- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes
- Ontario
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $133,355.09
- Government Page
- May/9/24 3:08:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals would beg for a week such as the one the Conservative Party just had.
They can look at fundraising numbers, they can look at polling numbers, and, of course, they can look at newspapers. They will see that another one of their ministers is caught in an ethical scandal, such as the Prime Minister, who got caught breaking the law, or the public safety minister, who got caught breaking the law and then tried to appoint his sister-in-law to be the Ethics Commissioner.
The Liberals cannot seem to help themselves. The employment minister was illegally lobbying, cashing cheques while he put $110 million of taxpayer money out the door. Will the Liberals support an RCMP investigation?
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- Apr/17/24 3:45:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have also confirmed that GC Strategies and ArriveCAN are under police investigation.
Has the RCMP contacted Mr. Firth about allegations related specifically to the Prime Minister's $60-million arrive scam?
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- Apr/15/24 7:58:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, every time, it is the same thing. The Liberals want us to trust them, and they say that they have processes in place. That is what they tell us. They did not want us to look deeper into the billion dollar green slush fund. When we did, after they tried to block committee investigations, we found conflicts of interest. What happened? I wrote letters to the Ethics Commissioner, and he launched investigations into their appointees.
It is the same thing with the $60 million arrive scam. The Liberals say that everything is fine and that there is nothing to see there, yet 12 investigations later, they are still telling us to trust them. We do not. We do not trust them to keep taxes low, to build houses, to balance the budget, to bring down inflation or to return safety and sanity to our streets.
Canadians have had enough, and they want real action. They want a government that is accountable. That is why Conservatives are going to bring it home.
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- Mar/20/24 6:21:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am rising on the notice of a question of privilege that I provided the table with following the tabling of the 17th report from the Standing Committee on Government Operations.
At the outset, I want to note that the government operations committee is actually meeting this afternoon, so our colleagues who sit on the committee may wish to address this with the House tomorrow or possibly Friday.
Last week, Kristian Firth, the co-founder of GC Strategies, a two-person IT firm that does no actual work, finally appeared before the government operations committee to answer for his role and his company's role at the heart of the Liberal government's arrive scam.
The House is well familiar already with the Auditor General's damning report of this procurement fiasco. Other investigations have been popping up left, right and centre by other officers of Parliament, including possibly the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I believe that Bill Curry of The Globe and Mail pegged it at 12 active investigations.
Parliamentarians had questions for Mr. Firth and his partner, Darren Anthony, who had long resisted appearing before committee. That is why the committee, in its 14th report, had asked for a House order to compel their appearances before the committee, backstopped by the authorization of a Speaker's warrant to take them into custody if necessary, and the House unanimously concurred in that report the same day it was tabled.
As I said, Mr. Firth appeared to answer questions, but “answers” are not how I would describe what he gave. That is why, at the conclusion of his appearance last Wednesday, the government operations committee unanimously and without debate adopted a Conservative motion to present a report to the House, “outlining the potential breach of privilege concerning Kristian Firth’s refusal to answer those questions which the Committee agreed to put to him and his prevarication in answering others.”
The area of greatest concern that I want to highlight was Mr. Firth's refusal to say which public office holders he communicated with concerning the crafting of a so-called competitive contract with the Canada Border Services Agency. The House will recall that the Auditor General found, at paragraph 1.56 of her ArriveCAN audit that GC Strategies was involved in developing the requirements set out in the agency's request for proposal. Naturally, parliamentarians wanted to know who spoke with him.
Mr. Firth, however, stonewalled several members, including me, with repeated refusals to answer those questions directed to him, citing an RCMP investigation. When he was pressed on whether he understood the imperative nature of answering questions at committee, he again refused to answer, citing solicitor-client privilege.
On other occasions, in response to other questions asked of him, the witness offered evasive responses, a concept referred to in some procedural texts as “prevaricating”, something which I will elaborate upon in a few moments.
I would draw your attention to a handful of exchanges in committee with Mr. Firth as examples.
I asked whether Mr. Firth had lied to a parliamentary committee before. Mr. Firth answered by saying, “watch my previous testimony.” I also asked which public office holders Mr. Firth had met outside of government offices. Mr. Firth answered, “I'm more than happy to provide that information in writing, but I'm not prepared to do that right now, televised.”
The hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan asked Mr. Firth how many hours he spent sending LinkedIn invitations, a key component of GC Strategies' apparent recruitment strategy, and Mr. Firth answered, “That has no bearing on this project, does it?”
