In this episode of Conservative MP for the riding of Rideau Lakes, MP for Leeds and Grenville, Michael Barrett, joins us to talk about the WE Charity scandal and the opposition day motion calling for the release of documents related to the scandal.
00:00:00.000It's Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Schmael, member of Marlman for Halliburton for the Lakes Brock.
00:00:08.720Thank you very much for joining us again. We have an amazing show lined up for you.
00:00:13.020Of course, if you're paying attention to the news lately, we could be on the cusp of a federal election.
00:00:18.600Yes, during a pandemic, an election that nobody wants because the Liberals, of course, aren't getting their own way on the WE charity scandal.
00:00:26.220And as you may have known and may be paying attention in the media, there has been a lot of things happening behind the scenes, including committees being filibustered, which means no business is getting put forward.
00:00:39.040Nothing is moving because the Liberals do not want the truth to come out.
00:00:42.900And of course, we hear them say all the time there is no big deal, nothing to see here.
00:00:47.820Well, if that's the case, let's see all the documents and see what the truth is.
00:00:51.940So clearly something is up. And to talk to us more about that, we have our ethics critic.
00:00:59.300He's also the member of parliament for Leeds, Grenville, Thousand Island and Rideau Lakes.
00:01:03.700Michael Barrett, thank you very much for joining us here today.
00:01:06.900A pleasure to join you as always, Jamie. Good to see you.
00:01:09.440Because you are a big fan of the show, you've been on a number of times before.
00:01:12.900I thank you for bringing out your blue suit, white shirt. That is greatly appreciated.
00:01:16.820That is your wardrobe of choice. You seem to really gravitate toward that, but you look good. I appreciate that.
00:01:24.180Well, that's high praise coming from you. Yeah, definitely, definitely the go-to blue suit, blue in many shades.
00:01:32.080A number of variations of the blue tie and the white shirt. Yep.
00:01:35.960So we're going to have a lot to talk about. That's why we need our audience.
00:01:39.200Those watching and listening at home to like, comment, share, subscribe to this program.
00:01:45.560And if you can't watch it all today, you can download it on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, you name it.
00:01:52.740It's out there. And together we can help push back against the ever-moving liberal agenda.
00:01:56.200Because as Michael Barrett knows and many others know, we are able to expand the audience and expand the potential of hitting undecided voters with a message of common sense and the conservative values that we move forward here.
00:02:10.300And that we're going to talk about now because a lot has been developing on the WE Charity scandal.
00:02:15.180And Michael Barrett, today is a opposition motion day, which for those outside the parliamentary precinct, outside the Ottawa bubble, it's a day that gives the opposition parties the ability to talk about whatever they want.
00:02:29.440And the Conservatives have put forward a motion talking about, well, actually, you know what, Michael Barrett, why don't you tell us what that's about?
00:02:39.460And so opposition days are really the opportunities for the different opposition parties to put forward proposals for the government, put our items on the agenda, and in some cases push back against the government's agenda.
00:02:54.980Now, today, it's the first time we've had an opposition day after the Prime Minister prorogued Parliament.
00:03:00.620And I'm sure, you know, we've covered this off before on the show, but prorogue just means that hit the reset button, shut down everything, shut down committees, no question period, anything like that.
00:03:14.080So here we are, we're back, we're dealing with this opposition day motion, and it all comes back to the WE scandal.
00:03:21.540We have, for a couple weeks now, tried to get the production of documents at committees, tried to do that at the Finance Committee, which ordered documents that ended up being heavily redacted.
00:03:34.000We tried to order documents with respect to speaking fees.
00:03:37.480Now, remember, this all comes from members of the Trudeau family, having received half a million dollars from an organization, the WE organization, that was awarded a half a billion dollar contract to administer on behalf of the government, on behalf of you, the taxpayer.
00:03:53.640And so, you know, when it comes to scandals, you have to follow the money.
00:03:58.580So we ordered production of documents with respect to the money.
00:04:02.340And that's really what led to the Prime Minister shutting down Parliament.
00:04:06.100So over the last two weeks since we've been back, we've been trying to get answers, try to order those at committee, and the Liberals have filibustered.
00:04:12.820And so they've just talked up the clock.
00:04:14.780The Ethics Committee, I think we had 14 hours of nonsense from Liberal members reading the newspaper into the record and reading Privy Council memos into the record, trying to put us to sleep, you know, philosophy lectures from them.
00:04:29.780And so we're ordering today in the House, we've put a motion forward to have a special committee to deal with corruption in government that would order the production of these documents with the passage of the motion, but would also change the composition of the committees.
00:04:49.000Now, the standing committees would, in their current forms, are, you know, usually split pretty evenly.
00:04:57.420They're split between the opposition and the government because we're in a minority.
00:05:00.920And most of the committees are chaired by a member of the government, by one of the Liberals.
00:05:05.480And so this special committee would be chaired by a member of the opposition.
00:05:09.180The opposition would have the majority on the committee as well as the chair.
00:05:13.180And we'd be able to deal with all of this, all of these corruption allegations, whether it's, you know, ventilators ordered from a company owned by a former Liberal MP, though the ventilators don't have regulatory approval.
00:05:27.860The issue with respect to the commercial rent assistance program, and there's a connection there between the Prime Minister's chief of staff and a family member of hers at the organization that was administering that program.
00:05:41.060And so we want to deal with all those. We want to get everything off the agenda of these other committees.
