- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- May/21/24 10:19:20 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, of course, the NDP persistently ignores the role of inflation and the carbon tax in driving up the price of food and other everyday essentials for Canadians.
Conservatives recognize that greed is a common part of the human condition, and this includes government greed. Bizarrely, the New Democrats think that it is only the private sector and that the government is totally immune to greed. They ignore the role that government greed plays with respect to higher taxes, higher spending, the pursuit of ever-greater government control and how that is making life more unaffordable under the NDP-Liberal coalition.
We hear a lot about specific grocery companies but almost nothing about Metro, which is one major grocery company in this country. Does the NDP member think the lack of mention of Metro by the NDP has anything to do with the fact that its leader's brother is a lobbyist for Metro?
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- Apr/8/24 12:58:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is hard to predict the timeline, but I have a great deal of hope about the critical steps that a Conservative government would take to fix the budget, and that includes establishing a dollar-for-dollar rule. This is common sense, that if a government is going to spend a dollar on something new, it should be able to explain where that dollar is coming from.
Those NDP-Liberal coalition partners are keen to announce all kinds of new spending initiatives, but they never explain where the money is going to come from. Clearly, in all of these new spending proposals, and, in many cases, I do not think they are serious about doing them, they promise new spending that will kick in at some distant point in the future. In every case, where the money is actually spent, it is digging us further into deep debt.
Beyond that, we have this flow of wasteful spending, the middle-man consultants, the management consultants who have done so well under the government.
If we instituted a dollar-for-dollar rule, this will get us back on track to understand that if we are going to spend a dollar on something, it has to come from somewhere.
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- Apr/8/24 12:54:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am not aware of some of the long-tenured, historical events about which the member is speaking. I am a relatively young member of the House, so events before a certain date are before my time.
It is pretty rich for the Liberals, after eight years in power, to always want to draw our attention to things that happened in decades past. The fact of the matter is that since 2015, the national debt has more than doubled. More than half of our national debt is the responsibility of the Prime Minister. That is why we are now spending more on debt servicing than we transfer for health care. It is outrageous, out-of-control spending under the government. The $60 million for the arrive scam scandal is important, but it is part of a larger pattern of cost, crime and corruption. I mentioned some of these numbers in my speech, such as over 600 companies just doing staff augmentation. It is out of control.
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- Apr/8/24 12:34:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member opposite was enthusiastic about hearing the rest of my speech, and I invite him to hear it now.
The Prime Minister is responsible for $46.5 billion this year in debt service costs. That is more than the federal government will transfer in health care. Astronomical amounts of money are being given to bankers and bond holders for the Prime Minister's out-of-control debt. The Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption.
Today, as the member pointed out, we are not debating the budget directly. We are discussing a question of privilege that relates centrally to government spending, to how the government spends taxpayers' dollars and the lack of controls associated with that spending. The point I want to emphasize is that this arrive scam scandal is intimately linked to overarching questions about how taxpayers' dollars are spent.
The government spent $60 million, according to the available data, on the arrive scam app, but that is a drop in a much larger ocean of contracting out to government insiders. The arrive scam scandal is illustrative of this larger problem of abuse, corruption, at best extremely generous contracting out, which has led to so much waste of taxpayers' dollars. The government will try to convince people that all of its spending is necessarily associated with meeting immediate needs that Canadians face, but that is very clearly not true.
We need to understand this picture of how government procurement is being abused under the NDP-Liberal government, how costly it is for taxpayers, and what an opportunity this presents for us to do better, to save money for taxpayers and focus, instead, on the core needs of our country.
Specifically on the arrive scam scandal, we had, according to the Auditor General's report, a rigged process. We had a process in which specifications were put in place that do not appear to make any logical sense but served the result of giving this one company, with only two people, the ability to access this contract. GC Strategies got the contract for the arrive scam app and subcontracted it. That company alone, according to estimates, got some $20 million. It did not do any work, other than a very sort of perfunctory activity of going to LinkedIn and finding others who might be able to perform the work.
A simple way of understanding what GC Strategies did and did not do would be if I were hired to paint your fence, Madam Speaker, for $100. I then hired the member for Winnipeg North and paid him $50 to paint the fence. He painted your fence and got $50. You paid me $100 and I just got $50 for facilitating the deal. Maybe I went on LinkedIn to find out that the member for Winnipeg North could paint fences.
He might be looking for job opportunities like this after the next election, so this may be a relevant example.
In that process, the middleman, the person who got the contract and passed it on, did not actually do anything. They did not add any value, yet they were able to collect, big time. The nature of this scandal was that GC Strategies, this so-called staff augmentation firm, which I think is the lingo that was used, took the contract, subcontracted the work out and got a whole bunch of money in the meantime for doing nothing.
