- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- Jun/5/24 12:18:07 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary addressed the question of ministerial accountability for these scandals. I want to drill down on that.
We have had ministers come to committee. They have not always been forthcoming, and there are many ministers we still need to hear from. However, when we have had ministers at committee, they have always tried to present their role in government as that of a passive bystander, a painting on the wall or a potted plant that is there and that hears things, but it is not actually responsible for anything that happens.
I have asked these questions over a series of procurement ministers, various ministers responsible for CBSA. What did they do? Were they briefed about the problems? Were they briefed about the abuses? I understand that ministers do not take every little individual decision, but as these issues were being raised publicly in Parliament and committee, did they issue directives? Did they take action? The answer is always no. They received briefings. They expected other people to solve the problems.
When will they take responsibility?
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- Jun/5/24 12:10:27 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, today is an important day in the arrive scam scandal saga, because later today, Minh Doan, who is one of the central figures in this affair, will be testifying before the government operations committee.
He will be testifying for three hours and will be required to answer critical questions about how the decision was made to choose GC Strategies and who was responsible for that decision. He will need to answer questions about significant allegations around the destruction of emails. Since his last appearance before the government operations and committee, there have been revelations in The Globe and Mail that note an accusation of unusual steps that he took that led to the destruction of emails at the Canada Border Services Agency.
There is an Auditor General's report on the arrive scam scandal that shows that there are missing records. There are also allegations filed by a CBSA IT employee that were obtained by The Globe and Mail, allegations of moving files in an odd way that led to the destruction of emails and other critical documents. This has, of course, as The Globe and Mail noted, particular importance given that we are seeking information about what happened with GC Strategies, that is, how it was awarded the contract. One of the deeply suspicious aspects of the arrive scam scandal is that nobody is actually prepared to take responsibility for the decision to choose GC Strategies. There is a flurry of very sharp and public accusations among senior public servants, which speaks to significant and enduring challenges at CBSA.
There are new audits that came out yesterday, new, damning audits from the Auditor General. One issue in particular that we have highlighted has been the government's cosy relationship with McKinsey, the government's constantly funnelling money and contracts to McKinsey, close friends with the government, without the proper processes in place and without demonstrating value for money.
It is another day, another series of corruption scandals and more damning reports from the Auditor General. Whether it is yesterday's Auditor General's report on McKinsey, as well as the green slush fund, or today's hearings that we are going to have with Minh Doan, it is scandal after scandal. After nine years, the Liberal government always wants to blame somebody else. The Liberals always want to say that it is somebody else's responsibility, without any clarity about who is actually going to take responsibility.
After nine years, the Prime Minister bears responsibility. He bears responsibility for a broken contracting system, for the fact that the Auditor General's reports repeatedly emphasize the lack of accountability for the way the government is serving up contracts to its close friends, and for the fact that there is a GC Strategies model. It is not just one company; it is a model that we see growing across government, where a small firm specializes in simply getting government contracts but then subcontracts all of the actual work and takes a big cut along the way.
This is systemic corruption in the procurement process that we have seen in the arrive scam and in multiple other instances. When will the corruption end? Will it be soon, or will it be after the election?
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- Mar/21/24 6:42:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is a great honour to follow my friend, the chair of our committee, the member for Edmonton West and the Edmonton mall, who made many excellent and important points.
I want to thank the member for Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes for initially raising this matter of privilege yesterday. Of course, it was of critical importance that the matter of privilege be raised as soon as possible following the tabling of the report, although that also happened to be a time when the government operations committee was meeting and hearing from ministers. Therefore, I am very grateful for his intervention, as well as for the allowances that have been given so regular members of the government operations committee can share some additional important thoughts about the very serious privilege issues raised in the 17th report of the government operations committee.
The genesis of this question of privilege is the ongoing hearings at the government operations committee into the metastasizing arrive scam scandal. In many respects, this is not one scandal, but a family of scandals. I will not detail all the various aspects. I think members are well familiar with the tens of millions of dollars spent on an app and its 177 versions, many of which were not tested. It sent over 10,000 people into quarantine falsely and unintentionally as a result of the fact that it was not tested. Companies were given contracts that had no IT experience and simply subcontracted all the work, did nothing and collected a massive commission along the way. There was a complete absence of records in many cases, and there are allegations of records perhaps being deleted or never being created in the first place.
As well, the Auditor General revealed that, at points along the way, the contractors sat down with people within the government to discuss the terms of the contract. The company involved in setting those terms was then able to bid on the contract, which effectively rigged the process.
We have a rigging of the process, absent records, an app that did not work and sent people into quarantine falsely and unintentionally, and an enormous waste in government. Compounding this is evidence of criminal activity in the form of the fraudulent altering of resumés by one of the same contractors.
