- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $170,231.20
- Government Page
- May/8/24 7:43:28 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the member is really struggling to understand what common sense is, and I see that struggle, but let me help explain, hopefully, and elucidate what we mean by common sense.
In the Conservative Party, we do not want to see the government take more of people's money and decide how to spend it for them. We think people should be able to keep more of their own money and decide what they want to do with it.
The NDP sees that the people are struggling because of high inflation and high taxes, but its solution is to have the government pay for more things and say, “We're going to give you this for free and that for free”, without appreciating that the money for those “free things” actually comes from somewhere; it comes from taxpayers. Therefore, people have to give more money to the government, which is then used for all of these, in some cases, good things that the NDP is talking about.
However, would it not be better if people who were struggling could just keep more of their own money instead of it being funnelled through a government bureaucracy that decides where it goes? Would that not be common sense?
211 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Apr/8/24 12:34:59 p.m.
- Watch
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.
2470 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/27/24 6:26:11 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, Canada's common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. This is in contrast to the Liberal record. The Liberals have axed the homes, built the crime, hiked the tax and stopped the budgeting.
We are here to discuss the arrive scam scandal and, in particular, the procurement ombudsman's excellent report. Today, the procurement ombudsman was before the public accounts committee, and he confirmed that he is not at all surprised that the RCMP is now investigating the corruption at the heart of the government.
In the arrive scam scandal, we see multiple layers of costly criminal corruption in the government's procurement system. The procurement ombudsman found that the government built a system for procurement designed to encourage companies to charge the government more. This is really incredible. If they charged too little, their bids or points might be removed, so the incentive was built right into the system for companies to charge more.
The procurement ombudsman found a chronic problem of so-called bait and switch. This is where the bidding company says it is going to have one person do the work, then it switches and has someone else do the work, someone who is potentially substantially less qualified. This builds on what we already know: GC Strategies, the company that got the ArriveCAN contract, was changing and falsifying resumés they submitted to the government, and the government rigged the process.
Members of the government sat down with the GC Strategies team to set the terms of the contract, such that GC Strategies would get the deal. This is a two-person company that subcontracts all the actual work, and yet the government sat down with this company and rigged the process so it would get the contracts. It built a system that would favour insiders to ensure GC Strategies got the deal. On top of that, it designed a process that would encourage GC Strategies and others to charge the government more, not less.
It is no wonder that spending is out of control and that Canadians are struggling under the pressure of higher taxes and the impact of higher deficits. When the government designs contracting-out processes, it designs systems to try to charge more. The levels of cost, crime and corruption we see in this arrive scam scandal are really incredible.
The RCMP is investigating. I asked the Prime Minister today whether the government will co-operate with the RCMP investigation. There was no answer. We had the procurement ombudsman's investigation report and the Auditor General's report, which reveal what happened. However, we now need to identify who the responsible individuals are and why they did it. Why was the process rigged in order to give this deal to this two-person company working out of a basement? Why was it rigged to GC Strategies' advantage? Why did the government create a system designed to charge taxpayers more, not less?
These are the key questions that need to be answered by the government, but I will distill it into one simple point. The RCMP is now investigating criminal behaviour as part of the arrive scam scandal. The parliamentary secretary was formerly with the Ontario government and has a great deal of experience dealing with issues of corruption. Could he tell the House, yes or no, whether the government will co-operate with the RCMP's investigation?
578 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/27/24 3:08:07 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, those who misuse taxpayers' money will face the consequences in the next election. While common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime, the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption after eight years. We heard ministers telling us today that RCMP criminal investigation into corruption in their government has become so commonplace, after eight years, it is not really news anymore. I am old enough to remember a time when it was a big deal that the RCMP investigated the government. It has been too many times, and it is time the government be held to account.
Finally, will the minister tell us whether the government will co-operate with the RCMP investigation?
131 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/12/24 2:44:11 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, everything I said is directly in the Auditor General's report, so the minister cannot claim he is listening to that report yet deny what I said.
Well-connected insiders averaged $1,100 per day for working on this contract. After eight years, the Prime Minister is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. The Prime Minister's arrive scam process was clearly rigged, and now Canadians are out tens of millions of dollars when they can least afford it.
Why did the Prime Minister rig the process to pay insiders and punish taxpayers?
98 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Feb/12/24 2:42:53 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, the two insiders at GC Strategies worked with the NDP-Liberal government to set the requirements of the arrive scam contracts, which GC Strategies then got.
In other words, the process was rigged. The government massively overpaid for the $60-million glitchy app, because the process was rigged. It was rigged so that GC Strategies got $20 million from taxpayers and did no actual work.
After eight years, it is clear the Prime Minister's arrive scam app is not worth the cost or the corruption. Why did the Prime Minister rig the process to pay insiders and punish taxpayers?
102 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/5/23 2:52:39 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, after eight years, workers know that they cannot rely on the NDP. The NDP leader initially called for the release of EV contracts, but last night the NDP flip-flopped and voted with the Liberals to bury them. These contracts will cost taxpayers over $40 billion. That is about $3,000 per Canadian family and the money will be used to fund foreign replacement workers instead of Canadian paycheques.
The NDP-Liberal government betrayed workers and is complicit in a cover-up. What did the Liberals offer the NDP to get the NDP members to change their position and abandon workers and taxpayers?