The process that allowed GC Strategies to get this contract was a rigged process. In fact, the Auditor General revealed how GC Strategies, in one case, sat down with government officials and set the terms of the contract that they would then bid on.
We heard at the Standing Committee on Public Accounts over the break that KPMG was told to go through GC Strategies by government officials. They said that if KPMG wanted to be part of this work, then they had to go through GC Strategies. The government was aware of other companies that could do this work, yet they directed those companies to go through GC Strategies. There was clearly something of a special relationship whereby members of the NDP-Liberal government were keen to see GC Strategies cashing in big time, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear.
GC Strategies is also a company that doctored résumés they were submitting to the government. This is something that we should be teaching children not to do. It is not appropriate or ethical to be doctoring your résumé in order to access an opportunity that you would not otherwise qualify for. It appears that GC Strategies was doctoring résumés systematically.
During his earlier appearance at committee, Kristian Firth said they change the résumés to make them compliant with the requirements of the contract. Then they go back to their resource and ask if it is okay. If I am applying for a government contract, and I have five months of experience when I am supposed to have five years of experience, then GC Strategies would cross out “months” and write in “years.” Then they would send it back to me and say, “We made this little change. Is that okay?” Then they would send it off to the government afterward.
Kristian Firth admitted that this was not something that they did just once. Adjusting résumés to meet the requirements of the contract and then checking if that was okay before sending them in was their process. What a wild and broken system this was.
We have rigging of the process and systematic cheating, things that young children should know are highly unethical and that seem to have been happening systematically in the government. Despite these obvious problems with GC Strategies, the Liberal-NDP government was keen to push other companies to work through GC Strategies. Then we have obfuscation in committees and accusing people of lying. These are some of the particular issues around the arrive scam scandal.
Thinking about this in the context of the budget and the overall fiscal situation, we have been digging more on the arrive scam and asking what the procurement practices are that allow this sort of thing to happen. What is happening more broadly inside of the government that allowed $60 million to be spent in this case and for nobody to seem to notice or care?
First of all, this process of contracting to people to contract other people was not just a one-off. It was not something that happened just in the case of ArriveCAN. We found that there are 635 companies that do IT staff augmentation for the federal government. There are 635 companies whose job it is to receive contracts and then contract out.
I think there are cases where contracting out is likely legitimate, although I am very skeptical of the idea that there is any value in contracting out to those who subcontract and perhaps further subcontract after that. The general contractor project management function should be able to be performed inside of government, yet we have 635 companies that do IT staff augmentation only. They act as these middlemen, these middle companies that receive contracts and contract out.
There are 635 of them in the IT space alone. That is not just a one-off. That is not just the arrive scam app. This is a larger issue with how the government treats money overall. The larger issue is systematic growth in contracting out and contracting out to those who just do this “staff augmentation” piece. We have seen how, in the midst of dramatic growth in spending on the public service, there has also been dramatic growth in spending for contracting out.
The government was spending tens of billions of dollars in contracting out. Some of it was for management consulting, and we have talked about the enormous growth in spending on McKinsey, and some of it was for those who further contract out. We are spending more inside of government and we are also spending dramatically more outside of government. We would expect those things to be inversely related in that if we are spending more growing public service then we should be contracting out less, or maybe if we are contracting out more, that should correspond to having a smaller public service. However, the government is growing the size of the public service and contracting out more at the same time.
The NDP-Liberal government clearly has a profound lack of respect for taxpayer dollars. Then it will try say that the Conservatives want to fix the budget and that the money will come from cuts. However, when we look at how broken our contracting system is and when we look at the 635 companies doing staff augmentation in the IT space and the tens of billions of dollars being spent on contracting out, pretty clearly there is a lot of room to get the budget under control. We can stop giving money to those outside companies that are abusing the taxpayer and providing no value and we can instead provide tax relief to Canadians who need it. We can instead axe the tax, build homes and cap spending. We can get out budget under control if we fix these grotesque abuses in government spending.
One key aspect of this scandal we need to ask about is where the minister was in all of this. It is right and important that we demand answers from these contractors. Canadians elect members of Parliament from which emerge a cabinet and a government, an executive branch, that are supposed to be accountable for the decisions that the government makes. They are supposed to be providing oversight and policy direction. Of course, ministers are not involved in the minutiae of every decision, but they are responsible for the culture and the policy frameworks that are established.
I asked the minister of procurement what he was doing in the midst of this arrive scam scandal. Actually, there have been a number of different ministers. I think four ministers just in the period since the pandemic have been responsible for procurement. Therefore, there have been many hands that should have had an opportunity to impact this process, yet all of those ministers, and anybody who speaks from the government, would have us believe that they were just there, that something happened in the department that they were supposed to be in charge of, but that they had no accountability or responsibility for it. That is absurd.