00:05:45.900Let finance do its work, which is important during the pandemic.
00:05:48.660Let the ethics committee, government operations, official languages, all the committees that were doing studies on this WE scandal, let them get back to their business.
00:05:58.360And let's have a dedicated set of members deal with the issue of corruption, misappropriation with government spending during the pandemic.
00:06:07.480A lot of what you just talked about was inside baseball stuff, right?
00:06:10.800This is inside Ottawa, inside the parliament, parliamentary precinct stuff.
00:06:16.280But what has made this kind of spread out even further is the fact that the Liberals are saying, if this motion is passed, we think we might trigger an election.
00:06:27.300We think we might call a snap election and send people to the polls during a pandemic, an election that nobody wants.
00:06:35.120And the fact that this will be the first time in history a motion triggers the fall of a government.
00:06:43.380And if the Liberals deem this a vote of confidence in the government, which they say they have, really, they're just trying to bully the opposition into not supporting this motion, believing that the opposition doesn't want an election.
00:07:01.260And look, we don't, you know, we've amended our motion to include text saying that the passage of this motion does not warrant a general election.
00:07:12.980You know, we're in the second wave of the pandemic.
00:07:15.420But what we're trying to address is the third wave of liberal corruption.
00:07:18.740We have, you know, Justin Trudeau twice found guilty of breaking ethics laws.
00:07:22.620You remember his trip to Billionaire Island.
00:07:24.040You remember his criminal interference in the prosecution of, or his interference in the criminal prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
00:07:30.640And now here we are with his latest scandal.
00:08:27.960And any time, any time there's a, you know, a right of center politician who is being chased by legislators in another country, you know, the liberals lap it up.
00:08:43.500They want to paint Canada's conservatives with the same brush as, you know, politicians on foreign soils and other lands.
00:08:50.920And here we have, you know, a repeat offender with the Conflict of Interest Act, Justin Trudeau, up to bat for a third time and willing to bring down the government, willing to go to an election to stop investigations into scandals with his government.
00:09:09.300And if we saw this happen anywhere else in the world, we'd be calling for, you know, Canadians to go and monitor the election.
00:09:15.040We'd be calling, you know, for, you know, statements of condemnation at the United Nations.
00:09:20.480But here we have it right in our own backyard.
00:09:22.740And Justin Trudeau is so fearful of what's inside these documents of Canadians finding out about it that he's willing to shut down Parliament.
00:09:30.960Which, what does that tell you, Jamie, that there's more to see here, right?
00:09:36.300If it's that easy, if there's nothing to see, put it all out on the table.
00:09:41.740Let's see what the relationship was between the Trudeau government and the Kielbergers who run the WE Charity.
00:09:47.300Let's talk about the rental assistant program that wasn't taken up to the level it was supposed to, but had a connection to someone in the prime minister's office, which then had an effect on that program.
00:09:58.880It wasn't a very successful program because of a number of factors built into it.
00:10:03.880But there were potential conflicts that are out there.
00:10:07.920And I think that that's where I agree with you.
00:10:09.440We do need, we as the official opposition, we are sworn to hold the government to account.
00:10:25.440I know the media is covering it right now.
00:10:27.700Coverage is different than their outrage.
00:10:29.760They would have experts around the table shaking their fists and falling on the ground and telling us what a horrible thing it is for the Conservatives, which it would have been.
00:10:38.540But you don't see that to the level the Liberals are.
00:10:41.400And this is, I think, how they are able to continue to function because that level of outrage is not there.
00:11:31.020We're talking about half a billion dollars.
00:11:32.800So, you know, this is more than 10 times the amount of money on just the one issue of the Canada Student Service Grant.
00:11:38.320And it's quite the fight to scrap for coverage.
00:11:43.840And today, while the Prime Minister is saying that he's going to trigger an election, if we look into, you know, this huge scandal, you know, half a billion dollar scandal in his government.
00:11:55.340You know, one of the questions at the press conference for him this morning was, what are your plans for trick-or-treating with your children, Prime Minister?
00:12:01.180So, I mean, like, look, I know that folks are, you know, trying to figure out, you know, social norms during the pandemic.
00:12:10.220But it's pretty, it's fundamental that our press, it's fundamental that our public are putting the questions to the government, to members, so that we can have confidence in our institutions.
00:12:25.520The job that members do is tremendously important.
00:12:28.820And I don't need to tell you that, Jamie.
00:12:30.000I mean, balancing the work as a constituency MP, as a legislator, as a shadow minister, all of these jobs have important, you know, they're important pieces of our federation.
00:12:43.260You know, we execute functions laid out in the constitution of our country.
00:12:48.200And, you know, while we do need to hold the government to account on their pandemic response, and we're doing that, we also need to hold them to account on these ethical issues.
00:12:59.980And we are, as an opposition, we're able to walk and chew gum.
00:13:04.580We expect the government to be able to do the same.
00:13:06.860And certainly, we should hear some more hard-hitting questions than which costume the Prime Minister is going to select for his Halloween this year.
00:13:18.940Well, you raised a good point, because our former leader, Andrew Scheer, raised this, too, towards the end of his time.
00:13:27.820The media fawns all over Kamala Harris.
00:13:31.840But yet, Leslyn Lewis gets barely a blip, and she was running to be the Prime Minister of Canada.
00:13:38.340And the level of coverage, the differences, and the level of outrage is so vast.