The hon. member for Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek asked Mr. Firth to name his contacts in the various departments which provided GC Strategies with 134 contracts. Mr. Firth answered, “I'd like to provide all of those details after this meeting, please. I would not like to speak about it publicly, just with how this committee is going.”
I asked Mr. Firth to name the individuals who allegedly provided the glowing testimonials which appear on GC Strategies' website. Mr. Firth answered, “I do know the answer.” He then said that he would provide it “after this meeting”.
As an aside, I believe that the committee is still waiting on Mr. Firth to make good on some of those undertakings, undertakings that he had promised the committee he would answer by 9 a.m. the following morning. The government operations committee might have more to report on that in due course.
I will also add that there are concerns about the truthfulness of some of the testimony from Mr. Firth and other witnesses throughout the course of this committee's study. However, that may well be a matter for yet another future report from the committee. For today's purposes, we are of course concerned with Mr. Firth's refusal to answer questions and his evasiveness on others.
Mr. Speaker, your predecessor ruled, on May 11, 2021, at page 7021 of Debates, about the role of committees in questions of privilege concerning the evidence of witnesses. He stated:
There is no precedent where the Chair has used testimony from a committee without there being a report on the subject.
This aspect of the matter is a concern for the Chair. It is not for the Speaker to untangle the committee evidence to determine who knew what and when. Such an initiative would trespass on the role of committee members and constitute a breach of my duty to act with impartiality. It is up to the committee to continue its own study and to inform the House of its conclusions, if it deems it appropriate, as has been the tradition.
The government operations committee has done its work. It has informed the House of its conclusion that Mr. Firth obstructed it, through his refusal to answer questions and providing prevaricating responses.
House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, at page 82, borrowing from a list of established contempts laid out in a 1999 report of the United Kingdom Parliament's Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, enumerates established areas of contempt, including, “without reasonable excuse, refusing to answer a question or provide information” and “engaging in other misconduct in the presence of, the House or a committee”.
On August 12, 1947, the United Kingdom House of Commons resolved:
That the refusal of a witness before a Select Committee to answer any question which may be put to him is a contempt of this House and an infraction of the undoubted right of this House to conduct any inquiry which may be necessary in the public interest.
Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, second edition, explains, at page 191:
A committee is not restricted in the scope of questions it can pose and a witness must answer all questions put to him, subject only to a point of order by a member of the committee that the question should not be permitted, and with an ultimate appeal of the chairman's ruling to the committee.
Beauchesne's Rules and Forms of the House of Commons of Canada, sixth edition, adds, at citation 863:
A witness who is unwilling to answer a question, after stating the reason for desiring to be excused from answering, may appeal to the Chair whether in the circumstances, for the reason stated, an answer should be given.
If you consult the transcript of last Wednesday's meeting of the government operations committee, Mr. Speaker, you will see several instances where the chair was asked, without any objection from the committee, to direct Mr. Firth, on behalf of the committee, to answer the questions. Certainly, no members objected to the questions that were asked.
The chair, having heard the reasons offered by Mr. Firth, nonetheless directed him to respond. The chair also reminded the witness of the protections offered to him by the law of parliamentary privilege.
Perhaps it would also be helpful for the House to be refreshed on those important principles. Beauchesne notes, at citation 109:
Witnesses before committees share the same privilege of freedom of speech as Members.... Nothing said before a committee (or at the Bar of the House) may be used in a court of law. Thus a witness may not refuse to answer on the grounds of self incrimination.
Bosc and Gagnon add, at footnote 681, on page 1080, “As with Members, freedom of speech is extended to the testimony given by witnesses before committees and has been held to include protection from any possible prosecution.”
The reasons behind this important principle are elaborated upon by Bosc and Gagnon, on page 93:
This right [freedom of speech] is also extended to individuals who appear before the House or its committees in order to encourage truthful and complete disclosure, without fear of reprisal or other adverse actions as a result of their testimony. In 2005, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled [in Gagliano v. Canada (Attorney General)] that the testimony of parliamentary witnesses fell within the scope of parliamentary privilege because it is necessary for the functioning of Parliament for three reasons: “to encourage witnesses to speak openly before the Parliamentary committee, to allow the committee to exercise its investigative function and, in a more secondary way, to avoid contradictory findings of fact”.
In 2007, the Federal Court again recognized [in George v. Canada (Attorney General)] that a witness’s testimony before a House committee is protected by parliamentary privilege:
“[A]lthough witnesses before a parliamentary committee are not Members of Parliament, they are not strangers to the House either. Rather they are guests who are afforded parliamentary privilege because, as with members, the privilege is necessary to ensure that they are able to speak openly, free from the fear that their words will be used against them in subsequent proceedings....”
