MP Mathyssen Speaks Up on Consistent Liberal and Conservative Corruption

Mr. Speaker, I am proud today to rise on behalf of my constituents in London—Fanshawe. I am always proud to be able to represent them. Every day I come to this place eager to work, to create solutions and programs that will help my constituents, which is what they expect from me. Each person in London—Fanshawe depends on me to be honest and to act with integrity to the best of my ability to improve this country, to expand upon the social programs and services upon which they depend, to help them and to address the issues that they are struggling with.

Many of my constituents are worried about the cost of living, about feeding, clothing and housing their families, about their jobs, about their quality of life, their health care and their pensions. They worry about their family and friends down the street. Many worry about their friends and families all around the world who want to come to Canada to share in this idea of what Canada is. So many of my constituents are terrified for their loved ones around the world, in Ukraine, in Sudan, in Gaza and in Lebanon. People in my area, in my community, are terrified. As a G7 country, they look to our government, expecting us to show leadership on the world stage to fight for a more just world.

I have spoken in this place often about how proud I am of the support New Democrats have gotten for Londoners and for Canadians. The provision of dental care is actively helping so many in London—Fanshawe. Seniors have told me that they are relieved, because after having spent years of living in pain, they have the ability to get their teeth fixed. Also, with pharmacare, the provision of free diabetes medicine medications and devices and contraceptives will save millions of people millions of dollars. I am proud that I can be a part of those supports, and many other New Democrats have negotiated them with this government for people. New Democrats did that. We used our time here not to promote ourselves, but for others.

I am frustrated beyond belief, because despite my being elected to help navigate these issues with my constituents, I am here today having to talk about the greed and corruption of the government. In the last month or so, I have been disappointed every day, because we keep coming back to a Conservative filibuster and a Liberal cover-up, and we continue to listen to Liberals and Conservatives compete over how bad each other is. Every day in this place, Conservatives talk about how bad Liberals are, how scandalous they are, and the Liberals, in return, talk about how bad Conservatives are and how scandalous they are. Guess what? Both are terrible; they are both scandal-ridden. News flash, every party, whether it is the Liberals or the Conservatives, have not used the power they have been given by their constituents for all of their constituents.

What so many members in this place do not seem to understand is that this place, Parliament, this access to power, is not about them. I am not here for them; I am here for the people who do not directly sit in this chamber, who do not represent billion-dollar interests or individuals who hoard the wealth and power of this nation for themselves. For the majority of each party's time in power since Confederation, these two parties have worked to undermine working people. They have worked to ensure that this system only benefits themselves and their closest friends; their friends who already hold a great deal of power, but are also determined to never lose it.

Up until this point, I did not want to enter this debate, but after weeks of listening to Conservative after Conservative, and the member for Winnipeg North, I could not take it anymore. We are debating this issue of integrity again, or lack thereof, and so I have entered the fray. I cannot imagine how many hours have been spent in the House over the decades debating Liberal and Conservative scandals.

Under Stephen Harper, where many of today's Conservatives are cutting their teeth, including the current Conservative leader, we saw the other place stuffed with party insiders who treated the public purse as theirs. They lined their pockets only to have the Prime Minister's office try to cover it up. In 2011, the Conservatives used robocalls to mislead voters away from the polls to try cheating their way into a majority government.

Sometimes the redaction of documents is legitimate, such as for national security reasons or to protect sensitive information, but in this case it is hard to know the reasoning for the redactions without further context. I do worry the government sometimes wants to redact information that it should not, but Parliament has yet to receive the documents, redacted or not, so then the official opposition members decided they wanted all the documents, unredacted, to go to the RCMP.

This is where it gets a little confusing, because the government has refused to do that, saying that while Parliament has the right to these documents, it is unprecedented to demand the production of documents to a third party. There is also an issue of whether the police forces, in this case the RCMP, might have its investigation compromised by having documents produced to it in that way.

I believe I am a reasonable person. Maybe others disagree, but I think I am reasonable, and a reasonable person who has their constituents' best interests at heart and who respects Parliament and our democratic institutions, would say it is fair enough that there is some doubt about referring these documents to a third party, so let us have the documents come before Parliament, as is its right, to ensure that the Speaker's ruling is followed.

