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Decentralized Democracy

Michael Barrett

  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $133,355.09

  • Government Page
  • Apr/18/24 2:45:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, he is not worth the cost or the corruption of his $60-million arrive scam. The Prime Minister's favourite scamster told the House yesterday that his home had been raided by the RCMP for his role in this latest scandal, but he also told the House that the NDP-Liberal government has not asked for a penny back of the ill-gotten gains. The House has ordered it. Why has the Prime Minister not enforced it? When will Canadians get their money back?
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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/16/24 3:01:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, it is clear he is not worth the cost or the corruption, like the $60-million arrive scam contractor, who is being hauled before the House of Commons tomorrow for refusing to answer committee questions about his role in the Prime Minister's latest multi-million-dollar scandal. This contractor claims that he only did Google searches and sent LinkedIn direct messages. Therefore, what did this guy and his partner give to the Liberals in exchange for the multi-million dollars they were paid?
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  • Mar/18/24 3:04:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what the Auditor General asked for in terms of information the government did not even want to provide. That is why it voted against having the Auditor General investigate the Prime Minister's $60-million arrive scam. It is clear that after eight years of the NDP-Liberal government, it is not worth the corruption or worth the cost. That $60 million was for outside consultants. It was not for public servants who needed to act quickly. It is was for Ottawa insiders who were getting rich, being made millionaires, while Canadians struggle and are now lined up at food banks. The Prime Minister has had weeks and he will not stand up, but we have ordered him to provide the documents. At what time will they be provided?
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  • Mar/18/24 3:02:52 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the NDP-Liberal government has been trying to cover up the full cost of its $60-million arrive scam. After eight years of the Prime Minister and his NDP-Liberal government, they are not worth the cost or the corruption. He has been hiding the documents and we have been hearing the paper shredders, but his homework is due today. The question is for the Prime Minister. At what time will he respect the common-sense Conservative motion that was passed by the House and deliver all of the documents and the full cost of his arrive scam scandal?
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  • Feb/29/24 3:06:50 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. Meanwhile, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, Canadians know he is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. Just yesterday, we learned that in the Prime Minister's $60-million arrive scam, one of the contractors who was paid millions is actually a bureaucrat for the NDP-Liberal government. That is why common-sense Conservatives passed a motion in this House, demanding that the government produce all the documents on the Prime Minister's scandal. Will he stand in this place and commit to releasing every last page?
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  • Feb/27/24 1:35:07 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is incredibly disappointing that the Bloc took the opportunity more than a half-dozen times to vote to increase the funding to this scandal-plagued arrive scam app. It is so frustrating for Canadians who are struggling to make ends meet. When the Conservatives were in government, there was no $60 million arrive scam. Spending on outside consultants was less than half of what it has ballooned to, at more than $21 billion under the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, who is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. As I said, it was not like that before these Liberals and it will not be like that after them.
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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/26/24 2:58:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it would not fit on a bumper sticker, but that member and everyone over there voted against the common-sense Conservative motion calling for the Auditor General to investigate corruption, and corruption is exactly what they found. That is what they get on that side of the House. On this side of the House, we have common-sense Conservatives who would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Why did the NDP support the Liberals with the $60-million arrive scam, which saw Liberal insiders working in their basement and getting paid millions while Canadians lined up at food banks? What did the Liberals promise the NDP?
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  • Feb/26/24 2:57:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on one hand, common-sense Conservatives would axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. On the other hand, after eight years, we have an NDP-Liberal Prime Minister who is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption, but he needed support for his $60-million arrive scam. Where did he get it from? It was from the costly cover-up coalition NDP. Canadians want to know, in this scandal that cost them millions, what the Liberals promised the NDP in exchange for its vote to support the corruption of the government.
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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 11:18:12 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/16/24 11:04:40 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, arrive scam is a failed app that should have cost $80,000 but cost Canadians $60 million. GC Strategies, the two middlemen working out of their basement getting $258 million in IT contracts, never did a keystroke of IT work. It turns out they have been wining and dining senior Liberal government officials. Another $150 million was embezzled at the Prime Minister's billion-dollar green slush fund, with hand-picked NDP-Liberal board members funnelling millions to their own companies. The Prime Minister is not worth the cost and not worth the corruption, but there is hope yet. Conservatives would end the corruption, axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. Our common-sense plan would axe the tax on everything, for everyone, for good. We would tie municipal funding to housing to make sure more houses get built, not bureaucracy. Conservatives would find savings by scrapping ArriveCAN. We would bring jail, not bail for Canadians. We would bring it home.
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  • Feb/12/24 2:31:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister's arrive scam app was supposed to cost taxpayers $80,000, but it was confirmed by the Auditor General that it in fact cost more than $60 million. After eight years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, we know that he is not worth the cost. He is definitely not worth the corruption. This process was so corrupt that his favourite company of two guys in a basement, GC Strategies, got to write the contract for themselves, to the exclusion of everybody else. We know they did no IT work, and that has been confirmed, but they got $20 million for their trouble. Will the Prime Minister just admit that he is lining the pockets of insiders at the expense of Canadians?
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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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  • Nov/29/23 2:20:11 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after eight years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, his billion-dollar green slush fund is engulfed in corruption. His hand-picked board chair was caught funnelling $220,000 to her own company and then paid herself $120,000. Then she and the CEO both resigned in disgrace. We learned yesterday that another board member funnelled millions of taxpayer dollars to not one, not two, not three, but four companies that she personally had an interest in. The Liberals knew about the corruption and ineligible payments and they did absolutely nothing. One senior government official called it an ad scam-level payout. Meanwhile, whistle-blowers are afraid of professional and legal reprisals because the Liberals refused to offer them any protection. At every level of the Prime Minister's green slush fund, there is corruption and more insiders getting paid. With an Auditor General investigation and an Ethics Commissioner investigation, it is clear that the Prime Minister just is not worth the cost. Conservatives will keep fighting to expose Liberal corruption and find out who got rich.
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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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  • Nov/15/22 3:03:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals wasted $54 million on their arrive scam and they waived the security clearance requirements for vendors and contractors who would deal with Canadians' biometric personal and health information. Now they are refusing to release the documents and covering up which Liberal insiders got rich. Canadians cannot trust the Liberals and they cannot afford the costly Liberal-NDP coalition. Will the Liberals end their inflationary spending?
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  • Oct/24/22 2:48:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, a company has come forward saying it did not receive a dime of the missing million dollars in the ArriveCAN scam, proving the Liberals provided false information to the House and to Canadians for spending on this app. Are the Liberals going to give Canadians the details of the real contracts for ArriveCAN, or are they going to wait for more companies to come forward and tell us that even more money is missing? Where are the missing millions? Who got rich?
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