We often speak in the opposition about the problems of cost, corruption and crime. In the case of the arrive scam scandal, we have all three going on here.
Of particular relevance to the privileges of Parliament, in this scandal, we have seen just how the committee has been engaged by various witnesses over the course of questioning. This has compounded members' concerns about the situation regarding the scandal. There were many instances of officials and people outside government lying to the committee, accusing others of lying or contradicting themselves. For instance, there were senior public servants accusing other senior public servants of lying to the committee. Obviously we have a massive problem here: Many people are not telling the truth to a parliamentary committee and do not seem to appreciate how serious parliamentary committees' roles are supposed to be.
Just last week, at the government operations committee, we had Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony separately, two separate principals at GC Strategies.
In my questioning of Darren Anthony, we could see at one point, when I asked him a question, that he was reading a statement off-screen. When I asked him if he was reading a statement or speaking from the heart, he said, without any kind of obvious show of conscience, that he was speaking from the heart.
In previous testimony, we had Kristian Firth himself making clearly contradictory claims over the course of two hours.
We also had Cameron MacDonald and Minh Doan accusing each other of lying about who was responsible for making this app.
Although there are unanswered questions, we know that there is a campaign to hide information from various quarters and to hide information from the government operations committee. We know that we are being lied to and that witnesses are choosing not to appear, are doing everything possible to avoid appearing, or are showing up and intentionally stonewalling the committee.
This raises further questions about the nature of the scandal and what might be motivating these attempts to hide information, but it also raises questions of privilege, of the rights of members of Parliament to be able to ask important questions and get answers.
What our committee has been clear on from the start is that what we are interested in is finding out the truth. We are interesting in finding out why these dubious characters were selected by the Government of Canada to build this app, why so much money was spent, what happened to the records, who made the decision, who is telling the truth, and who is not. These are questions that we want answered.
I have always felt that it is in the best interest of witnesses to simply come before the committee and honestly answer questions and tell the truth. The committee has, I think, responded much better to witnesses who have sought to be forthright in explaining why they did what they did and then trying to offer a defence for their actions, rather than prevaricating, refusing to answer, refusing to appear or hiding information.
Nonetheless, the vast majority of the characters, both inside and outside of government, have chosen the path of ducking and prevaricating, avoiding, and that makes us wonder what further information they are trying to hide. What are they trying to hide that is leading to this constant stonewalling of the committee by government witnesses and by external witnesses?
On matters of privilege, I want to highlight the key principles at stake in this question. Since I have been a member of Parliament I have been surprised at how many times witnesses, both inside and outside government but who seem to have close relationships with government, do not seem to appreciate the centrality of the principle of the supremacy of Parliament.
In a proper, functioning democratic society, the elected legislature has to be supreme. Of course, on day-to-day matters, the executive, the public service and other institutions exercise an enormous amount of power. However, Parliament has to be supreme. Parliament has to be supreme. That means that when Parliament passes laws, they have to be followed by the executive, by the Prime Minister and by people outside of government.
It means that the regulatory powers that governments have come from the legislature and are limited by the legislature. It also means that Parliament has the ability to conduct investigations, and the committees of Parliament have the ability to conduct investigations. They have constitutionally protected powers to call witnesses, to order the production of documents and to insist on answers to their questions. It is part of the supremacy of Parliament that, in order for parliamentarians to be able to do their jobs, they need to be able to access documents, order witnesses and get answers to questions.
This is so foundational to our system of government, yet in the last Parliament, shockingly, when I was working on the Winnipeg lab documents issue, we came up against the fact that the president of the Public Health Agency, a very senior official in the government, simply did not seem to believe in the principle of the supremacy of Parliament. The issue was important. Clearly, now that we know more, the issue of the Winnipeg labs documents was very important.
Underneath that, of perhaps even greater importance was the supremacy of Parliament, which was being challenged by that official, who said, “Actually, I do not have to answer your questions and I do not have to provide documents.” In response to that, the last Parliament took significant action and ordered responses. Those responses were not forthcoming, and that official was eventually summonsed to the bar here and admonished. Sadly, that episode ended with one of the political parties changing its position on it, which meant that a majority of Parliament was no longer ordering those documents.
However, for a period of time, Parliament took very seriously that assertion of its prerogatives of the supremacy of Parliament, and rightly so, because it is foundational to our democracy. If we were ever to go down the road of saying that Parliament is not supreme, that maybe the Privacy Act takes precedence and that maybe the executive can ignore Parliament, that would mark a serious erosion of democracy. In asserting this principle of parliamentary supremacy, not only are we defending our role as legislators, but we are also defending the democratic foundations of our country.
