracted the CBSA to go out there and contract the arrive scam and waste $60 million on absolutely nothing; or, is it the Prime Minister himself?
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