The Court confirmed that parliamentary privilege “precludes other entities from holding Members of Parliament or witnesses before committees liable for statements made in the discharge of their functions in the House”.
However, Mr. Firth persisted in his refusals, citing the RCMP investigation and solicitor-client privilege. Given the latter grounds, it is perhaps important to refer back to Beauchesne at citation 863:
A witness is, however, bound to answer all questions which the committee sees fit to put, and cannot be excused, for example, on the ground that there could be risk of a civil action...or because the matter was a privileged communication such as that between a solicitor and a client, or on the grounds of advice from counsel that the question cannot be answered without risking self-incrimination or civil suit, or that it would prejudice a defence in pending litigation, some of which would be sufficient grounds of excuse in a court of law.
Very similar words appear at page 38.36 of Erskine May, 25th edition.
The fact remains that Mr. Firth was asked questions. He refused. He was pressed to answer by the committee, yet he continued to refuse. That is, I respectfully submit, a contempt of Parliament.
Next, I want to turn to the matter of Mr. Firth's prevaricating evidence. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, second edition, defines the verb “prevaricate” as “speak or act evasively or misleadingly.”
Derek Lee's The Power of Parliamentary Houses to Send for Persons, Papers & Records, at page 180, states that witnesses have been found guilty of contempt by the House or similarly punished by the House for prevarication.
Erskine May puts it, at paragraph 15.5 of the 25th edition, as follows: “In the past, witnesses...who have prevaricated, given false evidence, willfully suppressed the truth, or persistently misled a committee have been considered guilty of contempt.” That entry falls under the heading of “Misconduct of Members or officers of either House”, a phrase found in the list of established contempts found on page 82 of Bosc and Gagnon.
Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand, fourth edition, also comments in relation to witnesses' obligation to tell the truth, at page 776, saying, “Even to prevaricate before a committee might invite questions.”
In the United Kingdom House of Commons, several committee witnesses in the 19th century faced the wrath of the House when giving prevaricating evidence with a finding of contempt, even committal into the custody of the Serjeant at Arms or at Her Majesty's jail of Newgate.
Example cases may be found. I will not read them all, but the can be found on page 601 of the Journals for August 28, 1835; page 258 of the Journals for February 24, 1848; page 147 of the Journals for April 7, 1851; page 699 and page 742 of the Journals for July 20 and 29, 1853; page 354 of the Journals for July 28, 1857; and page 239 of the Journals for April 23, 1866.
A close cousin of prevarication is the wilful suppression of the truth. On March 3, 1828, a committee of the whole of the United Kingdom House of Commons, which was considering the East Retford Disfranchisement Bill, had before it a witness named Jonathan Fox who spent 90 minutes answering most questions with some variation of “I cannot say”.
The witness was asked to withdraw while the committee deliberated. These deliberations, at column 936 of the parliamentary Debates, are insightful. The record reads:
Mr. Alderman Waithman
observed, that the committee could not suffer its dignity to be trifled with in this way. He would appeal to the committee whether this man's answers could be believed. Something ought to be done to support the dignity of the House, which ought not to be trifled with in this manner. He should move, that the witness had been guilty of gross prevarication.
Mr. Bering
asked, how, if the inquisitorial power of the House was to be exercised, that power could ever be exercised if it was treated in this manner? One phrase was perpetually in this man's mouth.... Here was a man...who had entertained the committee for an hour and a half, with the same answer. He had been guilty, in his opinion, of gross prevarication.
Mr. Peel
thought it doubtful whether the witness had been guilty of prevarication; it seemed a wilful suppression of the truth.
The Attorney General
agreed, that the conduct of the witness did not amount to gross prevarication, although it was evidently a wilful suppression of the truth.
Mr. Wynn
confessed that he did not know what prevarication was, if the witness had not been guilty of it.
In the end, the House adopted a resolution that Mr. Fox “has attempted to defeat the investigation of the committee by wilfully suppressing the truth.”
All that to say that Mr. Firth was quite clearly dodging and weaving in his evidence to the committee, desperate to avoid giving answers. He was, to borrow from the Canadian Oxford Dictionary definition, answering “evasively”. Now, based on the authorities I have cited, that is a further contempt of Parliament committed by Mr. Firth.
Normally, this is the point where I would say that I am prepared to move the appropriate motion, but what is the appropriate motion? Bosc and Gagnon comment, at page 150, that “The terms of the motion have generally provided that the matter be referred to committee for study”. Footnote 386 hastens to add, “There have, however, been exceptions to this practice.”
