44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 8, 2024 11:00AM
- Apr/8/24 12:58:11 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the member talked about $46 billion in our national debt servicing. This money is going to service a record debt. The Prime Minister has doubled the national debt. I am just wondering if the member has any hope that this debt will be paid off within his lifetime or the lifetime of his grandchildren.
56 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure to stand up today to present a petition.
The petition I am presenting today comes from Canadians from across the country who are concerned about the consent and age verification of those depicted in pornographic material. The petitioners are asking the government to follow recommendation 2 of the 2021 Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics report on MindGeek, which would require all content hosting platforms to verify age prior to uploading content.
Bill C-270, the stopping Internet sexual exploitation act, would add two offences to the Criminal Code. The first requires age verification and consent prior to distribution. The second requires removal of that material if the consent withdrawn.
The petitioners are calling on the House of Commons to pass Bill C-270.
134 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/8/24 4:04:17 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, in terms of one of the contracts that was signed with GC Strategies, GC Strategies actually designed the parameters of the contract and then got the contract later on.
Was my hon. colleague aware of that, and could he explain it a little?
45 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
Madam Speaker, as I begin my speech, I want to talk a bit about how Canadians cannot afford the higher taxes and inflation that the government has brought on, and they cannot afford the Prime Minister. That is why we have been calling for judicial use of taxpayer dollars. We have been calling for the government to axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234. We have demanded that the government build homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition of receiving federal funding. We have also asked the government to cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down the interest rates and inflation. Conservatives said we will not support the government in its budget unless it does these things, so we will vote non-confidence if the government does not axe the tax; build more homes, not bureaucracy; and cap the spending.
It is the spending that brings us here today. We have seen that the ArriveCAN app, an app that could have cost only $80,000 to produce, ended up costing over $60 million. We have seen some unsavoury contractors taking advantage of the government, but the government also failed to maintain records.
This is a classic case of a time when we see a critical situation. Oftentimes this happens, and it is always very suspicious. There is a crime scene, a camera is recording the crime scene, but during the two minutes the crime happened, the camera seems to be mysteriously turned off, and then the camera comes back on after that. This is again one of these cases where we can smell that something is wrong and see that something is wrong.
We have the scathing Auditor General's report, which says that a massive amount of money was spent, and she cannot find what the money was spent on. She anticipates that 67% of the subcontractors did no actual work, yet here we are with a scandal of grand proportion. It appears that the tape was not running, that the camera was turned off for that period of time. The Auditor General says it could be as little as $60 million, and it could be far more.
We are debating a privilege motion here today. A privilege motion has to do with the ability of members of Parliament to do their jobs. Members of Parliament have particular privileges that are not broadly used by citizens. Taking a seat in the House of Commons is a privilege that only members of Parliament have, but the government has particular privileges as well. The government gets to write the cheques for Canada. It holds the chequebook. That is not an opposition party job. That is a job of the government. Therefore, it is incredibly important that the government maintains control of the chequebook and maintains the scrutiny of where the cheques are going. That is a massive failure, and we are trying to get to the bottom of that.
If we listen to the Liberals, they would have us believe that it is these evil contractors, and I am not denying that, who have been taking advantage of the government, which, by all accounts, appears to be the case, but where were the checks and balances? Where was the trust and verify? Why did it not ask if we were getting good value for money? This has been a common problem with the Liberals for a long time, that whenever they are questioned about a government failure, they point out how much money they have spent on a particular issue, whether it is border security, policing or managing vehicle crimes. They talk about how much money they are spending on a particular program, when the problem only seems to be getting worse.
Contractors have figured out that limiting the money being spent has not been an active priority for the government. Maintaining some sort of fiscal restraint is not something the government has been known for, and contractors have been taking advantage of that, for sure.
Common-sense Conservatives, after eight years of the Prime Minister, are putting forward a plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, and that is really what this comes down to.