Ministers should take responsibility for what happens in their departments. They should establish clear expectations in terms of accountability, ethics, respect for taxpayer dollars. When costly criminal corruption is occurring under the watch of a particular minister, then the minister should have some responsibility and some response to what she or he is doing in order to address those concerning events. However, when the current Minister of Public Services and Procurement was before committee, I asked him when he was briefed and what did he do. He said that he had received a briefing and that he provided no directive in terms of action in response to this scandal. That is unbelievable.
The descriptions by public servants are that ministers receive briefs, remain apprised of or seized with what is going on, but then ostensibly do nothing and have no role in actually shaping policy outcomes, which is just unacceptable. At best, the government has been a disinterested passenger in the midst of declining respect for taxpayer dollars. That is a an overly charitable description. The government has itself shown flagrant disregard for taxpayer dollars and has been complicit in various corruption scandals over the eight long years that it has been in power.
Even in its defence, the government says that the minister had nothing to do with it. We have someone in the government whose title is “Minister for Public Services and Procurement”, yet when there is one of the biggest procurement scandals in our country's history, the government says that we cannot expect the Minister of Procurement to have anything to do with a scandal in procurement. It is just in the name.
At committee, I proposed, and it elicited points of orders and maybe it will today, that we could replace the Minister of Public Services and Procurement with a potted plant and we would have the same result. A potted plant could receive briefings, naturally. A potted plant could be apprised of events, though it would obviously not take any action in response to those events.
Ministers were in the room, received briefings, but did nothing. They would want us to believe that the role as a minister of procurement is to simply be there, to hear things, to be interested in those things and to receive updates. Again, we could save a drop in the bucket in comparison to other money that could be saved, but we could at least save a minister's salary if we replaced the current procurement minister with some such inanimate object.
I want to underline that the arrive scam scandal, as bad as it is in and of itself, is a drop in this larger ocean of government waste and corruption. Tens of billions of dollars are being spent on contracting out. There was clearly a basic incontinence associated with government spending. The money just flows out for no discernible reason. The processes are rigged. There is obfuscation and unresponsiveness at committee.
The latest is that we have seen how the indigenous procurement rules are being abused by insiders, insiders who feel they have no obligation to bring about any benefit to indigenous communities through their access to indigenous procurement. A lot more work needs to be done to understand the abuses of the indigenous procurement process that have been happening under the government. Very troubling information has come out, for instance, David Yeo saying that the point of the program is not to benefit indigenous communities, it is just to benefit him as an entrepreneur. I do not think that is the point of the policy.
We see costs, corruption and crime happening under the government. This privilege motion is one key piece of getting to the bottom of what happened, demanding answers from Kristian Firth that he was unwilling to give at committee. This would help us suss out, in detail, all the crime, corruption and the cost that we are seeing under the NDP-Liberal government.
Enough is enough. Canadians are looking for an alternative that will respect taxpayer dollars, that will restore probity in spending, that will bring it home.
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Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to address the House today. Yesterday, common-sense Conservatives announced our demands for the upcoming federal budget.
We called on the government to axe the tax on farmers and food by immediately passing Bill C-234 in its original form. We called on the government to build the homes, not bureaucracy, by requiring cities to permit 15% more homebuilding each year as a condition for receiving federal infrastructure money. Finally, we called on the government to cap the spending with a dollar-for-dollar rule to bring down interest rates and inflation. We said the government must find a dollar in savings for every new dollar of spending.
These were the three common-sense Conservative demands for the budget: axing the tax on farmers and food; building homes, not bureaucracies; and instituting a dollar-for-dollar rule. Of course, Conservatives in government would go further to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
Under the NDP-Liberal government, we see how spending is completely out of control. Under the Prime Minister, Canada will spend $46.5 billion this year to service the debt. That is more than the federal health transfer. The government is spending more on servicing the debt than it does on the federal health transfer.
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- Feb/12/24 7:17:37 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, in follow up to my last session question period rhyme, we will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
Poverty, chaos, and gross food inflationHave become severe across this great nationLiberals they deny it, but these are just factsAnd that’s why the Tories will first axe the tax.You know costs are up if you know how to addSo many young adults must live with their dad While Liberals just think of their photos and combsA new Tory government will build the homes. Deficit spending kills jobs, drives up prices On things ranging from homes to cheap kitchen spices Liberals promise change, but at best they'll nudge itThe Tory party will soon fix the budget.Car thefts, extortion, drugs, deaths and disorder Under the misrule of PM wakeboarder It's getting dire, it is surely past time For some new leaders that will quickly stop crime. This session, these topics on which we'll opine Axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget, stop the crime The call will resound across this great nation As people prepare for bright transformation As we prosecute government trespasses Liberals do nothing and sit on their...hands.
