Madam Speaker, I think at this time the interpreters may get a bit of a break in the speed of the discussion, which might be nice going into the weekend.

I want to quickly say, as I am the last speaker today, that with Remembrance Week and Remembrance Day, it is important for all of us to pay tribute and make sure we attend services. To everyone watching, I am very fortunate to have Base Borden in Simcoe-Gray. Not only do I represent all the people there, but I represent the largest training base. The military is an important part of our community, and not just for what its members do in the military, but for what they do for all of us citizens and civilians, whether it is by volunteering for hockey teams, baseball teams or whatever else. Hopefully, everyone has an opportunity to go to one of those services.

I am pleased to rise today to speak to the amended motion concerning the Liberal green slush fund. Known to some as Sustainable Development Technology Canada, this fund has become arguably the biggest transfer of contracts and tax dollars to Liberal friends since the sponsorship scandal, which toppled the Paul Martin government. However, there is one fundamental difference between then and now: It was not as hard to make ends meet back in 2004.

While Liberals rewarding their friends is nothing new, back in 2004 people just saw it as business as usual. In 2004, yearly inflation was 1.27%. Most people had jobs, and this allowed them to pay their bills and save for a vacation and for their future and children's future. The Liberals' waste was frustrating, definitely, but that is just how Liberals do business. People were not struggling as they watched Liberals line their friends' pockets with tax dollars back then.

Let us fast-forward to 2024 to see how things have changed. We have tent cities in the major centres, and now they are even in small towns in my riding. Crime rates have soared. Daily essentials are no longer affordable since double-digit inflation has driven up the price of almost everything. It is difficult to save for family vacations. Liberals here in the House even mock Canadians' desire for a great summer road trip. It is near impossible to save for retirement or to put money away for our children's future.

A good government would do whatever it could to lower the cost of living for its citizens, but we do not have a good government here in Canada. The Liberal-NDP government instead raises taxes and takes more money from all of us, making it harder and harder for a regular middle-class family to get ahead. It takes all that money and hands some of it back to certain targeted groups, and then screams that Conservatives are going to all of a sudden take it all away. This is how Liberals operate: take from everyone and then throw some pennies out to Canadians and have them fight it out among themselves. “Tax, divide and conquer” is the ethos of today's Liberal Party.

However, Canadians, now more than ever, see through this strategy. Canadians who have done everything they were told to do are finally fed up. Getting an education, working hard, being honest, obeying the law, paying taxes and then being rewarded seems like a quaint idea. Instead, Canadians watch more and more of their paycheques get taken by a federal Liberal-NDP government that continues to get bigger while it spends their hard-earned money on pet projects and sweetheart deals for its friends.

In 2004, Liberal corruption and mismanagement annoyed Canadians. In 2024, it has made them angry. The most surprising thing about this is that Liberal-NDP government members seem to be in shock as to why Canadians are so angry.

When I last spoke to the green slush fund a couple weeks ago, I outlined that this was just another in a long line of Liberal scandals. There was WE Charity and the billion dollars it was given after hiring the Prime Minister's brother and mother. There was SNC-Lavalin, which had the Prime Minister personally intervening to help it get out of fraud charges for the low cost of $100,000 in donations to the Liberal Party. There was also the Aga Khan scandal, which saw the Prime Minister, the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, the member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl and their families get a $271,000 vacation in exchange for $50 million in tax dollars.

We cannot forget the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation taking money from a Beijing-connected billionaire in exchange for future considerations from the Communist government. I barely even got to touch on the $237 million that former Liberal MP Frank Baylis got for ventilators, which may not have even been delivered, or GC Strategies, which got $20 million to build the arrive scam, which was supposed to only cost $80,000.

Most Canadians are not better off after nine years of Liberal corruption and mismanagement but their insiders and friends are way better off, friends like the environment minister's former boss, the founder and owner of Cycle Capital, Andrée-Lise Méthot. While Ms. Méthot sat on the board of the green slush fund, she helped herself to $114 million in tax dollars, which she funnelled to companies she had invested in. Her then-senior adviser, the current Minister of the Environment, had 25 meetings with the Prime Minister's Office and the Department of Industry to help seal the deal. Ms. Méthot says her company tripled in value during this time. We know that the environment minister remains a shareholder in this company to this day. He will not say how much he owns but he certainly has personally benefited from this overt corruption.

It may be hard to believe for many of us but the environment minister was actually a very wanted commodity by the federal Liberals in 2019. How better to demonstrate our adherence to the climate change agenda than by recruiting one of the most radical environmentalists out there? Despite some association with Quebec separatists and his public support for socialism, the Liberal Party was desperate to improve its image among eco-activists, so landing the present environment minister was a challenge the Prime Minister relished, but what did it cost?

How many of the 25 meetings were also about recruiting the environment minister to run for the Liberal Party? What was the price to get a rumoured separatist and committed socialist to become part of the pipeline-owning Liberal government?