After six weeks, here we are still in a filibuster. Instead of responsibly doing what the Speaker directed and sending these documents to the procedure and House affairs committee, of which I am a member, so we can do our job and investigate this motion, we are instead sitting again through a Conservative filibuster and a Liberal cover-up. On top of everything else that most Canadians would shake their heads about, this filibuster is costing taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. We are not doing the work we were sent here to do.

In London—Fanshawe last week, there were people who were forcibly evicted from their homes because a greedy corporate landlord renovicted them. People were torn from their homes and from their community. We are not talking about that.

In London—Fanshawe two weeks ago, I sat with families who cried as they told me they could not get their families out of Sudan because the government refuses to fulfill the promises it made to create special measures within the immigration system. We are not debating that.

In London—Fanshawe over a month ago, I spoke to constituents who told me how difficult it was working in key community and public organizations that deal with mental health, addictions, housing, women's safety, the youth justice system and so many more because they are not making a livable wage. Even though they love the work they do and the people they serve, they cannot make ends meet, and they are worried that both the federal and provincial governments do not value them or their clients. We are not debating that.

These are the issues of the people in my riding that need to be debated in this place and need to be solved. They sent me here to deal with them. They want to know how we can make sure everyone has a secure, affordable and decent place to live. They want to be able to feed their families and build vibrant communities. People are struggling, and what are we doing? We are being filibustered about scandals and greed.

I will say it again: Both the Liberals and the Conservatives are terrible. Both have terrible records and terrible histories. Both have worked to ensure only the rich and powerful are made more rich and powerful. Both are mired in histories of scandal and greed and lack of accountability and transparency. They stand in the House and proclaim they are here to defend Canadians, when the reality is they are here to either desperately hold on to power or desperately regain the power they have lost. What they do not understand is that it is not their power.

The Conservatives every day stand in this place and call for an election, and they do it because they simply want that power back. They have a shiny new leader, and this time, unlike in 2019 and 2021, they think they can actually win. They have spent a lot of money on advertising. They have rebranded their leader. They have given him a makeover. They have spent millions of dollars marketing their slogans and catchphrases, selling a leader and a party that will do the same thing Conservatives did last time they were in government.

The Conservative international aid minister was held in contempt when he lied about defunding KAIROS and charities. The government was held in contempt for lying about the F-35 fighter jet program. The Conservative defence minister took a Cormorant search and rescue helicopter out of the military, which were used for necessary rescue missions of Canadians, for a joyride.

Finally, the Conservative government refused to produce documents, which is ironic, a motion passed by a majority vote in Parliament, underpinning its so-called tough-on-crime legislation. That is the same situation we are in today, where the government did not respect the authority of Parliament, and that was because it knew what those documents would show, which was that Conservatives wanted to throw the book at youth or our fellow Canadians trapped in the cycle of poverty and petty crime while covering up for their white-collar crimes and corruption during their time in Parliament.

Canadians finally got sick of watching Conservatives cut our community services to fill their pockets. They threw them to the curb and elected Liberals, but the Liberal government has been no better. When SNC-Lavalin was caught bribing the Libyan government, the Prime Minister tried interfering to save his powerful buddies. When Canadians were making sacrifices to make it through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Liberals tried ramming through their convoluted program to refuse students relief while lining the pockets of the PM's friends, the Kielburgers.

The Prime Minister set up cash for access fundraisers where the wealthiest and most powerful in Canada could pay the maximum amount legally and were allowed to have off-the-record face time with the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister promised to be Canada's first environmentalist government and then bought a pipeline.

The Liberal government is once again accused of corruption, scandal and misspending. In this case, this time, it concerns the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund established in 2001. It was afforded over $1 billion in 2021 to be delivered over a five-year period. Through an Auditor General report and a spot audit of this fund, 90 cases of conflicts of interest were identified, totalling about $80 million of taxpayers' money. The question was raised whether the people who were making those decisions, all appointed by the Liberal government, to allocate those funds were actually giving it to the companies that they themselves controlled or that were connected in some way with them, which would seem a significant conflict of interest.