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- Dec/14/23 11:05:18 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that obviously was not a point of order, but, in a way, it was revealing the way the member spoke about it. He thinks when different levels of government spend money it comes from the individual, that when the Government of Ontario spends money that it is Doug Ford's money or when the current government spends money that it is its money somehow. There is only one taxpayer: the people of Canada. Whether it is through provincial, local or national governments, the people of Canada are paying for this. We are talking about very large sums of money individually, so Canadians have a right to ask what value they are getting for this spending. If they were to find that a very large portion of those subsidies was going to subsidize foreign replacement workers, I think they would have a right to be concerned.
Conservatives have taken a very moderate and reasonable approach on this. We just want to get the information, so we asked the government to show us its work. We think Canadians should be able to see the contracts. It is interesting that every time we bring this up, that Canadians should be able to see the contracts, members of the government say that these are great deals, the best that members have ever seen for workers. I would not say that these are the best deals we have ever seen because we have not seen them. We do not know if they are the best deals we have ever seen because we cannot see them, so let us see them.
If the government is so proud of what it is doing it should show us its work. Maybe we will be surprised, but I doubt it. Maybe we will be pleased and say that these contracts are fantastic. Maybe once they are submitted to the committees we will look at them and say that the government has done a great job. We probably will not, but maybe we will be shocked and they will be good. Maybe we will find that the government did not include any protections for Canadian workers. Either way, we want it to show us its work, not to say that it was the best essay it ever wrote but the dog ate it before it could hand it in to the teacher, or that it cleaned it up so well, but somehow the dog got in and no one can see it. What absurdity from the government. If it did the work well, if the workers are protected, then it should show us the contracts. If the government is proud of its approach, if it thinks it has done good work for workers, then it should show us the work.
I believe that in questions and comments we are going to hear members stand up and say that these are the best deals we have ever seen. Enough of the best deals we have never seen. Let us see the deals. Let us see what $40 billion got Canadian workers. Did it get workers anything?
Mr. Irek Kusmierczyk: Come to Windsor and see the battery plant getting built.
Mr. Garnett Genuis: Mr. Speaker, the member across the way said that I should come to Windsor. I would love to come to Windsor. I will come and door-knock vigorously in Windsor in the next election. We will be there. When we door-knock in Windsor we will tell workers that they have the right to a member of Parliament who wants to show them the work. We will tell them to vote for a member of Parliament who is not going to hide that work, that they deserve a member who is not going to go to committee to filibuster and fight to cover up the work the government is doing. They deserve a member of Parliament who is going to show them what it accomplished, not someone who does not want to show them the work.
Therefore, I challenge the members across the way, if they care about Canadian workers, to let them see the work and release the contracts.
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- Dec/12/23 6:36:18 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the government is spending an enormous amount of money on subsidies to various manufacturers involved in batteries here in Canada. Over $40 billion is being spent on this particular business subsidy program. This subsidy plan will cost every single Canadian family about $3,000.
Conservatives are committed to always standing up for workers, which is why we have asked for clarity from the government about whether there are protections for Canadian workers in the subsidy contracts that it signed with companies. Will Canadian workers actually benefit from this enormous outlay of taxpayer money? It is $3,000 per Canadian family; Canadians would like to know, and they would like to know how much workers are going to benefit.
The parliamentary secretary is clearly eager to respond. He is saying that they are going to benefit “lots”.
What we have asked for, quite simply, is that the government show its work and release these contracts to the public, so we can know the impacts. The particular genesis for this demand is that we have found out that the companies involved are actually going to be hiring a large number of foreign replacement workers. Therefore, over $40 billion in Canadian taxpayer money—
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
Mr. Garnett Genuis: Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary seems to think this is funny. It is not.
Over $40 billion in taxpayer money is being used not to employ Canadian workers but to hire foreign replacement workers, who are going to come to Canada to do the job. That is concerning, obviously. Did these contracts include protections for Canadian workers or guarantees for jobs for Canadians? We would like to know. If the government left that out and just said it was going to give tens of billions of dollars to these companies, and it does not know whether or how much Canadians are going to benefit, then that would be seriously troubling. This is why, again, we have insisted that we want to actually see these contracts.
Consistently, Liberals have been filibustering in the government operations committee in order to block the release of the contracts. For a while, we had all opposition parties, including Conservative, Bloc and NDP, standing together and prepared to vote in favour of ordering the production of the contracts. The Liberals were against it. They were filibustering to block their release.
Then, tragically, we had a flip-flop from the NDP. Rather than standing with workers, as they like to say they do, the New Democrats betrayed workers. They said that they do not actually need to see the contracts anymore. It is a shameful betrayal of workers from the NDP, under pressure from its colleagues in the costly and corrupt cover-up coalition. The Liberals put a bit of pressure on their friends in the NDP with a little filibustering. It was not even a very long filibuster, and I would know. Simply because of a little bit of pressure, the New Democrats buckled and betrayed workers. The only party that will stand consistently with workers in the House of Commons is the Conservative Party.