Therefore, what would be the objective of another committee study in these circumstances? The facts are crystal clear. The questions and the refusals are already on the record. Would we ask the procedure and House affairs committee to report back saying, “Yes, Kristian Firth definitely refused to answer those questions, and man, he was really cagey, too”?
Maingot, at page 263, offers the answer, which is this: “nevertheless open in flagrant cases of contemptuous conduct to move that the facts in question constitute a breach of privilege”. He wrote, a little earlier on the same page, “the practice at one time provided that the alleged contemner be brought to the Bar of the House”.
Indeed, that is what the House decided to do in June 2021 after the government defied an order of the House concerning the production of Winnipeg lab documents, summoning the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada to appear at the bar to receive an admonishment on behalf of his agency. Now, these circumstances are a little different when we are dealing with a committee witness providing testimony rather than a document production order aimed at the government.
The House has, since the turn of the century, held two witnesses in contempt for their evidence before committee. In 2003, the government operations committee concluded that the former privacy commissioner George Radwanski had deliberately misled the committee in his testimony and should be found in contempt of the House. However, given that Mr. Radwanski had apologized to the House in writing, in addition to having resigned as an officer of Parliament, no sanctions were applied beyond the contempt finding.
In 2008, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts determined that the then RCMP deputy commissioner Barbara George had knowingly misled the committee in her testimony before the committee and recommended that she be found in contempt of the House, but it ordered no further action on the recommendation of the committee “as this finding of contempt is, in and of itself, a very serious sanction.”
More recently, in 2011, the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development provided the House with extracts of evidence given by the minister of international co-operation, which contradicted her statements in the House. Speaker Milliken ruled, on March 9, 2011, that there was a prima facie case of privilege and the matter was referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which heard from the minister and other witnesses but did not complete a report before Parliament was dissolved.
Those cases involved contradicting answers. We are concerned here with getting answers. Therefore, we must look back further in time for instances when the House addressed similar situations.
In June of 1891, Michael Connolly, a witness before the privileges and elections committee, which was investigating allegations of corrupt practices on the part of a member of the House, refused to turn over documents that he brought with him and was being asked about. This was reported to the House, which in turn ordered him to appear at the bar, where he was questioned, granted counsel and ordered to turn over the documents in question.
In August of 1891, Thomas McGreevy, the member whose corruption was being investigated by the privileges and elections committee, appeared as a witness and refused to answer questions. The matter was reported to the House, which ordered him to appear in his place in the House to answer those questions. Mr. McGreevy did not appear, leading the House to order him to be taken into custody. Despite the Sergeant-at-Arms' pursuit of Mr. McGreevy by train as far as Quebec City, he was not captured but was expelled as an MP the following month.
In 1906, William Preston, a civil servant, appeared as a witness before the agriculture and public accounts committees where he refused to answer questions. Each committee reported the situation to the House, where a motion to summon him to the bar was debated, but a Liberal government amendment that excused Mr. Preston was adopted instead.
In 1913, R.C. Miller, a witness before the public accounts committee, refused to answer questions. The matter was reported to the House, which ordered him to appear before the bar, where Mr. Miller was further questioned but persisted in his refusals to answer. The House in turn found him in contempt and sent him to prison, where he remained until Parliament was prorogued four months later.
Let us be clear. I am not proposing that Mr. Firth be imprisoned for this particular offence. However, we must all recall that the House possesses awesome power and authority to vindicate its role as the grand inquest of the nation.
Citations 123 to 125 of Beauchesne's elaborate the following:
123. Privilege grants considerable punitive powers to the House of Commons. The mildest form of punishment is a simple declaration that an act or an article is a breach of privilege. When an individual has been present at the Bar it has been customary to deliver this conclusion to the culprit in the presence of the House. On such occasions, censure of the individual is usually added to the conclusion that privilege has been offended.
124. Occasionally the individual at the Bar will be given an opportunity to purge the contempt and promise better conduct in the future....
125. For more serious contempts the House may proceed further.
Before anyone worries that this might be an intense approach, the United Kingdom Parliament's Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in 1999, at paragraphs 301 and 302, compellingly explained the need for such powers when confronted by contempt.
301. The first question to be considered is whether contempt of Parliament by non-members should still attract any punishment at all. We believe it should. Take, as an example, the investigatory work of committees. Powers must exist to ensure that committee investigations can proceed, that witnesses will attend and that papers will be produced. Apart from public officials and ministers, many interest groups and representative bodies, and many companies and private individuals, also appear regularly before select committees of both Houses. They almost always appear voluntarily. However, occasionally witnesses are unwilling to appear, or information necessary to an inquiry is not willingly provided....