In the case of the orders to Kristian Firth and Darren Anthony, on multiple occasions, the committee ordered these witnesses to appear. They repeatedly refused. I think it was evident in discussions with them, and they had legal counsel as well, that they did not appear to appreciate just how serious it was that a parliamentary committee was ordering them to do something. I can only infer from that, as my colleague from Edmonton West alluded to, that they had learned the wrong lessons from actions by the government. I infer that they had not seen modelled in previous incidents the fact that parliamentary committees insist on having their rights respected.
However, the committee was insistent, and we had a motion that came to the House that was concurred in unanimously. It ordered Mr. Firth and Mr. Anthony to appear; this meant that, if they had not appeared, they would have been taken into custody by the Sergeant-at-Arms. Therefore, they appeared at the last possible minute, but once they appeared, they did everything possible to double down on their lack of respect for the principle of the supremacy of Parliament. They presented a bald-faced challenge to the core democratic principle that the people get to decide and that the people, through their democratic representatives, are supreme within our system of government.
Presumably under the advice of their lawyers, they decided that they could simply defy our core democratic norms, disregard the democratic rule of law and not respect this principle of the supremacy of Parliament.
We know that committees have these powers to work on behalf of the House, to order documents, to summon witnesses and to insist on answers to questions, and we have seen time and time again an effort to erode this principle through refusal to comply with these powers. However, I commend the government operations committee on drawing a firm line at that point and saying that enough was enough. It said that it needed not only to get to the bottom of what happened in the arrive scam scandal but also to defend our democratic institutions and the principle of parliamentary supremacy. Furthermore, it needed to insist that this is not merely a place of pageantry but the deliberative assembly of one nation, where we work out our differences and answer big questions. In order to do that, it had to be able to exercise its powers to access information.
I commend the committee for firmly asserting and standing on that principle and for standing up to the efforts of officials, contractors and lawyers of others to try to defy it. We will stand firm for democracy and against democratic decline; we will defend the role of Parliament and the supremacy of Parliament against all challenges. We are doing that today in this question of privilege.
When the witnesses were told by the chair that they had to answer the questions, and when the questions were put to them not by individual members but by the committee, Mr. Firth in particular said that he would not answer. He provided no clear reason for this. He said that there might hypothetically be an RCMP investigation on the matter at some point in the future. He said that, based on speculation he had read on Twitter, he thought there might be an investigation; as such, he refused to answer the question.
In the face of such defiance, in two minutes, the committee unanimously agreed to empower the chair to present a report to the House outlining the material facts of this breach of privilege. This was an extraordinary show of unity at the committee, which I hoped would be continued in the House. The committee unanimously, immediately, without debate, agreed to my motion to refer this matter to the House.
As a matter of process, I think it is important for Canadians to understand that parliamentary committees have these awesome powers, which are necessary as part of democracy and the supremacy of Parliament, but their enforcement process is quite circuitous. When parliamentary committees feel there is a violation of privilege, they have to provide a report to the House that provides the details of that violation of privilege. The House then considers the matter, but the committee has to agree to it first. As I have worked through cases like this before, it can be very difficult, as we saw in the case of the Winnipeg lab's documents, to get the committee to come together to provide the report to the House in an appropriate, fulsome and timely way that actually moves it forward.
In this case, the committee was clear and unanimous in wanting to expedite this issue, and I commend it for that. I had hoped and I do hope that we will see a similar unanimous response from the House. I encourage all members to stand up for their roles as members of Parliament. We come here initially as representatives of our constituencies, but we also come into the House as members of a deliberative assembly of one nation to speak on behalf of the people who send us here to try to get to the bottom of the serious problems facing our nation. We do so principally as individuals, not as creatures of political parties. The rights of individual members have to endure, and protecting the rights of individual members and of this institution is necessary for making our democracy strong.
Therefore, let us all push back against efforts to reduce or diminish this institution to mere spectacle. Let us defend the powers and prerogatives of Parliament and let us bequeath to future generations a stronger, not weaker, Parliament by moving this question of privilege forward, by defending the rights of committees to do their job and by resisting the pressures of democratic decline.
I hope you will find a prima facie case of privilege and that we will be able to take the further steps necessary to insist that Mr. Firth, and all witnesses, show up when they are told to show up, answer questions forthrightly and provide the documents that are requested. This will be a critical test for the House, for this Parliament and for us as leaders, whether we defend this core principle of democracy or allow it to erode. I hope to see a positive ruling on this. I know, at that point, members will be prepared to move the appropriate motion.
I want to say briefly that yesterday, in response to this, the member for Winnipeg North implied that the information requested was eventually provided. That is certainly not the case. I know the member for Edmonton West emphasized that this was not the case. The report that was tabled with the unanimous support of the committee emphasized that the information was not provided. The reason why the committee was quick and united in taking the position it did was that the information was not provided. It has not been provided since. The chair has confirmed as much, and I can confirm as much as a member of the committee. This is very much still an outstanding item.