I hope we get a direct answer to my question for the parliamentary secretary, rather than more of the unrelated bluster that we often get from the government. What did the government offer the NDP members, its colleagues in the costly cover-up coalition, to get them to change their position, flip-flop and betray workers? Moreover, why will the government not release the contracts?
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- Dec/11/23 3:38:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if you judge it unparliamentary, I will withdraw it out of deference to your office.
The member knows the following facts. He knows the Conservatives support Operation Unifier. He knows that we started Operation Unifier, actually. He also understands that when we have budget and confidence motions, members are not just voting on the particular item on the table; they are voting regarding whether or not they have confidence in the government. Conservatives do not have confidence in the current government, which is why, when given the chance, we voted non-confidence in the government at every single occasion. Does that mean that we oppose every single spending item? Clearly it does not. That is obviously absurd. We voted non-confidence in the government every chance we got.
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- Jan/30/23 6:48:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, here are the facts. The Prime Minister has more than doubled the national debt in his eight years in office. The Prime Minister has run up more debt in these eight years than all of the previous prime ministers had up until that point. That is the reality of the legacy of the Prime Minister. That is causing inflation. It is causing Canadians to suffer. Of course, some other countries have pursued similar kinds of policies and they are experiencing the same challenges as a result. However, there is a better way. That is to control spending and focus on what is truly important to Canadians.
Much of the growth in spending we have seen, as I talked about, has been to outside consultants. We have dramatic growth in the core public service but, at the same time, we have a government contracting out to consulting firms like McKinsey that it is personally close with for services that are supposed to be done in the core public service. That is driving inflation and driving paying Canadians' experience.
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- Nov/23/23 10:48:58 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, lately the government likes to claim it has had a conversion to being concerned about affordability. Meanwhile, for years it has been running a horrifying economic experiment. It has massively increased spending and more than doubled our national debt. We know now that it is spending more on debt servicing than it is sending to the provinces for health care.
Outrageous amounts of money in debt servicing costs are making life less affordable for Canadians. Fundamentally, since the Liberals claim to have had this conversion to being concerned about affordability, will they tell the House when the budget will be balanced?
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Madam Speaker, I want to pick up on the point about certainty for the long term.
The Liberal government has run up more debt in its period of office than the country has in its entire history up to that point, and is continuing to fund these and other promised expansions of social spending through deficit spending. The fiscal context actually leaves a lot of Canadians uncertain that any of these kinds of programs would be there in the future, not because of political debates or the positions of any particular individuals but because of the fact that the Liberal government is making promises on the basis of deficit spending, promises that would in fact continue to cost more. This is in a context, by the way, where many Canadians still do not have child care.
I wonder how the member could justify his claim that this is providing multi-generational certainty, when in a substantive sense these programs are not funded?
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- Jun/5/23 3:53:02 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I apologize for that and I apologize to the interpreters.
Canadians are struggling because of increasing costs, and these costs are the result of a failed fiscal policy from the current government. We listen to the way the government talks about spending, and whenever things go wrong, it is not the Liberals' fault. Whenever the Liberals are spending money, they have no sense of the source of where that money comes from. We hear members of the government, ministers and other members, say that costs are high and things are challenging. It is as though when bad things are happening, they wonder, “How did this happen? We have been in power for eight years and costs are going up; surely it has no relationship to the policies we have pursued.”
It is actually very clear to Canadians that there is a direct, causal link between the decisions the government has made and the pain Canadians are experiencing. It is the Liberals' policy to increase taxes, especially in the area of the carbon tax. We actually just had a vote on what is, in effect, a second carbon tax that the Liberals want to impose. Not only do they want to triple the existing carbon tax, but they also have a second carbon tax in mind. They are constantly lying awake at night trying to think of creative new ways of taxing Canadians. The result is that Canadians are paying more. They are paying more to the government, but also, as government spending continues to grow and in even greater proportions outstrip the amount we are seeing in terms of tax increases, we are seeing rising prices driven by inflation and by more money chasing fewer goods.
All of this was in the Conservatives' dissenting report for the public accounts committee. Conservatives have called for tax relief for Canadians. We have called for more freedom for removing the gatekeepers, for eliminating the carbon tax, for not imposing a second carbon tax, for not having a tax on a tax and other such attacks on Canadians' efforts to live an affordable, prosperous life.