302. If the work of Parliament is to proceed without improper interference, there must ultimately be some sanction available against those who offend: those who interrupt the proceedings or destroy evidence, or seek to intimidate members or witnesses; those who disobey orders of the House or a committee to attend and answer questions or produce documents. Sometimes the conduct is a criminal offence. Then the criminal law should take its course. In the case of non-members that will normally suffice. But unless a residual power to punish exists, the obligation not to obstruct will be little more than a pious aspiration. The absence of a sanction will be cynically exploited by some persons from time to time.
Some from the Liberal benches might urge upon the Chair in the House the fact that these powers concerning these witnesses had not been used in many decades and, therefore, they might argue that they are now in doubt. They might even object to my referencing precedent longer than their time in the House. To that, I would answer with paragraphs 76 and 77 of the 2013 report of the United Kingdom Parliament's Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which formed part of an analysis on options for enforcing the House's authority, barely 10 years old.
It reads:
76. It is unfortunate that Parliament's restraint has led to doubt about the continuing existence of its powers. They are a part of United Kingdom law and have been so for centuries. In this section we consider the third option, which would involve the two Houses re-asserting their historic penal jurisdiction and setting up procedures for exercising that jurisdiction.
77. The first and most important challenge is to assert the continuing existence of each House's jurisdiction over contempt. This is, fundamentally, a test of institutional confidence. We urge the two Houses to rise to this challenge.
This is why my “appropriate motion” would rise to the challenge and it would do the following: It would find Kristian Firth to be in contempt. It would order him to the bar of the House to be admonished by the Speaker. While at the bar, he would be required to answer the questions which the committee struggled to obtain answers to, as noted in the 17th report, tabled today. Finally, there would be provision for supplementary questions to Mr. Firth arising from the answers that he provided.
The first three items are perfectly consistent with and are modelled upon the order of the House adopted on June 17, 2021, where the president of the Public Health Agency of Canada was summoned to the bar to receive an admonishment and turn over the documents which had previously not been provided. Indeed, Lee writes at page 241, “Where the House finds that a breach of privilege or contempt has been committed by a person, the House may take steps to coerce the offender into complying with the order of the House or committee that resulted in the breach of privilege or contempt.”
Given the distinction here of seeking answers to oral questions, as opposed to the production of papers, I would propose allowing for supplementary questions to be asked. While it has been some time since a witness has been questioned at the bar, the sequence of events would, I respectfully submit, be consistent with the past precedents that I cited of witnesses who had refused to answer questions at committee.
Though the relevant forms and procedures are old and do not neatly fit into our contemporary way of conducting House business, it does not make the idea impossible. Sir John Bourinot, in Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada, fourth edition, at pages 70 and 74, explains the procedures for questioning witnesses at the bar for those who want to understand the area better.
In conclusion, the 17th report of the government operations committee outlines a troubling new development in the Liberal government's arrive scam, which I believe amounts to a contempt of the House. Parliament deserves answers about this fiasco. All Canadians deserve to know those answers. We cannot allow the House of Commons to be trifled with or cynically exploited by witnesses who are too clever just by half. We must rise to the challenge. We need to demonstrate our institutional confidence as the grand inquest of the nation.
We must get answers from Kristian Firth about his conduct, which is at the very heart of the arrive scam. If you agree with me, Mr. Speaker, once we have allowed an opportunity for colleagues from the government operations committee to speak to the matter, if they wish, I am prepared to move the motion I outlined earlier.
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- Feb/27/24 2:50:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if the minister and his colleagues thought that the Auditor General's work was so important, they would not have voted against the audit the Leader of the Opposition and common-sense Conservatives voted for. That was how we found out about this $60-million scandal, which has landed at the minister's feet. Now we have the RCMP investigating them. Twice before, the Prime Minister used the powers of the executive to shield himself from criminal investigations with the RCMP.
My question this time is simple. Will the Prime Minister interfere in the investigation again or will he allow the RCMP to do its work?
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- Feb/27/24 2:49:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. After eight years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, he is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption.
Today, the commissioner of the RCMP confirmed that the Liberals' scandal-plagued $60-million arrive scam app is, in fact, under RCMP investigation. We have seen the Prime Minister use the powers of the executive to try to shield himself from criminal investigations, just as he did with his trip to the Aga Khan's island and the SNC-Lavalin scandal, for both of which he was found guilty of breaking the ethics act.
Will the Prime Minister fully co-operate with the RCMP investigation?
