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Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Bernard Généreux

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup
  • Quebec
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $143,434.52

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 326 - Jun/6/24
Mr. Bernard Généreux (Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, CPC)
  • Jun/6/24 4:16:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak today. Nine years with this Prime Minister in power has meant nine years of scandals. The scandals are piling up here in Ottawa at an unbelievable rate. There is a new one every day. This week, the Auditor General of Canada discovered that the Prime Minister turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada into a slush fund for Liberal Party insiders. This is taxpayers' money, more specifically, $123 million that SDTC awarded to close associates who were not only in a conflict of interest, but in some cases were not even eligible for funding. A total of $59 million of Canadians' money was awarded for ineligible projects, and $76 million was awarded for projects with a connection to Liberal cronies who had been appointed to positions within SDTC. There is more. The Auditor General's report further indicates that long-standing conflict of interest management policies were completely ignored in 90 of the cases. We are not talking about one or two cases. We are talking about nearly 100 cases where conflict of interest policies were not followed. This is serious. I was a member of the board of directors of the Port of Québec, and I owned a company. Obviously, the Port of Québec could not do business with my company. It was out of the question. It was not allowed. I do not understand how the members of this organization's board of directors were able to give themselves so much money. It is unbelievable. More specifically, the SDTC chair, who was chosen by none other than the Prime Minister himself, misappropriated $217,000 for her own personal gain. She blatantly exploited public resources and behaved incredibly irresponsibly with regard to the ethics rules and with regard to the trust of Canadians. Is no one in the government able to allocate those funds properly? One has to wonder. Who is responsible for preventing this type of scandal? One also has to wonder about that. Whistle-blowers are the ones who tipped us off. They made sure that we, the official opposition, moved this investigation forward until it reached the point where the Auditor General was asked to investigate to get to the bottom of things. The Auditor General made it clear that the responsibility lies squarely with the industry minister. This minister failed to adequately monitor contracts awarded to Liberal insiders and, in so doing, he seriously failed in his duty to protect Canadian taxpayers as well as Canadian dollars. He completely neglected the essential task of ensuring that public funds are managed with integrity and transparency. This scandalous situation is equally unacceptable. The abuse of power and corruption are unacceptable. Canadians deserve much better after nine years of scandals from this Prime Minister. The Prime Minister and his government have betrayed the trust of Canadians with every misallocated dollar. We pay taxes. We send money to the federal government in the hope that the federal government will spend it wisely and, more importantly, offer services and products that we could be proud of. That is not the case right now. They betray our trust with every dollar wasted and every dollar taken out of Canadians' pockets. Public funds are not there to line the pockets of Liberal cronies or to make the rich richer. Canadians are suffering and are having an extremely tough time meeting their most essential needs, namely food and shelter. While hunger and homelessness are a reality for more and more Canadians, while they cannot even live in dignity, while they are faced with choices such as buying food or paying the rent, living in a motel or living in the street, the government is turning public funds into a slush fund for its friends. How could such an abuse of power happen? How could there be such a misappropriation of funds? The Auditor General noted that Sustainable Development Technology Canada did not comply with conflict of interest policies in a hundred or so cases; spent nearly $76 million on projects with ties to highly placed Liberal cronies in the organization; and spent $59 million on projects that should not have received money. Think about it. There is a special fund that is supposed to be used to help the environment and help the country become carbon neutral by 2050, and it is being used to fund projects that have nothing to do with the green fund. It is quite incredible. The Auditor General also noted that SDTC also spent $12 million on projects that involved a conflict of interest and were also ineligible for funding. What is more, its chair diverted $217 billion to her own company. Talk about a total and outrageous lack of accountability. The Liberal government is neither transparent nor accountable. It should always be held responsible for its actions, and it should always answer Canadians' questions, especially when their money is being misappropriated, wasted, invested in a corrupt and negligent way. I think I speak for all Canadians when I say that we need answers. The most important thing is making sure Canadians get answers. That is why we think this matter should be handed over to the RCMP so they can find out the truth. Once again, we are disappointed for Canadians, disappointed for our country and disappointed in this Liberal government. However, our disappointment merely reinforces and confirms what we already knew. We need to bring common sense back to Ottawa, and we need to do it now. Only the common-sense Conservatives can put an end to the corruption, the irresponsibility and the negligence. Respecting conflict of interest policies does not seem like mission impossible to us. It should not even be an issue. At the risk of repeating myself, it is just common sense. I took a course in business administration at Université Laval. That was in 2013, if I am not mistaken. Anyone who wants to have a governance role must absolutely ensure that there is no conflict of interest in anything they are going to do. Allocating millions of dollars to one's own companies within an organization like that is completely and utterly unacceptable. I can guarantee that we will bring common sense back to Ottawa. Serving the interests of those who elected us, representing them properly, answering their questions correctly, ensuring they can live with dignity, all without abusing their money, now that is common sense, and that is what we will stand up for on this side of the House. Nine years of scandals is nine years too long. Canadians deserve to see an end to this long and difficult era of scandals. We want to help bring this chapter to an end. Democracy depends on peoples' trust in their representatives. Without that trust, we have nothing. Today, we are speaking out against the irresponsible corruption that has taken place at Sustainable Development Technology Canada, an organization where a failure of governance and a continuous cycle of mismanagement have led to very serious violations of conflict of interest policies. This has led to the mismanagement of over $123 million of taxpayers' money. An RCMP investigation is absolutely crucial. As usual, the government claims to be surprised and will waste even more money on overly generously paid consultants to cover up yet another scandal. We know that the minister was informed years ago that there were concerns regarding Sustainable Development Technology Canada, so why did the problem continue? How did the mismanagement get so out of hand? This investigation is urgent. Action is urgently needed. It is imperative that we take action as quickly as possible. Therefore I move, seconded by the hon. member for Mégantic—L'Érable, the following amendment: That the motion be amended: (a) by replacing the words “14 days“ with the words “30 days”; (b) by adding the word “and” at the end of paragraph (f), and by adding, after paragraph (f), the following new paragraph: “(g) in the case of the Auditor General of Canada, any other document, not described in paragraphs (a) to (f), upon which she relied in preparing her Report 6—Sustainable Development Technology Canada, which was laid upon the table on Tuesday, June 4, 2024;”; and (c) in paragraph (h), by deleting all the words after the word “Police”.
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Context: House Hansard - 283 - Feb/15/24
Mr. Bernard Généreux (Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, CPC)
  • Feb/15/24 2:43:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years, this government is not worth the cost or the corruption. It awarded the ArriveCAN contract to GC Strategies, a four-employee company that does not even do IT work, for an app that was supposed to cost $80,000 but, according to the Auditor General, may have cost more than $60 million, or 750 times as much. That is what I call gross incompetence. Politically, who is going to take responsibility for this incompetence? Will we ever get back the money lost due to this incompetence?
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