There are some other things I will share from the discussions we had around the study of the public accounts at the public accounts committee. It was interesting to me to note that there are instances where the government has provided loan forgiveness to various corporations. They could be very large and profitable corporations that have benefited from loans from the government, to which the government says it is going to forgive those loans, so, effectively, those loans turn into a subsidy. Therefore, as part of the public accounts discussion, we asked whether the government would be willing to provide the names of those companies and to release information about who is benefiting from a corporate subsidy. It seems to me to be a common sense proposition that, at the very least, if a large profitable corporation is benefiting from a federal government subsidy in the form of debt forgiveness, that is, the stakeholders took a loan they were supposed to pay back and did not pay back, and the government says they do not have to pay it back, then at that point, they should have to tell not only the government; Canadians should also be able to know that the company benefited from a public subsidy.
Many people would want to ask questions, and the company operators should be expected to provide some kind of explanation. Corporate welfare should not be something that is provided in secret. Maybe it should not be something that is provided at all, but certainly it is not something that should be provided in secret. Therefore, we asked, as part of the public accounts committee process, whether more information could be given with respect to which companies are benefiting from such loan forgiveness. That information was not forthcoming.
We have asked for similar information through Order Paper questions as well, by the way. Some points were raised earlier today about the government's not answering Order Paper questions and that it provides what are very clearly non-answers to Order Paper questions. Answers are supposed to provide information. Again we see, in the public accounts committee, in responses to Order Paper questions and in other areas, this decline in terms of the willingness of the government to provide information in general in response to queries from members of Parliament, committees, the public and journalists, etc.
However, as I say, the main thrust of our dissenting report is about the fact that life has become more expensive. It has been eight years under this Prime Minister. Everything feels broken. Costs are up. Rent, housing and food are up and the government members want to behave as if it is not their fault and it is all some accident, as if to say, “How terrible that bad things keep happening to the country while we are in charge” and “What terrible fate we have.”
That is obviously not the case. The Liberal government is pursuing policies that are making life less affordable. It is piling taxes on taxes. It has the second carbon tax, in addition to the tripling of the first. Inflation is up because of government spending. We have seen the accumulation of more debt under the Prime Minister than in the entire history of the country up until this point.
It is clear that the Liberals are not working. Their policies are not working. They are not making life better for Canadians. They are not making life better for the middle class and those working hard to join it.
That is why we need an alternative policy prescription that recognizes the creativity, potential and creative genuis in every individual, and that seeks to harness that creativity to create more space and opportunity for individuals to go out and pursue their own ideas without the kinds of impediments that we are constantly seeing from the Liberal government. We need to unleash the creative potential of Canada by removing the gatekeepers and the barriers, and that includes reducing the regulatory burden on Canadians and lowering taxes. That is why we have put forward concrete policy proposals that move us toward—
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- Jun/5/23 3:48:34 p.m.
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moved that the 20th report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts presented on Thursday, October 20, 2022, be concurred in.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to be able to speak to this very important committee report. It has been an honour for me to work as part of the team on the public accounts committee. I will be sharing my time.
The 20th report deals with the public accounts themselves, which are the volumes that come out every year, detailing the government's spending. There are various important items in the report. I particularly want to highlight the dissenting report the Conservatives submitted, because it talks about an issue that is top of mind for many Canadians: the carbon tax. Our dissenting report highlighted how the public accounts revealed key information about the cost to Canadians associated with the carbon tax, and, in fact, the action we want the government to take, namely to cancel the carbon tax.
The dissenting report from the Conservatives highlights something we have been saying in the House for a long time, which is how the cost of the Liberal government is driving up the cost of living. We are seeing out-of-control spending by the government and higher taxes. This is driving up the cost of living for many Canadians. The more the government spends, the more it costs Canadians and the more those costs are seen in terms of taxes, as well as higher prices, which are the result of inflation. Every time the government spends money, it has an impact on Canadians in terms of higher prices and higher taxes. The dissenting report from Conservatives highlights how grocery prices are up; they are rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. The average family of four is now spending over $1,200 more each year to put food on the table. We have seen particularly astronomical increases in costs in areas like housing and rent.
The carbon tax applies to the fuel that Canadians use, as well as to the goods that need to be transported using fuel, which is almost everything. It is the things we eat and many of the things we buy. The carbon tax is baked into those costs, and Canadians are seeing those costs increase. In the past, the government has tried to claim that this is a tax that will not cost anybody anything, a rather convenient but absurd claim. The public accounts revealed, and Conservatives were able to identify in our exploration in the public accounts committee, the enormous cost to Canadians associated with the carbon tax. One way the carbon tax is obviously not neutral is the GST. The GST is charged on top of the carbon tax; it is a tax on a tax. I recall a time when a former Conservative MP, the late Mark Warawa, I believe, put forward a private member's bill to take the GST off the carbon tax, but Liberals opposed it. They voted in favour of double taxation, which is clearly not revenue-neutral.