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- Feb/27/24 1:22:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, $60 million is the running total so far for the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government's arrive scam. This is a scandal that sees Liberal insiders lining their pockets with tens of millions of dollars while Canadians are lined up at food banks.
I just came from the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics where we heard very interesting testimony from the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The leader of the official opposition sent a letter of complaint to the RCMP about the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister's $60 million arrive scam. The RCMP commissioner confirmed, just minutes ago, that, yes, the Prime Minister's $60 million arrive scam is under RCMP investigation.
This is a government that has been mired in scandal. This issue, though on its face seems to be business as usual, is shocking to Canadians. It is shocking because one contractor, who worked on the government's failed $60 million arrive scam received $20 million, but that is $20 million out of $258 million that these two guys, working out of a suburban Ottawa basement, have been pulling in, in contracts. The same two guys admitted under questioning at committee that they fraudulently won the bids.
That was not enough for the government to freeze the awarding of contracts to GC Strategies, just like every single one of the Liberal members voted against having Canada's Auditor General investigate the arrive scam. Why did they vote against it? We learned, when we got the report back from the Auditor General, that it was damning, just like the report from the procurement ombud, revealing that 76% of the contractors, whose résumés were used to win the bids for the $60 million boondoggle, did not do any work on the ArriveCAN app.
The accountability that the Liberals look to apply to this measure is the same as having the fox guard the henhouse. They want internal processes, the CBSA, to investigate itself. That does a disservice to everyone. In my community, we have frontline border service officers and managers. Those border service officers work tirelessly to keep our country and our communities safe. They are appalled by what they have seen from the Prime Minister's senior bureaucrats, like the former president of the CBSA, in this shocking waste of taxpayers' money.
I did have a parliamentary secretary in this place one day say that it saved tens of thousands of lives. The parliamentary secretary had to walk that back. There was no data. They just make stuff up. Also, under questioning, their officials at committee confirmed the same.
This scandal has seen explosive testimony at committee with allegations of bribery and extortion, and evidence of corruption, forgery, fraud and threats. After we forced meetings last week, including testimony by the Information Commissioner, the Information Commissioner has launched her own investigation into the Prime Minister's and the NDP-Liberal government's $60-million scandal.
Today's motion is incredibly important because this is going to require the government to report on actual costs. It says something about the complete absence of transparency. The Liberals committed themselves to having the most transparent government in history and having sunshine be the best disinfectant. They need a lot of disinfectant over there because, every step of the way, they have tried to block the answers and the accountability that common-sense Conservatives have pressed for on this massive scandal. We want the actual costs.
Let us break down the name of the Auditor General for a second. She is a general who has an army of auditors, and she could not even get the true costs out of the government because of the paper shredders working overtime every time anyone takes a look at the Liberals and their well-connected friends.
We are going to get all the costs, all the way down the line, and we are going to call on the government to recoup the costs. Last week at committee, senior officials confirmed, when I asked, that there is a mechanism to get Canadians' tax dollars back in this egregious scandal. It is unbelievable that when we have officials lying at committee, when we have clear evidence of criminal acts and when all this evidence continues to pile up, the app was originally billed at a cost of $80,000.
We will hear the hue and cry that it was never going to cost $80,000 and that it could not have been built in a day. I have yet to hear testimony, in all the hours, at all the committees looking at this, that $60 million is good value for money. In fact, the Auditor General confirmed that this was not a value-for-money project, that there was gross mismanagement and that thousands of pages of documents are missing. The government does not know how many documents are missing, just like it does not know the true cost of the app. It is a bit of a problem, and this issue is one that we have been attuned to for more than a year. The government has pushed back on every effort that Conservatives have made on this.
I am pleased that I will be splitting my time to allow for another common-sense Conservative to speak to this egregious scandal.
In spite of the Liberals' protests and their filibuster of a two-day talkathon to try to block the founders of GC Strategies from having to testify at committee, dodging summonses from a parliamentary committee twice, the Liberals, yesterday, voted against the committee motion forcing the founders of GC Strategies to come before the House. They voted against it happening. Again, with common-sense Conservative pressure, we had to give them a mulligan and have a second vote because that member's party voted against accountability and transparency for Canadian tax dollars.
That is egregious, and Canadians are outraged. They are outraged, but they are also hungry and are lined up at food banks in record numbers: two million Canadians in a single month with a third of them being children. They are struggling after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government and its Prime Minister, who is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. That is what Canadians see under his government.