Again, we must insist on respect for our democracy and we must, through this process, educate government officials, the legal community and anybody who is representing those who come to Parliament about the principle of the supremacy of Parliament.
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- Feb/27/24 5:15:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption.
Today, we are talking about costly criminal corruption, a three-in-one, right at the heart of the government. That is the arrive scam scandal. We found out today that the RCMP is investigating this costly criminal corruption. People are familiar with the arrive scam scandal. I think we should be calling it “the arrive scam scandals”, plural. There are multiple different scandals, and every time, at the public accounts committee and the government operations committee, we turn over a new leaf or a new stone. There is more to uncover, and it speaks to the rot, the crime, the corruption and the capricious disregard for public money that is at the heart of the NDP-Liberal government.
We heard today in committee from watchdogs, from the Auditor General's office, from the procurement ombudsman's office, that they are not at all surprised that the RCMP is investigating criminal behaviour in the context of the arrive scam scandal. We heard ministers in question period today, when they were asked about the RCMP investigation, say that it is no big deal and that of course the RCMP is looking into it.
We have come to a point, in Canada, after eight years of the Prime Minister and the NDP-Liberal government, where ministers will say, unironically, that the RCMP investigating the behaviour of the government is not a big deal. It is true that there have been many different RCMP investigations involving conduct by and within the current government. However, we should never normalize or accept or tolerate, in Canada, the fact that there would be a government that has so debased our public institutions that it thinks it is normal for the RCMP to be investigating its bad behaviour.
What happened in the arrive scam scandal? It is the “arrive scam scandals”. There are many different things at the heart of this problem. We had at least $60 million spent on an app that should have cost $80,000. Many of those who worked on this did not actually do any work. GC Strategies, the company that received this contract, got $20 million for nothing. It simply received the contract and subcontracted it.
We do not just have the problem of the government contracting out work. We have the government contracting out to people who contract out. There are multiple layers and levels of subcontracting. It is essentially a two-person company that received this contract, did no work, had no IT expertise and subcontracted. It went on LinkedIn and found people who could do the work for them. It received $20 million for searching on LinkedIn.
I think a lot of Canadians would say, “I could get $20 million for just going on social media and looking for people who could do something”. That is the way this government operates. One gets $20 million for looking around on LinkedIn, if one is a well-connected insider.
We have no work done and millions of dollars going to GC Strategies for this process of getting contracts and subcontracting. Not only that, we know now, from the Auditor General's report, that the process was rigged. GC Strategies sat down with government officials to determine what the terms of the contract would be, which it would then bid on. The procurement ombudsman revealed that the terms of the contract were designed to drive up costs. They built a system that would incentivize driving up costs and would incentivize contractors to ask the government for more money instead of less.
Normal people look for opportunities to spend less when they buy things. This government built a system in which it was in the interests of contractors to charge more instead of less. It built a system that was structurally designed to protect insiders. It was built so that if one was not an insider, one could not get the contract. We have money for nothing, a rigged process, protection for insiders, a process designed to drive up costs.
As part of studying this issue at the government operations committee, we found out about faked résumés. GC Strategies, as part of trying to get work, submitted faked résumés. It said that it changed numbers around in résumés and just sent in the wrong version. However, it admitted under questioning that this insider company, as part of its process, changes numbers on résumés in order to make it compliant with the requirements.
If the government said that it needed someone with five years' experience and the person had five months of experience, GC Strategies' processes would be to change the number to five years to make it compliant, and then they would go back to the original subcontractor or resource and ask if it was okay that they changed the numbers. In one case, they did not even do that. They just sent in the false résumé.
Further, we have instances of tens of thousands of emails being deleted, with the Auditor General saying in so many cases that there is a complete absence of records. The Auditor General cannot confirm if records were destroyed or never existed, although we now have allegations of emails being deleted. We have senior public servants accusing each other of lying to the committee, accusing each other of faking health episodes in order to avoid accountability. We also have reprisals against senior public servants, public servants suspended without pay in the middle of an investigation after they give critical testimony.
That is money for no work; a rigged process and protection for insiders driving up costs; fake résumés; senior officials accusing each other of lying and reprisals among senior public servants. The result of all that was an app that went through 177 versions and sent over 10,000 people into quarantine as a result of a tech glitch, because they could not bother to test it. What a disaster. What a complete and utter disaster this arrive scam fiasco has been. After eight years, the government would say that the RCMP is investigating this whole family of scandals. That is just the way things work.