For Canadians who are concerned about the cost of the carbon tax, I am sorry to say that, as long as the Prime Minister remains in office, it is going to get worse. The Liberal plan is to triple the carbon tax, and to do so in the coming years. Hopefully we will see a Conservative government reverse those plans. The Conservatives' plan is not only to not increase the carbon tax, but also to eliminate the carbon tax. We want to bring tax relief to Canadians. We want to focus on deploying technology, not taxes, as the tool required to move us toward our environmental objectives.
The Liberals do not have an environmental plan. Their plan is clearly not working. Their only plan is to increase taxes on Canadians, and this is hurting Canadians. It is driving up the cost of living and making everything harder for Canadians. I am—
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- May/3/23 11:04:42 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-6
Madam Speaker, that is a great point from my colleague.
With the way government members talk about government spending, we would think it was their own money. They say they are going to give people this for dental care and give people this for groceries. There is no appreciation that this money comes from the people we are giving it back to.
In every case that the government promises new spending, it should provide an explanation of where that money is coming from. It does create money out of thin air, I suppose, but the problem with that is it causes inflation, so somebody is paying for it regardless. The inflation tax is another way of taxing Canadians, but it still has the same effect of a tax.
This is not to say that there is no place for government spending. There is absolutely a place for taxation and government spending. However, every time the government spends money, there is a corresponding cost and the cost is borne by Canadians. The government should acknowledge that when it is going out and defending its proposals.
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- Mar/21/23 6:50:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak to the government's relationship with McKinsey in a follow-up to a question I had asked. This has been an important issue for me and an important issue for the opposition.
Why is it important? Well, there are a number of reasons. First, the government has spent over $100 million on contracts for McKinsey, work that public servants have told the media that, in many cases, could have been done inside the public service.
More broadly, we are seeing a significant increase in spending on outside consultants by the government at the same time as we are seeing growth in the public service. The government is spending more inside the public service, and it is spending more to contract out activities as well, so there is a basic fiscal probity question at play here, but there are also some other issues that I think are very important as we look at the government's relationship with McKinsey.
One is that Dominic Barton, the managing partner of McKinsey, was leading the Prime Minister's growth council, having special access through that growth council to ministers and the government at the same time that McKinsey was pitching services for sale to the government. We know from emails that a Mr. Pickersgill, who was working for McKinsey, was supplying analysts for the growth council at the same time as he was sending emails to the government requesting work. We have seen those emails, so, very clearly, there are questions of conflict of interest.
There are other issues of conflict of interest. The fact that the Minister of Defence, yesterday, at the operations committee, was asked if it is acceptable for McKinsey to do work for the Canadian Department of Defence at the same time as it is potentially working for other departments of defence for hostile actors around the world and learning things from our Department of Defence that it may be using in those other interactions.
The Minister of National Defence did not know, or was not willing or able to tell the committee, which other departments of defence around the world McKinsey was working for, but we were told by the deputy minister not to worry because the information and the issues that McKinsey are working on are not that secret. Really, they are just talking about operational structural details, which it is not getting access to national security. They are just operational aspects of the work of government and so forth.
On the other hand, the minister was unwilling to provide basic information about these contracts to the committee unredacted. What we heard from the Minister of National Defence and her department was effectively that the information is not so secret that we need to worry about what McKinsey may be learning and using in its engagements with other hostile powers, but at the same time, the information is so secret that it could not even be shared with members of a parliamentary committee, despite the order to produce that content.
A final issue I will raise tonight is the fact that McKinsey worked for Purdue Pharma and gave them advice specifically on how to supercharge opioid sales. That is not an issue of something happening beyond our borders. The opioid crisis has affected so many Canadians. I think that every family has, in some way, been touched by the opioid crisis.
McKinsey specifically advised Purdue Pharma on how to turbocharge its sales engine. That advice included, for instance, how to circumvent traditional pharmacies by operating mail-in pharmacies to circumvent the controls that were being put in place in traditional pharmacies. That advice included paying bonuses for overdoses that occurred. This was advice that McKinsey provided to Purdue Pharma at the same time that McKinsey was working for the Government of Canada, and at the same time that Dominic Barton was leading McKinsey and leading the Prime Minister's growth council.
Why is the government willing to do business with McKinsey? Why is it comfortable with the risks this poses in fundamental ethics, the opioid crisis issues, as well as the conflict of interest issues?
We have repeatedly raised the broader question of all the money that is being spent on these outside consultants. The government's relation with McKinsey stinks, and it needs to be addressed.
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- Jan/30/23 6:40:24 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, over the course of the parliamentary break, we have all had an opportunity to talk to people in our communities and across the country, and it is clear that, after eight years of the Prime Minister's economic and social policies, many people are hurting. There are many people who are struggling in various ways, especially under the profound weight of inflation, and they are asking for all of us to look for solutions that empower them to have jobs and opportunity, and to see their tax dollars respected.
At the same time, we are seeing continuing outrageous extravagance in spending from this government. While Canadians are struggling, the government has been spending so much more, not on helping Canadians, but on things that serve the government's interest, and enrich and empower its friends.