However, the good news is that it was not like this before, and it will not be like this after. Common-sense Conservatives have a very straightforward plan. It is to axe the tax, to fix the budget, to build the homes and to stop the crime. That is what Canadians deserve after suffering for eight years under a government that has been mired in corruption and scandal for years.
I look forward to putting the question to the House. We will see if Liberals are again going to work with their cover-up coalition to try to block this very important and straightforward accountability measure from passing. Their attempts before have not stopped Conservatives from working for Canadians. That is what we were elected to do. We are going to continue to provide answers and accountability for Canadians, and we are going to get some of their money back.
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- Feb/16/24 11:20:36 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course the Auditor General is willing and able to do her work, but the problem is that the government refuses to give her the documents she needs to fully account for the $60 million that was spent on this boondoggle. The Liberals, in the past, have used the executive to shield themselves from an investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, like they did in the SNC-Lavalin scandal. This time, Canadians want to know who got rich, other than of course those two guys who worked out of their basement and who took Liberal bosses out for fine dinners and whisky tastings.
Will the Liberals join our calls to call in the RCMP to investigate this scam?
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- Feb/16/24 11:19:29 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the minister said the Auditor General had an important job, but he and all the Liberals voted against her conducting the audit. It was because the Leader of the Opposition moved a motion in November 2022 that we had that Auditor General investigation. Just like that was the right thing to do then, calling in the RCMP is the right thing to do now. This is an $80,000 app that ballooned to $60 million. We have a two-person firm, working out of their basement, being paid $20 million, and wining and dining senior Liberal officials.
Will the Liberals end their cover-up and join Conservatives in calling for an expanded RCMP investigation?
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- Feb/16/24 11:18:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, its arrive scam app that was supposed to cost $80,000 cost Canadians $60 million and, just like it, the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister is not worth the cost or the corruption. GC Strategies, the two-person team who worked out of a basement, got paid $20 million and did no IT work but did take senior Liberal officials out for whisky tastings and fine dinners, which were not worth the cost and not worth the corruption.
Will the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister join common-sense Conservatives as we call for the RCMP to expand the investigation into this Liberal scandal?
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- Feb/12/24 2:32:28 p.m.
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Canadians want and expect us to ascribe responsibility to the individual responsible, and that is the Prime Minister. This app was supposed to cost $80,000. It cost more than $60 million. It has been under RCMP investigation and investigation by the procurement ombud and the Auditor General, and the results so far are damning for the government. It has lined the pockets of insiders while Canadians are lined up at food banks. It is absolutely unacceptable that the cost overruns have seen $20 million go to a company that did absolutely no work on the app.
Why is the government putting its friends ahead while Canadians suffer?
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- Feb/5/24 6:14:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government, it is so distressing to see the state of disrespect the government has fostered for Canadians who have fallen on hard times. Canadians are lining up at food banks in record numbers; there are two million a month, and a third of food bank users are children.
The government is fighting in full defence of its $54-million arrive scam. This is the scandal, of course, that saw the two-person shop, GC Strategies, pull in $11 million with its operation that did no IT work, pocketing millions of dollars. They did it at a time of crisis in our country. A global pandemic had been declared, and there were a couple of yoyos in a basement forging the resumes of contractors to try to land a government contract. More than two-thirds, 70%, of the subcontractors they said they were going to use did no work on this $54-million government boondoggle.
The scandal of the ArriveCAN app had senior government officials lying before a parliamentary committee. Contractors who worked on the ArriveCAN app are under RCMP investigation. We know that, in less than a week's time, the Auditor General will be releasing her findings on the ArriveCAN app. A parliamentary secretary in the House previously was talking about the tens of thousands of lives that were saved by this app. This was later admitted to be pure conjecture based not on fact but just on emotion and to defend the indefensible. The app wrongly quarantined and put people under house arrest, did not properly safeguard the biometric health data of Canadians, and, of course, did nothing to safeguard Canadian tax dollars.
The government spends wildly and blindly. The costs to Canadians are incredible, and the effects of those costs are devastating. The government is going to spend tens of billions of dollars more just on servicing the debt this year than it does on the underfunded Canadian Armed Forces.
Canadians are rightly outraged by the scandal, and it is incomprehensible why the NDP-Liberal government continues to try to defend this. We know that the chief information officer for the government may have destroyed four years' worth of relevant information, seven gigabytes of data and 1,700 emails. It was not until Conservatives forced the issue to be studied at the government operations committee that we finally saw real action taken and real attention paid to this.
We want answers from the Auditor General. We want an apology from the government. When are we going to get back the money that the government misappropriated?
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- Dec/14/23 3:09:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, only Liberals would think shovelling hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of their friends is doing anything to fight climate change.