On this side of the House, we say no. We say that Canadians deserve clean, efficient, effective government and a government, by the way, in which elected leaders take responsibility. Liberals would have us believe that they had nothing to do with this. “Oh, my goodness, can you believe the things that happen to us when we're ministers? All these public servants are doing things that we know nothing about.” Our system is built on the principle of ministerial accountability, which is that ministers are responsible for what happens in their departments and ministers are responsible for the systems they create within their departments.
After eight years, the Prime Minister and his ministers have presided over the complete debasement of efficiency and integrity within the government. They have presided over a dramatic decline in the Government of Canada's ability to do anything efficiently or effectively. We have seen this across many different areas, that the ability of the Canadian state to deliver on basic services, to purchase an app, for example, has dramatically declined. However, the government would have us believe that this dramatic decline over the last years has nothing to do with it.
We have an increase in crime. We have struggles in the cost of living. We have an escalation in corruption. There is the cost, the crime and the corruption, but the government wants us to believe that the people in charge have nothing to do with the outcomes. Who are we going to blame for all these challenges our country is facing? It will not be the people in charge, surely.
We need to go back to a time when we have a government that is willing to take responsibility for what happens under its watch. We have seen this escalation in cost, crime and corruption, and it is the responsibility of the Prime Minister and his government, for what they did and what they fail to do to ensure integrity, effectiveness and fair processes within government.
This is why Conservatives have put forward a motion today that calls on the government to show the numbers, to account for the cost. It also calls for the money to be paid back. In cases where money was spent for no work, money should be paid back to the taxpayers. Canadians are struggling as a result of decisions made by the government. Canadians deserve to know the cost. They deserve to see the records of deleted emails. They deserve to see the information, and they deserve to have their money back.
Common-sense Conservatives will restore accountability and responsibility in government. When Conservatives are in office, we will no longer have ministers presiding over corruption, crime and chaos while claiming that they had nothing to do with it. We will have a government that axes the tax, builds the homes, fixes the budget, stops the crime, ends the corruption and treats taxpayers' dollars with respect.
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- Nov/22/23 7:43:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I was simply reading a quote, which I think is on the record, that showed the NDP speaking out against giving lethal weapons to Ukraine. Ukraine needs weapons.
I will speak now about the arrive scam app, which is a grotesque scandal that I think many Canadians are seized with. It is actually more like a family of scandals; it is a number of different scandals that are interrelated. The government spent $54 million developing an app, which is far in excess of what it had spent on apps before. It spent $54 million developing a glitchy app that did not work and that sent many Canadians into quarantine who should not have been in quarantine.
In the process, the government hired not a major company or a company with IT expertise. Rather, it hired GC Strategies, a company of two people working out of their basement and who did no IT work. They simply subcontracted all of the actual work. That would be like the Speaker's hiring me to paint her fence for $100, my then hiring the member for Winnipeg North to paint the fence for $20, and my pocketing $80. He did all the work, and the Speaker was sort of fine with that arrangement. That is what happened consistently. I think Canadians have a grave problem with why the two-person company that did nothing got all the work. The RCMP is now investigating the contractors. Meanwhile, there is an admission that fraudulent resumes were submitted to the Government of Canada by GC Strategies, and there are senior public servants accusing each other of lying about who is responsible for the choice to hire GC Strategies.
We need an answer from the government on this, because we have tried to ask senior public servants, and they have accused each other. They have said, “It wasn't me; he chose GC” and “No, someone else chose GC Strategies.” One can understand why nobody wants to take credit for the decision, given the fact that a company with no IT experience and that did no work was hired. The government needs to explain, because it was a decision made by the Government of Canada.
In the midst of these structural problems about contracting, fraudulent resumes and public servants accusing each other of lying, will the government finally tell us who is responsible for choosing GC Strategies for ArriveCAN?
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Madam Speaker, thank you for announcing to the House that I will be delivering the late show later this evening. If, after this speech, the member for Winnipeg North and others feel they have not heard enough, they can certainly stick around.
Just to preview a little, I will be speaking at that time about the Liberal McKinsey scandal, about the fact that the government—
Some hon. members: Which one?
Mr. Garnett Genuis: Madam Speaker, I have to say there are so many scandals that it is hard to keep track. We are going to need to publish a scandal almanac so we will know exactly which one at all times.
This is the scandal in which the Liberal government gave over $100 million in contracts to McKinsey, a company with a very shady record of activity around the world that includes, most concerning to many Canadians, giving advice to Purdue Pharma on how to supercharge the opioid crisis. Stick around for that, Madam Speaker. I will be speaking to that later tonight. You may not have a choice. There will be someone in the chair, regardless.
On the issue of Bill C-23, I was speaking about the government's engagement in terms of consultation with indigenous Canadians. I think, sadly but very clearly, what we have seen with the government when it comes to engaging with indigenous communities is that it has always been a one-way street. If there are indigenous organizations or communities expressing opposition to development projects, the government says it has to listen and it has to really elevate the voices on that side of the debate.