105 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/18/23 6:38:18 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I am following up on a simple question that I asked the government earlier, which was whether it believes that McKinsey is an ethical company. We have not gotten a direct answer from the government on that, and I do not think it is a difficult question at all for reasons that I will explain later.
Does the government think McKinsey is an ethical company? I ask the Government of Canada whether it thinks this private company is ethical because the number of contracts to McKinsey have gone up dramatically under the tenure of the government. McKinsey has received over $100 million in contracts from the government during the time the Prime Minister was in office, and this has happened in the context of various close relationships that existed: Dominic Barton, the global managing partner of McKinsey, advising the Prime Minister's growth council and recommending the creation of the Canada Infrastructure Bank; many McKinsey people going to work for the Infrastructure Bank; and McKinsey analysts doing so-called pro bono work for the growth council that therefore allowed McKinsey to infiltrate government and then get all these contracts.
There is a long-running close relationship between the government and McKinsey that led to McKinsey getting over $100 million in contracts, and the government has since revealed that not all rules were consistently followed, in fact, in the awarding of contracts to McKinsey. There was a failure to follow the rules, there were clearly strategic efforts by McKinsey to integrate itself into the operations of government and there were people from McKinsey who were given prominent positions within government, like Dominic Barton, head of the Prime Minister's growth council and, subsequently, ambassador to China. While he was ambassador to China, although he no longer worked for McKinsey, McKinsey was involved in facilitating a meeting with the Infrastructure Bank that he attended. There were all of these suspicious interactions or integrations between the government and McKinsey.
It is important to then ask this question: What is this company that has exercised such outsized influence over the direction of our country?
I am asking this question today in the context where we just had an opposition day motion debated on the opioid crisis. We have this horrific opioid crisis in this country, and part of the reason we have an opioid crisis is that Purdue Pharma, working with McKinsey, fuelled that crisis. McKinsey gave Purdue Pharma advice on how to supercharge opioid sales, recommending things like paying bonuses to pharmacists in cases where there were overdoses and having online pharmacies that would circumvent the checks on addiction that traditional pharmacies put in place. These were the kinds of things that McKinsey recommended, and McKinsey has had to pay out significantly for it. It reached a settlement of over half a billion dollars in the United States.
In the United States, McKinsey is being held accountable and being forced to pay compensation to victims of the opioid crisis. In fact, Republicans and Democrats, in equal measure across various states, have pursued McKinsey for this. However, in Canada, the Liberal government has a close relationship with McKinsey and has given it over $100 million in contracts.
We have found out lately that the government is joining British Columbia's class action lawsuit against McKinsey over its role in the opioid crisis. In response to significant opposition pressure from members saying that these bad actors need to be held accountable, the government is finally saying it is going to take a step in that direction and join this lawsuit. However, it still has not been willing to say it is going to reform the integrity regime so that McKinsey does not get contracts in the future. What sense does it make for the government to continue to pour out largesse on McKinsey, hiring it for contracts of dubious value and spending over $100 million of taxpayers' money in the process, but it will not answer the simple question of whether it thinks McKinsey is ethical?
673 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Dec/6/22 7:10:27 p.m.
- Watch
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—
274 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- Nov/14/22 6:31:32 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, in certain respects it has been a weird fall. Right now, as colleagues know, we are in Adjournment Proceedings, which is when we can follow up on questions asked earlier in question period.
A few weeks back, I asked about the government's plan to triple the carbon tax, therefore increasing the cost of gas, groceries, home heating and other goods that increasingly feel out of reach for many Canadians. In these times, the finance minister's way of saying that she feels their pain is to acknowledge that she has also had to make sacrifices by cancelling her Disney+ subscription. If that cancellation gets her out of the fantasy world she has been living in, then I think it is a good thing. Ironically, though, video streaming services are one of the only things that will not be affected by carbon tax increases.
Earlier this fall, I asked a question of the government about its carbon tax plans and I inserted into my question some of the lyrics from Bohemian Rhapsody. This is because shortly before the Prime Minister had gone to London, ostensibly to attend the Queen's funeral. He had stayed in a hotel room that cost $6,000 a night and stayed up late singing Bohemian Rhapsody in a bar somewhere. One could get a lot of Disney+ for $6,000 a night, but of course this was taxpayers' money. If I had spent $6,000 a night of someone else's money on a hotel room, I would have at least had the decency to stay in and enjoy it.
I put some Bohemian Rhapsody lyrics into my original question and it got a lot of attention on social media, I think, for three distinct reasons. First, it may have been the question itself. Second, there was an unexpected camera angle. Third was the fact that a member of the parliamentary press gallery thought the question was so lame that I should be shot like a horse. This suggests to me that he knows as much about the care of animals as he does politics.
This series of events was so unusual that it left me wondering:
Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy?Disney+ pushed aside; that's the finance minister's new reality.New vacation highs, flying through the skies for free. Liberal caucus plots, I have some sympathy.Foreign ministers have been easy come, easy goLittle high, little low.Foreign interference doesn't really matter to them.Mama, a journalist just threatened to kill a man.(Wait, he's not a journalist.) Mama, a Liberal staffer with a press gallery pass just threatened to kill a man.(Of course, I don't mean literally a Liberal staffer but figuratively. He's not literally a Liberal staffer.)Mama, my career had just began, but Dale Smith wants to blow it all away.If I'm not back again this time tomorrow.Carry on, carry on.
I see it is late and my time is almost gone, so I will conclude my remarks there and await the government's fandango of a response.
524 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
