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Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council

Michael Cooper

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of the Joint Interparliamentary Council
  • Conservative
  • St. Albert—Edmonton
  • Alberta
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $119,185.60

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 326 - Jun/6/24
Mr. Michael Cooper (St. Albert—Edmonton, CPC)
  • Jun/6/24 5:12:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in support of our Conservative motion that calls on the Liberals to end their cover-up and produce for the House, as well as turn over to the RCMP, all documents relating to corruption and self-dealing with respect to the Liberals' billion-dollar green slush fund, otherwise known as Sustainable Development Technology Canada, or SDTC. The staggering level of corruption, conflicts and self-dealing was revealed in the Auditor General's report that was tabled in the House earlier this week. It is a direct result of a culture of corruption embedded in the rotten Liberal government. That is demonstrated by the fact that, before the Liberals took office, under the previous Harper Conservative government, SDTC was functioning well. That is evidenced by a 2017 report of the Auditor General that went back into the Harper era and gave SDTC a clean bill of health. The ethical spiral downward at SDTC occurred exclusively under the watch of the Liberals, and more specifically, under the former minister of industry, Navdeep Bains, and the current minister of industry. To put a timeline on when that began, I would submit it happened when Navdeep Bains, the Prime Minister's good buddy, decided, for purely political reasons, to fire the Harper-appointed chair of SDTC, who had presided over it when it received a clean bill of health from the Auditor General, and replace that chair with Ms. Annette Verschuren. There was a major problem with the appointment of Verschuren because she had a major conflict of interest, namely that her company was receiving money from SDTC. That is a major conflict of interest that Navdeep Bains was warned about multiple times, including by Annette Verschuren herself, who, to her credit, said that she had a conflict of interest. Navdeep Bains did not care and, conflicts of interest be damned, he appointed Annette Verschuren as chair. The culture within any organization begins at the top, and the culture that was set by Navdeep Bains at SDTC was a culture where conflicts of interest did not matter. Looking back at what has transpired since that time, and the decisions that Navdeep Bains made, both with respect to the appointment of Verschuren, as well as several other directors, it is now evident to me that Navdeep Bains wanted to turn SDTC into a slush fund where Liberal insiders could rig the system to line their own pockets by ripping off taxpayers. That is precisely what has happened at SDTC, and Navdeep Bains is the architect of that. For years, Navdeep Bains, as the former industry minister, and the current minister turned a blind eye to all kinds of conflicts of interest, and tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money was being funnelled improperly out the door at SDTC. The only time the minister pretended to take some interest in the corruption at SDTC was when a whistle-blower sounded the alarm over nearly $40 million in so-called COVID relief payments being approved by the board. The Auditor General, in her report, determined that those COVID relief payments contravened the contribution agreement with the Department of Industry, and that there were 66 cases of conflicts of interest in which board members voted to approve funds that were funnelled into companies that they had an interest in. I have to note that Annette Verschuren, the chair, actually moved both motions to funnel monies into her own companies from SDTC. The rot and corruption was blatant. They were not even trying to hide it. However, it gets a lot worse than the COVID relief payments, because the Auditor General found 186 cases of conflicts of interest involving board members and consultants. In 90 cases, board members voted to approve funds that were funnelled into companies they had an interest in and benefited from, and they did not even so much as declare a conflict. Some $76 million went into those companies, voted for by board members at SDTC. It is not just $76 million, and I should not say “just” $76 million. Tens of millions of taxpayers' money was also funnelled into companies of SDTC board members while those members served on the board. I note, for instance, that the Minister of Environment's good friend and former colleague Andrée-Lise Méthot, at the time as she served on the board, benefited to the tune of $42.5 million in SDTC funds, which went into her companies. Then there are Guy Ouimet, another board member, whose companies received $4 million in funding from SDTC, and Liberal insider and former Liberal staffer Stephen Kukucha, whose companies received $25 million from SDTC when he served on the board. This speaks not only to major and serious conflicts of interest, but to the fact that members of the board broke the law. They broke the Conflict of Interest Act. Board members are public office holders. They are bound by the Conflict of Interest Act and the Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology Act, which the Auditor General determined. The Canada Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology Act very expressly, in subsection 12(2), provides that board members shall not profit or benefit from decisions of the board, and they profited handsomely. In addition to that, $59 million improperly went out the door to projects that contravened the contribution agreement with the Department of Industry, and that is just scratching the surface because those are only the projects that the Auditor General audited. The Auditor General concluded that there were likely many more projects to which money went out the door improperly. Through it all, an assistant deputy minister sat in on each and every board meeting in which these decisions were made, when board members had conflicts of interest and when money went out the door in contravention of the contribution agreements, and former minister Bains and the current minister did nothing. The current minister turned a blind eye until he was caught. One current senior industry official said that things are so bad at SDTC, he compared them to “a sponsorship-scandal level kind of giveaway”. Based on what we know from the Auditor General's report, which likely just scratches the surface of the corruption and self-dealing at SDTC, it looks to be a lot worse than the sponsorship scandal. We are talking about potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that were improperly funnelled out the door from which board members profited. In closing, let me simply say this is why it is time for the Liberals to end the cover-up. It is time to turn over the documents to the RCMP. It is time to call in the Mounties.
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Context: House Hansard - 258 - Nov/29/23
Mr. Michael Cooper
  • Nov/29/23 7:39:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am glad the parliamentary secretary confirmed that the resignation of the chair of SDTC was a personal decision that she did not make at the direction of the minister. This was the same chair who funnelled $220,000 into her own company and then transferred $120,000 of that into her personal bank account. That is corruption, yet it did not meet the level for the minister to call on her to resign. If that level of corruption does not suffice calling for a resignation, what does?
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