On the other hand, if we have indigenous communities, organizations or nations that are supportive of development, that want to see development projects proceed, then the government very clearly does not listen. It tries to elevate one perspective that exists within indigenous communities while ignoring another.
Let us acknowledge that, within any community of people, there is going to be a diversity of perspectives about the best way to proceed on certain issues. Development projects can be one of those contentious areas where there will be differences of opinion.
The government takes a very one-sided approach to its supposed commitment to consultation. What sticks out to me most in this regard is some time that I spent in northern territories and meeting with indigenous leaders there who talked about development restrictions the government had imposed with absolutely no consultation. It was sort of a phone call to a premier right before an announcement was made. That is how the government stopped development projects, yet it talks increasingly as if proponents of projects, those proceeding with development projects, have to get to something near unanimity.
If we realize that, in the process of talking about consulting indigenous Canadians, the government is actually interested in listening to only one side of the equation, then we realize that it is not about meaningful consultation but about the government trying to find people within indigenous communities who share its perspective and ignoring people who have a different perspective.
I fully acknowledge the diversity of views that exist in any community on development projects, but I know, certainly with people I talk to, indigenous peoples living in my riding and others across the country, there is a sizable constituency out there saying that natural resource development projects in particular contribute to jobs and opportunity growth, and that is very positive for these communities.
In the process of that consultation, it is important to ensure that the government is hearing from the full spectrum of opinions. However, what we then often see is that, when the government is creating consultation mechanisms, it preserves for itself control of who actually participates in that consultation mechanism. There was a bill that the government put forward recently creating an indigenous advisory council. In that context, the minister would be able to do the initial appointments. On the one hand, it was saying the government wants to consult with people from indigenous communities, but on the other hand, it would choose the people it is consulting.
That obviously takes away, to some extent, from the meaningfulness that could have been realized if representatives were not selected by the government that was then going to consult with them about a specific issue. I flag this because this legislation, Bill C-23, speaks about setting aside seats for first nations, Inuit and Métis representatives on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, but the process of appointment retains substantial control over those appointments in the hands of the government. It is saying it would appoint from these communities, but it is going to be the one doing those appointments. That is something important to flag in whether this would be effective.
As I said, Conservatives are supportive of the principle of having certain sites with genuine historic significance being thus designated, and of having particular frameworks around the protection of those sites once they are thus designated. We are supportive of that in principle. We will be supporting this legislation at the second reading stage, which is where we are at, and this is where we consider the general concept of a bill in principle.
The rubber is going to hit the road when we get to the committee study on this legislation and when we work through how to ensure the government is not able to use this legislation to such a general extent as to be able to put a halt to development projects anywhere and to use the designation of a place as having historic significance to block development. It is worth saying, sort of as a bit of a coda, that almost any place is probably of some significance to someone, so the broad enabling power this legislation could give government is something we need to be very careful of.
How limited is its use going to be? Is it going to be so broad as to be open to the Minister of Environment? He, let us be clear, has a particular animus for the energy sector and development in that sector and he, at one time, illegally climbed onto the roof of the premier of Alberta's home to protest that premier's policies. We see, rightly, condemnation of instances where politicians in protests are targeted in their homes, but the Minister of Environment has never addressed his record on this. We know he has a particular approach when it comes to development in this sector, so giving such significant enabling powers to the government, to the Minister of Environment in particular, raises some red flags. That is why the rubber will hit the road at the committee stage of this bill.
Finally, the approach of Conservatives is to recognize that, reasonably, there is a role for government, but we want to do everything we can to get red tape and gatekeeping out of people's lives; make people's interactions with government simpler, clearer and more predictable; reduce their taxes; and give them more control over their own lives.
Our goal as a party is to realize a fuller vision of human freedom, where people can live in strong communities and strong families, independent of government overreach and government bureaucratic control, and independent of the bureaucratization of every aspect of their lives. That is the vision our leader has articulated about removing gatekeepers, defending freedom and recognizing that strong individuals, families and communities are the fundamentals of life far more important than government.
While we recognize some value in the principle of this legislation, I can assure members that we will continue to be vigilant to ensure the government, to the extent we are able, is blocked from overreaches into people's lives, that we fully realize that vision of human freedom. I suspect it will take a new government, a new Conservative government, to bring us to that point, but for the time being, we will use the opportunities we have in opposition to do precisely that.
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- Feb/6/23 3:42:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, certainly on this side of the House, we are prepared to work with any individuals and any parties that want to help us get to the bottom of these scandals that we have seen under the current government. There has been a ceding of control by Liberals to outside consultants. There has been a waste of money in duplication of efforts. There have been conflicts of interest.