We have heard some incredible things that have come out of committee. First is the fact that the Auditor General said that it was incredibly hard to track down what this money was spent on, as the contracts that GS Strategies got were more and more vague as time went on. They were for longer and longer periods of time and for larger and larger amounts of money. However, there have been some other interesting things, such as resumés that had been submitted to get the contracts being forged, which appears to be just straight-up fraud. There was a requirement for experience and qualifications, and GC Strategies admitted that it doctored these resumés to make sure that they fit in order to get the contracts.
The other really interesting thing that happened, which we discovered last week at committee, was that KPMG was approached by the government to do an audit of the effectiveness of the app, but rather than the government contracting KPMG directly to do this audit, the government employee suggested to KPMG that it should approach GC Strategies to do this audit rather than just doing it directly, even though it was the government that approached KPMG. There does seem to be something very interesting going on between the bureaucracy and GC Strategies.
Again, going back to this video camera that, for some apparent reason, seems to have been shut off just when the crime seemed to be happening, interestingly, all of the emails associated with this discussion of the KPMG contract have disappeared. The government employee who had been communicating on this deleted all of his emails and is no longer affiliated with the department that he worked with. I am not sure, but I think he has been suspended from the public service, so we do not have the documents.
Members might say, “Well, that's the actions of one individual” or “Mr. Firth is not answering our questions, and that's the actions of a particular individual”, but I would say that this has been the MO of the government. I remember back in 2015 when the Liberals came into power with the grand slogan of being “open by default”. That is what it said, yet we have seen more redactions, and we have seen the government take the Speaker of the House of Commons to court to prevent documents from coming to this place. We have seen endless amounts of redactions. We have an ATIP process that is completely dysfunctional. We will get an ATIP back, and it will be entirely blacked out. We have also seen the Prime Minister call an election to prevent the Winnipeg lab documents from coming to this place. He first sued the Speaker to prevent it, and then called an election to prevent the truth coming to light on a number of things.
It is not a far leap that, when citizens see the government refusing to answer questions and redacting or not allowing documents to come forth, citizens who are then called before Parliament would not treat Parliament with the respect that is required or would not be as forthright with Parliament as they should be, which is why we are calling on Mr. Firth to come to the bar so he can be questioned on a number of these issues. However, we also want to point out that we wish the government would be more forthright with documentation as well so we can get to the bottom of a number of these scandals.
1322 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/8/24 5:32:58 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I hope we can restore some trust in our democratic institutions, and that we can make it so that, when people are required to come to committee and are sworn in, they tell the truth and help us get to the bottom of it.
The member opposite wants to cast this narrowly as being about one individual coming to the bar so he can be questioned and we can get the truth from him, but it is likely that, when we get the truth from him, it will only lead us to more questions on the extent of the corruption, the extent of the taxpayer money waste and all of these things. The member may want to narrowly cast this, but this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to investigating the ArriveCAN app.
139 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/8/24 5:34:48 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, it is precisely the ability for members to hold the government to account. I hear from constituents all of the time who are wondering what will be done about this. It seems obvious that money was wasted and somebody was defrauding the government. It seems obvious that the government was asleep at the switch, not paying attention to where this money was going and not considering the value for money.
All of those things lead to the derogation of the trust in our institutions. People want to see justice, and when they do not see that justice, they ask what that institution is good for if it is incapable of capturing the thing it is supposed to capture.
120 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/8/24 5:36:50 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more. That is precisely why this privilege motion has been brought forward.
We are trying to get the answers to who authorized these contracts and what funny business was going on when the government allowed the company to write its own contracts and also suggested that other companies contract through GC Strategies, rather than directly with the government.
These are all important questions that we would like to get the answers to, so we can get to the bottom of this and root out corruption, if there is any.
95 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/8/24 6:36:59 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Chair, the NDP members, particularly from B.C., should talk to their provincial government about getting more access to fibre. That is entirely a provincial problem and one of the NDP's own making in British Columbia. On the one hand, we have NDP governments limiting access to fibre, and on the other hand we have a Liberal government that is limiting our ability to market the softwood lumber around the world, particularly to the United States.
I do recall something that was called a “bromance” between the Prime Minister and Barack Obama when he was the prime minister. It was a complete failure by the current Prime Minister to get a softwood lumber agreement when Obama was in power.
What does the member have to say about that?
132 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