They are under multiple investigations. It is Liberal appointees who are being investigated. It is absolutely despicable. Canadians are lined up at food banks in record numbers, and Liberal grifters and embezzlers are jamming their pockets full of Canadian tax dollars. Canadians want to know who got rich. Where did the missing millions go?
With an Auditor General investigation and two Ethics Commissioner investigations, is the RCMP next?
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- Dec/11/23 3:01:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Canada's Ethics Commissioner has launched an investigation into a second Liberal-appointed member at their billion-dollar green slush fund. Two Liberal appointees together have funnelled more than $600,000 to their own companies. It is clear the Prime Minister is not worth the cost to struggling Canadians. Though the NDP-Liberal government tried to silence the whistle-blower, the whistle-blower will be testifying at committee tonight.
Can the Prime Minister cut the drama so that we do not have to wait for this evening, and tell Canadians how many other Liberal insiders got rich?
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- Nov/23/23 3:05:29 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the minister is a bystander in this billion-dollar slush fund scandal.
Let us lay out the facts: He did absolutely nothing. Conservatives called for an investigation at committee. We wrote a letter to the Auditor General; she started an investigation. We wrote a letter to the Ethics Commissioner; he launched an investigation. We had the CEO and the board chair come to committee; they both resigned in disgrace following their appearances at committee. Now, we want a whistle-blower to come before committee, and what are they doing? Silencing whistle-blowers as a part of the cover-up coalition with the NDP.
What are they trying to hide?
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- Nov/23/23 3:04:13 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the NDP-Liberal cover-up coalition blocked a Conservative motion to have a whistle-blower testify at the ethics committee. After eight years under the Prime Minister, it is hard not to feel disappointed in the government when every day there is a new scandal. It is easy to see that the Prime Minister is not worth the price.
The latest scandal is the billion-dollar green slush fund. Facing an Auditor General investigation and an Ethics Commissioner investigation, the CEO and the Liberal hand-picked board chair resigned in disgrace. Now they are blocking a whistle-blower from testifying. What are they trying to hide?
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- Nov/20/23 3:05:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, they are not holding anyone accountable. Let us just get a couple of facts on the record. The board chair, hand-picked by the Prime Minister, funnelled more than $200,000 to her own company. The Ethics Commissioner launched an investigation, and the board chair quit. They found more than $40 million in ineligible payments. Therefore, the Auditor General launched an investigation, and the CEO quit. The government is doing absolutely nothing.
Before the paper shredders get fired up over at the green slush fund headquarters, will the minister agree that a parliamentary inquiry needs to be expanded so that we can get all the information in the latest scandal involving the Prime Minister and the corrupt government?
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- Nov/3/23 11:16:37 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, members will not believe what happened in a committee hearing yesterday about the Prime Minister's $54-million arrive scam, which is now under RCMP investigation. Kristian Firth, one of the co-owners of GC Strategies, is a ghost contractor and key player in arrive scam who was ordered to appear at committee. When asked if a senior government official had a cottage, he said no. However, when pressed, Firth said that it is a chalet, not a cottage. People in rural Ontario do not speak the same language as the Liberal elite, but they do know when someone is lying.
When asked if he met with another senior government official in their house, Firth again said no, but documents prove that he did. He was asked if he met with government officials after hours in their homes. He said no, but when I pressed him, he admitted that he did in fact meet with some government officials in their homes. There were so many meetings between a shady contractor and government officials that he cannot even remember them.
We have ordered him back to committee with his bank records. Conservatives are going to get answers with respect to the Prime Minister's $54-million arrive scam.
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- Oct/27/23 11:59:40 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, $54 million in waste, extortion, corruption and an RCMP investigation; that is ArriveCAN. We heard shocking testimony about a group of government insiders who are running a real racket in tech sector procurement.
After eight years of the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government, that is how they run things, and now there is an RCMP investigation. The Prime Minister is clearly not worth the cost. Will he fully co-operate with the RCMP in this investigation?
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- Oct/24/23 2:57:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I hope they were paying attention. That is the first time we have had a question answered in this House in eight years.
The Prime Minister and the public safety minister both said that the RCMP commissioner was the one to answer questions. He was sitting at the table yesterday, and they adjourned the meeting as part of their ongoing cover-up. They blocked him just like the Prime Minister is blocking the release of documents in the criminal investigation concerning him. After eight years of the Prime Minister and his detrimental effect on our democratic institutions, it is clear that he is not worth the cost.
To the leader of the NDP, is protecting the Prime Minister from criminal investigations part of the coalition deal?
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