There are significant concerns about what McKinsey is up to around the world and the conflicts of interest that exist where they are working for both sides of the same issue. For instance, they are working for the Canadian Department of National Defence while working for hostile interests around the world. These are all issues that we need to get to the bottom of. I hope that this House will support the value-for-money audit that we need to see happen from the Auditor General, as well as some of the other ongoing work that is required to get to the bottom of this Liberal-McKinsey scandal.
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- Feb/6/23 3:40:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in fact the motion that is before the House asks for those records from 2011, so we are quite open to the Auditor General's doing that work as well. My understanding of the record is that there were very small volumes in that earlier period and that there has been dramatic, 50-fold growth under the current government.
I would just say that some of the ethical scandals I have mentioned, including the collaboration with state-owned and affiliated companies around the world, the work with the Government of Saudi Arabia and the work with Purdue Pharma, have come out subsequently.
The government has been in power for eight years. We have seen what the Liberals have done, including dramatically increasing spending on outside consultants and McKinsey in particular. The government has to be accountable for its record.
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- Feb/6/23 3:30:09 p.m.
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I rise today to speak to the House about the ongoing Liberal-McKinsey scandal. This is the affair through which the government gave over $100 million in contracts to its friends at McKinsey & Company.
The Liberals' response to this scandal has been to say not to not worry, that they will have the ministers responsible for the Treasury Board and procurement investigate what happened in the context of Treasury Board and procurement. In other words, they are not only having Liberals investigate Liberals, but precisely having the Liberal cabinet ministers responsible for this issue in the first place investigating themselves.
The Prime Minister thinks that an appropriate response to waste and corruption within his own government is to have the ministers responsible for that waste and corruption investigating themselves. The Conservatives do not think that is an appropriate response to scandal, and that is why we are moving this motion today to call for an independent investigation by Canada's non-partisan Auditor General.
Of course, we have seen in the House the Auditor General attacked by the Minister of National Revenue. The Conservatives have faith in our independent officers of Parliament, and that is why we want to bring in the Auditor General and ask her to investigate the waste and corruption we are seeing under the Liberal government.
The Liberal-McKinsey affair has three main elements to it. We can speak about corruption, about control and about character.
The Liberals have given over $100 million that we know of so far in contracts to McKinsey & Company. At the same time as McKinsey was selling its services to the Liberal government, Dominic Barton, who was the managing partner of McKinsey, was leading the Prime Minister's own growth council. Although Dominic Barton has said that he is not friends with the Prime Minister, that he barely knows these people and that he did not recognize the Prime Minister in an elevator the first time he saw him, we have the Deputy Prime Minister talking about how close Dominic Barton was to the Prime Minister, how accessible he was and how they had a relationship of being able to contact each other any time, which was build up over time.
On the word of the Deputy Prime Minister, there is a close relationship between the managing director of McKinsey at the time and the Prime Minister. Analysts at McKinsey are doing analytical work for the Prime Minister's growth council at the same time as McKinsey is selling its consulting services to the government. It is no surprise under those circumstances, when we have these clear conflicts of interest and close relationships, that there was a significant spike with respect to the volume of contracts McKinsey was getting from the government. We have conflicts of interest driven by these relationships.
Let us talk as well about control, because Canadians are asking who is pulling the strings, who is making the decisions and who is really deciding the direction of the government. What has been happening with the government is that it has been bringing in high-priced outside consultants, who have been both selling to the government and also making very significant policy decisions. They have been doing work that the public service has said it could be doing itself. We do not know what these consultants are doing, but the consultants are playing a very significant role in setting policy and direction, and they are not subject to the same kinds of transparency requirements as the public service.
If Canadians want to know what discussions were happening within the public service, they can use the transparency and accountability tools that are available to them. However, if Canadians want to know about decisions that are made at McKinsey that are in fact shaping what happens in government, they are not able to access that information. In fact, up until now, McKinsey has not even been willing to provide its client list and that is a huge problem, because McKinsey has a history of working on both sides of the same issue.
In the United States, we had instances where McKinsey was working for the FDA, which is responsible for approving drugs, and it was working for pharmaceutical companies at the same time. It is working for the approval body as well as for the companies that are seeking that approval. In fact, the New York Times revealed instances where the same individual was working for both the FDA and those making the applications.
Is that same thing happening in Canada? Do we have decisions being made by McKinsey while it is also working for clients who benefit from those decisions? The reality is that we do not know, because McKinsey will not disclose its client list. Therefore, there is a lack of transparency and there is influence and control coming from these high-priced consultants who are being hired by the government.
Therefore, there are issues of corruption and control. However, there are also issues of character.
Who is this company? Who is McKinsey, and what has it done around the world? Most notably for the impact it is having here in Canada, McKinsey worked for Purdue Pharma. This is the company that invented OxyContin and was responsible for driving the opioid crisis that has devastated our communities.