According to the Auditor General, the projects that were approved and did receive millions of dollars of taxpayers' funds overstated the environmental benefits that actually came to pass. In fact, over the past six years, SDTC approved over 225 projects worth about $836 million and although the Auditor General did only a spot audit on the sampling of this, she found consistent, pervasive and repeated conflicts of interest, misspending and wasteful spending. The Auditor General put the blame squarely on the Liberal minister responsible for this fund and said there was a lack of oversight. I am shocked that almost a billion-dollar fund was running with such a significant lack of oversight by the Liberal minister, who was supposed to make sure that those funds are spent in accordance with the authorization of Parliament.

The Ethics Commissioner is now investigating the former chair of SDTC, who approved two grants greater than $200,000 to a private firm that she herself directed. She did not recuse herself. She participated in the decision of SDTC to approve the grant. That case is being investigated as we speak. This is important. I agree with all my NDP colleagues and all parliamentarians that this is horrible and we have to condemn this kind of wasteful spending and scandalous corruption.

The official opposition has put forward a motion demanding documents from the government so we can get to the bottom of it, as is Parliament's right. The New Democrats joined with the official opposition, supported that request and demanded production of documents to the House so that Parliament can exercise its constitutional duty to scrutinize spending of government and hold it accountable. The Liberals, at first, did not want to deliver those documents, but then the will of Parliament is supreme, and certainly New Democrats demand that transparency and accountability occur. The government was prepared to produce the documents to the House, but it wanted to redact them to some degree.

Mr. Speaker, what I want to provide for my constituents is something that both Conservative and Liberal governments have failed to do since, over 30 years ago, when the affordable housing strategy was cut by a former Liberal government and certainly not brought forward by the Conservatives after that.

We are missing 30 years of a federal government building affordable housing. The Ontario government has not done that either. We need to focus on building more co-operatives, building more of that affordable housing at all stages, whether it is rent geared to income or social housing or whatever, and we need to eliminate the REITs. We need to ensure that those greedy corporations that are buying up all of those affordable housing units cannot do it anymore.

In London, we are making some strides on that, a bit, at the municipal level, but the federal government has not taken any sort of leadership in that regard nor has the provincial government. I have stood many times, desperate to put forward real solutions on funds that could be created to give to not-for-profit organizations to buy up those affordable units to keep them affordable. The government has not done it, and my constituents are the ones that suffer for that.

There are so many incredible ideas that exist out there that we are not hearing because we are talking about how these two parties are both mired in scandal.

Mr. Speaker, it is a fallacy that there is not enough money for the things that people need. There is enough money for seniors. There is enough money to build social housing. There is enough money to ensure that we are expanding and strengthening our health care system. There is enough money to provide people with the dental care and pharmacare that they need, and so on. That money exists.

It is just that money, again, as I said in my speech, is being hoarded by a very small group of people. It used to be that government would insist that that money was redistributed and that power was redistributed. The government does not do that. It used to be that people would demand that. New Democrats demand that. New Democrats see it in our solutions on this, but the government has not taken our ideas entirely, in terms of cutting that GST as a moderate support and a help for people, for my constituents and people across this country.

What we want to do is ensure that we are raising an excess profit tax to ensure that we are covering those expenditures. That is how we find balance. That is how we regain sense, order and balance in this country. We make things fair and we make things equitable.

If Conservatives were truly acting in the best interests of Canadians, they would work in collaboration to make real changes. They would put forward real alternatives. They would not throw out personal insults and contribute to the long list of scandals, corruption and waste of millions of taxpayers' dollars in filibusters. If Liberals were truly here for Canadians, they would release the unredacted documents to Parliament and not waste millions of taxpayers' dollars in scandals and corruption.

I will say to Canadians that they can demand more of their politicians. They can make real change. We can have a government that disseminates power and wealth. We can have a government that puts people first and does everything it can to get results for people. New Democrats can be that government.