I am asking a follow-up tonight on a question I asked earlier about spending $6,000 a night for a single hotel room. The government spent $6,000 a night on a single hotel room. We asked who stayed in that hotel room. There was some implication that it was the Prime Minister, but we do not know that for sure.
I also mentioned in my question the $54 million spent on the development of an app, the ArriveCAN app, which did not work very well and did more to impede Canadians in their travel than actually facilitate the effective prevention of the transmission of COVID. In any event, if that was the piece of technology the situation called for, which I do not think it was, but if it was, it could have been developed much more quickly at a much lower price and probably be much more effective.
However, we are seeing this trend in outrageous government spending on friends of the government, on external contractors, at a time when Canadians are suffering, which was the question I had asked earlier.
Today, of course, what is big in the news is the fact that the government spent over $100 million in outsourced contracts to McKinsey and Company. I would remind members that McKinsey is managed by Dominic Barton, a close friend of the Prime Minister, and someone who is simultaneously chairing the Prime Minister's economic growth council.
Effectively, Dominic Barton, as the head of McKinsey, is both an adviser to the government and a vendor for the government. With great fanfare, the Prime Minister said that he was only paid a dollar a year for his position leading the economic growth council. Only a dollar a year, but meanwhile we have over $100 million in outsourced contracts over the life of this government so far to McKinsey. We asked today what the exact amount of it was. The government would not provide that number, and it keeps going up every time.
After eight years of this Prime Minister, Canadians are struggling economically. They are struggling under the weight of inflation, which the Governor of the Bank of Canada and the former Governor of the Bank of Canada all say is domestically caused. They are struggling under the weight of those policies. Meanwhile, we are seeing outrageous profligate spending on contracts to friends of the government going out to the McKinsey, $54 million for the ArriveCAN app and $6,000 a night for a hotel room.
Therefore, I want to ask the parliamentary secretary this: How does he and other members of the government face their constituents, who are facing these challenges, and justify this kind of outrageous, unaccountable, nonsensical spending?
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- Dec/6/22 7:10:27 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the member thought he was answering a different question. I, of course, spoke about the government's carbon tax, but primarily about the ArriveCAN app, about the hypocrisy we have seen from the Prime Minister and about the Prime Minister's spending. There was no response whatsoever on any of those issues. Clearly, the government cannot explain why it spent $54 million on a glitchy app that it had no data to support whatsoever.
As to the government's spending, it is very interesting the way members of the government talk. They say, “We are spending all this money. We are giving people more money with nary a thought about where the money comes from.” Where does the money that the government spends come from? Oh, it takes it from people first.
We had a report from the Auditor General today. The Auditor General's report shows that over $30 billion went to people who certainly or very likely did not meet eligibility criteria. The government creates programs that are supposed to go to one group of people but then billions of dollars out of that spending go to people and the government does not know who they are. The government is not tracking that. The Auditor General was able to identify that many of those people do not actually meet the criteria the government has set out. We have a big problem.
The government says it is being generous. It is being generous with taxpayers' money by giving it away, but it does not know who is getting it and it does not have any spending—
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Madam Speaker, while today the government is asking the House to expedite its spending, we have the Auditor General revealing tens of billions of dollars in inflationary waste associated with the government's past spending. Tens of billions of dollars went out the door to people with clearly identified risk factors for not actually being eligible for the programs they were receiving money for: There were no spending controls before the money was spent and no spending controls afterwards. Essentially the government is handing out money through its programs on the basis of an honour system. If one says one is eligible, one gets the money, and there is no checking before or after. Over $30 billion in spending was identified, associated with very likely risk factors in the Auditor General's report.
I have a simple question for the minister with respect to the Auditor General's report. The Auditor General has come up with clear recommendations to try to address this problem of tens of billions of dollars of inflationary waste. Will the government accept and implement all the recommendations of the Auditor General, yes or no?
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- Nov/14/22 6:38:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is clear that the parliamentary secretary has not cancelled his Disney+ subscription, because he still seems to think money grows on trees.
I will put the following points to him. The Governor of the Bank of Canada has said that inflation here in Canada is being caused by domestic policy. The same has been said by the former governor of the Bank of Canada and future leader of the Liberal Party, Mark Carney.
The government's proposal to triple the carbon tax and increase the cost of vital necessities such as gas, groceries and home heating is not going to help tackle inflation. The government's plan is to raise taxes on goods that are vitally necessary for Canadians and to balloon government spending, in the vast number of cases, on things totally unrelated to measures that Canadians can see, touch and feel, such as $54 million for the ArriveCAN app, $6,000 a night for a hotel room for the Prime Minister and an ineffective infrastructure bank. The government is taxing Canadians, causing inflation and making life less affordable.
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