Canadians are frustrated. They are frustrated because, in Canada, for the longest time, we were told that if we work hard, we will get ahead, and that if we work hard and pay our taxes, we will be taken care of when we retire, but those promises have been broken. After nine years of the Liberal government, the Canada so many of us grew up in is gone. People are working harder than ever before. The price of housing and the commute to get to work have grown while the wages of the working people have stagnated in Canada. What is worse, the Liberal government has overseen the biggest increase in the cost of living since another Trudeau was prime minister.

Under the Liberals, we pay more for groceries. We pay more for gas, for our home, for our family, and we drive longer to get to our job but since our wage has likely not increased much and the cost of everything has skyrocketed, our quality of life and the time we enjoy with our family have declined. This is a reality for many Canadians as they watch Liberals, their friends and insiders get multi-million dollar contracts and sweetheart perks they can only imagine.

Every day I get people in my riding either phoning or emailing the office saying how frustrated they are or how hard it is to get by. I say “to get by” because that is all. They have given up on getting ahead under the government; they just want to get by.

I think of people like Carolyn, a senior in my riding. Carolyn turned 65 in March. She had been collecting CPP and expected to automatically receive OAS after her 65th birthday as her husband had. When May came and she had not received anything, she contacted Service Canada. She was told it does not necessarily start automatically for some people and that she needed to apply. Carolyn completed her application and submitted it. She was told that it would take over 100 days to process, so she waited.

Over 100 days, in fact, she waited and nothing: crickets. She contacted Service Canada again and again, only to be told that she had missed completing one small section in her application. No one ever thought to tell her. Despite 100,000 new bureaucrats being hired since the Liberals took office, over 100 days went by and not one person at the Government of Canada thought it might be a good idea to reach out and let her know. She was told to start over, apply again and wait 100 more days. There was no “let's fill that section out together” or “let me fill it in for you” or “apply again, but we'll process it immediately because it's already been 100 days.”

She applied again from scratch, but she also contacted my office shortly thereafter to let us know how ridiculous this whole process was. We pushed on her behalf. Now she will be getting her arrears in five days, and regular payments will start at the end of this month.

We have lots of stories like this about the frustration of dealing with the biggest, most expensive government in Canadian history. Carolyn faced an unresponsive bureaucracy for months to get the few hundred bucks she was entitled to as a senior, while Liberal friends and insiders continued to get millions of dollars in contracts and zero accountability. That is really why people are so frustrated.

What about people like Travis in my riding? Travis works hard. He pays his taxes. Travis is proud of his family. Travis has lived in Angus since 1996 and in the same home since 2007. Recently, though, there has been a lot of growth in this area, with many new developments taking place as people have left Toronto for slightly more affordable properties, and obviously better federal representation, and moved to Simcoe—Grey.

There has been so much growth that Canada Post had to change postal codes. Inexplicably, it was the existing residents who were given new postal codes, instead of the people moving into the new developments. What is worse is that, when these residents began updating their new postal codes with their insurance companies, their rates jumped. In Travis's case, his home insurance went up 50% and his car went up 50% as well. That seemed bizarre, so my office investigated it further. It turns out the new postal codes put long-time rural residents like Travis into what is now considered an urban postal code.

Because crime is now out of control in our cities, thanks to the Liberals' soft-on-crime policies, insurance rates have skyrocketed. If we are lucky enough to have what is considered an urban postal code, our rates will have jumped as well, even if we are in the same house for many years. Since Canada Post is about as accountable as the Liberal government, Travis was stuck trying to appeal this rip-off to the ombudsman, but even they could not help.

There are hundreds of people in my riding who have faced that this year. I have been bombarded with calls because their insurance went up, but they have not moved. It is ridiculous right now because people are having a tough time getting by. It has been extremely frustrating and expensive, and it has been a hassle for all these hard-working people just trying to get ahead. All the while, Liberal insiders are getting millions of dollars, no questions asked.

Liberal members pretend to be outraged as to why we are still talking about this matter. How dare opposition members take them to task over corruption and complete mismanagement? It is because of people like Travis and Carolyn, who play by the rules but have a harder and harder time getting ahead.

How about Colleen, another constituent of mine in Simcoe—Grey? She contacted my office back in March when the CRA sent her notice that she had an $8,000 debt dating back to 2017 for benefits she was not entitled to. CRA took issue with the fact that Colleen had said she was separated but was still living in the same house with her former partner. Life is really expensive for Canadians post-COVID, but even in 2017, it was difficult for those going through a divorce or a separation to get a new home.

Colleen took the advice of her lawyer and, for financial reasons, remained in the lower level of the house until it could be sold. The sale took a year. Colleen is not the only person who has faced this sort of situation. I am sure some of the members in the House are aware of similar cases.

Colleen and her husband's separation was documented as of May 1, 2017. They began separate lives. They even had separate schedules to use the one kitchen in the home. Oddly, while the CRA came after her demanding $8,000 in payments, it accepted the date of separation for her now ex-husband, who was living at the same address.

Terry Dowdall

$507,690.00