In 2007, Purdue pleaded guilty to criminal misbranding of its products and downplaying the addiction risk to market these opioids to people. It did this so that it could make money with total disregard for the suffering caused. After 2007, McKinsey continued to work for Purdue Pharma even though it had pleaded guilty. McKinsey put together proposals with a number of recommendations aimed at helping Purdue Pharma supercharge its opioid sales.
Those recommendations included, incredibly, paying bonuses to pharmacists in instances of overdose deaths. In cases where traditional pharmacies were trying to put in place mechanisms to prevent over-prescription, McKinsey proposed that one could have a mail-in process for people to order opioids without needing to go to traditional pharmacies, allowing them to circumvent the checks that existed.
McKinsey was doing this kind of work for Purdue with no regard for basic ethical or moral norms. That was when Dominic Barton was leading McKinsey. I asked him about this at committee last week, and Mr. Barton said he had no idea that McKinsey was doing this work for Purdue. It was a client for 10 years, and the managing director claimed he had no idea.
McKinsey has done other work around the world. It has worked with Russian state-owned and affiliated companies. It has worked with a Chinese state-affiliated company that is building militarized islands in the South China Sea.
These points speak to the character of this company. If we want to talk about conflict of interest, we have a company that is doing work for the Department of National Defence here in Canada while working with Russian and Chinese state-owned and state-affiliated companies.
McKinsey did a report for the Saudi government in which it identified influential dissidents who were driving criticism of Saudi economic policy. Not surprisingly, after those accounts were identified, these dissidents were subject to various forms of harassment. One of them actually lives in Canada and was subject to harassment on Canadian soil.
We have corruption. We have conflict of interest. We have control. We have a lack of character from this company. This is the company that the Prime Minister keeps. This is the company that has gotten over $100 million in contracts.
While Canadians are suffering, well-connected Liberal insiders have never had it so good, especially the well-connected Liberal insiders at McKinsey.
In the context of this scandal, the government's response is that it is going to have the cabinet ministers responsible for procurement and for the Treasury Board do their own investigation. That is clearly not good enough.
The Liberals have made a complete mess of governance. They are wasting taxpayers' dollars and giving money to their friends. The public service is growing, and they are giving more and more money to outside consultants. We cannot trust the Liberals, who are responsible for these scandals, to then come in and say that they are going to investigate themselves.
That is why, as an urgent matter, it is time to ask the Auditor General to come in and get to the bottom of what happened here. We need the resources and the ingenuity of the Auditor General to find out what is happening and assess value for money.
There are many different aspects to this scandal. Canadians need to decide, at a basic character level, if this is the kind of company that they want to see their prime minister doing business with. The Auditor General is well positioned to assess value for money, to say, “What did we actually get for this $100 million-plus?”
How much money was actually spent, by the way? We cannot get a straight answer from the government on this. Moreover, was there value for money? Many public servants have told the media that they do not know what work was done. They brought in PowerPoint slides and said that they were going to change everything, but nothing got done.
It is time to bring in the Auditor General. Conservatives want this motion adopted so that the Auditor General will help all of us get to the bottom of what happened between the Liberals and McKinsey.
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- Oct/4/22 7:22:12 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in her speech, the member focused in particular on the need to improve governance at the World Health Organization. I agree that there is a desperate need to improve aspects of the WHO's governance and behaviour.
One of the most scandalizing things for many people who have followed these issues in the last few years was this massive sexual abuse scandal in Congo. Many women were coming forward who faced sexual abuse during the Ebola crisis, and it was at the hands of WHO employees. There has been a lack of effective response. Canada needs to do more to respond to that.
We also saw the way that the World Health Organization was not willing to engage with Taiwan, and some of the comments that were made dismissing Taiwan's distinctiveness in any way.
Would the member agree with me that these were significant scandals, that the WHO has a lot of work to do and that her government needs to do more to be willing to hold international organizations like the World Health Organization accountable?
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- Jun/8/22 11:54:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, respectfully, the member shared general values but did not respond to important specific questions.
Our allies have taken stronger responses to ensure that the rubber meets the road here, for instance, by withdrawing funds to the WHO in the DRC. Expressing these aspirations and concerns is not lining up with the strong measures being taken by our allies.
I also asked the member a specific question following up on the issue of UNWRA. Does the government believe it is acceptable when there is an internal investigation where we are told the allegations are without merit, and yet there is no publication of that report and it is not even made available to member states?
The same question applies in the case of the WHO scandal. When there are scandals involving alleged sexual misconduct at UN agencies, they have internal reports done and the reports are not made public or even shared with member states. Is that really a victim-centred approach? Does the government think that is an acceptable approach?
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