House of Commons wants to quit over allegations of Liberal ‘corruption’ – National

The government has failed to put its own cases before the House of Commons for a week, and the Conservatives said on Thursday this is the result of Liberal “corruption”.

Conservative House Leader Andrew Scheer said the ruling party would rather see the House bogged down in debate than produce documents related to misspent government dollars in a program his party has dubbed the “green slush fund.”

Speaker of the House of Representatives Greg Fergus ruled last Thursday that the government “clearly has not fully complied” with a House of Representatives order to provide documents related to a now-defunct foundation responsible for the distributing hundreds of millions of federal dollars to green technology projects.

Since then, the House of Representatives has been involved in a debate on the issue and Scheer said this will continue until the government agrees to hand over the documents to police.

“They are willing to shut down Parliament rather than turn this information over to the RCMP for a possible criminal investigation,” Scheer said in an interview Thursday.

The RCMP told MPs this summer they likely wouldn’t be able to use the documents as part of an investigation, but Scheer said they needed to have access to all the information before making a decision.

3:09
Liberals, Conservatives Trade Over Corruption Allegations: ‘Filling Their Own Pockets’

The Liberals argued that mandating the production of documents to be handed over to the RCMP blurs the lines between Parliament and the judiciary, and blamed the Conservatives for the dysfunction in the House of Representatives.

Liberal House Leader Karina Gould called the request for the documents an abuse of Parliament’s power that is trampling on Canadians’ Charter rights.

“Let’s be very clear: these are the Conservatives trying to screw up Parliament,” Gould said Thursday.

“Conservative MPs are here for their own political, personal goals and they don’t care what they do to Canadians in the meantime, and that is something that should be extremely alarming to all of us.”

Scheer said the Charter exists “to protect the people from the government. It is not there to protect the government from accountability from the people.”

A similar dispute over government documents played out when the Conservatives found themselves on the government side of the aisle during a dispute over minority government more than a decade ago.

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In 2009, the House ordered the government to make public unredacted documents related to Canada’s role in the torture of Afghan prisoners.

A few weeks after opposition parties passed a motion demanding the documents be produced, then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament for several months, preventing the House of Representatives committee from investigating the matter.

1:15
Liberals say they will cooperate with the ArrivalCan investigation as Conservatives look for answers

In this case, the Liberal government abolished Sustainable Development Technology Canada after the auditor general issued a scathing report last spring on the organization’s management.

Of the projects she looked at, one in six that received funding did not qualify. The audit report also found 90 cases of violations of the conflict of interest policy.

A month later, the Ethics Commissioner concluded that the foundation’s former president had failed to evade decisions that benefited organizations with which she was associated.

Since MPs returned to Ottawa in mid-September, the House of Representatives has been in a state of near-constant unrest.

The Conservatives have made two attempts to overthrow the minority government with votes of no confidence. While both attempts failed to win support from other opposition parties, the Conservatives promise there will be more such votes to come.

Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet denounced a “disrespect for democracy” in the House on Thursday during an unrelated news conference in Chicoutimi, Que.

Blanchet claimed that bloc MPs are among the few in parliament who ask thoughtful questions instead of “spouting slogans and banging on desks” like other parties in the House of Representatives.

“They are proud that they have repeated the same thing 60 times in the last 60 days,” he said in French.

“Refusing to answer questions when there are questions no longer shows any respect for the voters.”

1:40
Bloc Québécois is pushing for an increase in pension payments

Among the few votes that advanced this week was a Bloc Québécois motion to push the government to support its pension bill for seniors under 75, a change that would cost more than $3 billion a year.

While Conservatives have criticized what they call politically motivated inflationary spending, they have thrown their support behind the bill.

Scheer did not respond to a question about why the party supported the motion.

Conservative seniors critic Anna Roberts said in a statement that the government’s inflation spending “has increased the cost of groceries and gasoline and placed additional burdens on Canadian families and seniors on fixed incomes.”

The Conservatives have also asked Canada’s lobby commissioner to investigate whether it would violate ethics rules for the Prime Minister to appoint Mark Carney as a Liberal adviser.

The Liberals announced at their recent caucus retreat in Nanaimo, B.C., that Carney, the former governor of the Bank of Canada, had been named chair of an economic growth task force.

They said Carney will help shape the party’s policies for the next election, reporting to Justin Trudeau and the Liberal platform committee.

2:33
Conservatives say Freeland is being ‘pushed aside’ by Liberals for Mark Carney

Tory ethics critic Michael Barrett said in a letter to the commissioner that Carney is not registered to lobby federally, but that his corporate positions put him in several potential conflicts of interest.

“How can any member of ministerial staff, member of parliament or minister not feel a sense of obligation to Mr Carney because of his close relationship with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer?” Barrett asked in his letter Thursday.

Carney is also chairman of Brookfield Asset Management, which is in talks with the government to launch a $50 billion investment fund with support from Ottawa and Canadian pensions.

When asked about Carney’s potential conflict of interest in the House of Representatives, Health Minister Mark Holland accused the Conservatives of “smearing” a Canadian famous around the world.

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