The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - “Where are my tax dollars going？”

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprints. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm

00:00:08.340 your host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton, Kawartha Lakes, Brock, with

00:00:11.720 new content for you every single Tuesday. On today's show, we are talking about the

00:00:16.520 Liberals' $1 billion slush fund, so please like, comment, subscribe, and share this program.

00:00:22.140 Of course, if you want Pierre Polyev to be the next Prime Minister, eyes and ears have

00:00:26.140 to see and listen to the message here, because you're not getting it from the mainstream

00:00:29.540 media, so you can listen to it, tell your friends, download it on platforms like CastBox,

00:00:33.680 iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. So to talk about that slush fund, much, much more, we

00:00:38.380 have Michael Barrett, a good friend of the show, coming back on once again, the Member

00:00:41.940 of Parliament for Leeds, Grenville, Thousand Islands, and Rideau Lakes, also the Critic

00:00:46.100 for Ethics. Thank you for joining us. Always a pleasure to be here. I got your

00:00:49.760 writing right, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, you knocked it out. See, there we go. Yeah, better than any

00:00:54.100 of the speakers in the House are able to. Absolutely, see? That's not what I'm

00:00:58.120 auditioning for, though. So, billion-dollar slush fund, the Liberals have this green

00:01:01.880 technology slush fund. You've been going at it hard at Committee, trying to expose.

00:01:06.940 Well, we'll talk about the $200,000 gift, but let's talk about the slush fund. What

00:01:11.600 is it? What's going on? What are you doing at Committee? So, Sustainable Development

00:01:15.060 Technologies Canada has a billion taxpayer dollars and a Liberal-appointed board chair who is supposed

00:01:24.280 to be funding, you know, green tech startups. Whistleblowers came forward about a year ago

00:01:31.240 and brought their concerns to the Prime Minister's department, the Privy Council office. Well,

00:01:36.200 they referred them to the industry minister's office. And the... So, it was a big priority. So,

00:01:42.760 big priority. Huge priority. Big priority. And the industry minister then received an independent

00:01:50.200 report that they had asked for from a company called Raymond Shabbat Grant Thornton RCGT. And

00:01:59.880 this report sampled just a small number of projects. So, the slush fund has funded hundreds

00:02:06.600 of projects. They sampled about two dozen. And they found $40 million in ineligible payments that

00:02:16.600 were made. So, funding that was not appropriate for the contribution agreement as it's set out

00:02:22.120 by the rules that they have with the government of Canada. So, on just a handful of projects,

00:02:28.680 they found $40 million. It identified gross mismanagement and conflicts of interest.

00:02:33.560 So, we had them in committee. And of course, there was a lot of resistance from the Liberals about

00:02:40.280 about getting these officials to come to committee. And within a two-week period, we had the Auditor

00:02:47.000 General investigating, even though the minister said there's nothing to see here. We have the CEO,

00:02:53.720 who has now resigned under the Auditor General investigation, the cloud of that.

00:02:59.960 Then, I wrote to the Ethics Commissioner, the Interim Ethics Commissioner, identifying a problem

00:03:05.960 with, you know, you talked about this $200,000 number. And so, I wrote a letter to the Ethics

00:03:11.160 Commissioner. And the Ethics Commissioner says, yep, we're going to launch an investigation into the

00:03:15.560 Liberal-appointed board chair, Ned for Sharon. And she resigned on learning that she's now under

00:03:21.560 investigation, which it doesn't get her away from the light of it. So, that's within two weeks. The

00:03:27.160 CEO and the board chair both resigning, Auditor General and Ethics Commissioner investigation.

00:03:32.200 And the industry minister said he has full confidence in the process and the board and

00:03:37.080 doesn't want anyone to worry. They've got this well in hand, only $40 million.

00:03:42.280 It's all under control.

00:03:43.480 All under control.

00:03:44.680 So, this board chair decides we're going to move a motion to give her company $200,000 in contracts. 1.00

00:03:52.760 Yeah, a little more than $200,000. And she said that it's fine. She didn't break any rules.

00:03:57.640 She's good.

00:03:58.440 She asked her lawyer and her lawyer said, yep, that check will clear.

00:04:01.480 Gotcha. So, I guess everyone, you know, $40 million, some questions around that. I guess

00:04:09.080 she thought, well, might as well try to get my company some of this action.

00:04:12.600 Yeah, what's a couple hundred thousand dollars between friends, right? And when pressed, we also

00:04:17.000 learned that the company that she controls, that she directed this $200,000 plus to, she then

00:04:25.480 drew $120,000 from that company. So,

00:04:28.360 So, she's doing hard work.

00:04:30.920 Well, she would say so. And of course, this is a blatant conflict of interest. At the very least,

00:04:36.680 it's the appearance of a conflict. But this stinks to the high heavens. And that's why

00:04:44.040 a fact-finding exercise that was done, that RCGT report, found tens of millions of dollars in

00:04:49.960 ineligible payments. And it's important to note, Jamie, that when the Auditor General,

00:04:56.680 the Deputy Auditor General came before a committee a couple of weeks ago, the Liberals said, well,

00:05:00.920 you know, this fund existed when they were conservatives in government. So, your audit's

00:05:03.880 going to cover that period, right? And he said, absolutely not. The Auditor General investigated

00:05:08.920 the Sustainable Development Technologies Canada through to 2017. Everything we're talking about

00:05:16.040 has been part of the umbrella of corruption, scandal, waste, and mismanagement of Justin Trudeau

00:05:22.360 and his NDP Liberal government. That's exactly what this Auditor General report's going to look at.

00:05:27.400 And the Ethics Commissioner is specifically targeting Trudeau's hand-picked chair. This is a

00:05:34.360 liberal corruption problem. And it's part of this pattern that we've seen, of course, that I've

00:05:38.360 been on the show to talk about many times. Too many times.

00:05:41.080 Too many times. So, we have a slush fund given out to all these companies, $40 million with a big

00:05:49.240 question mark around it, as we kind of dig deeper into it. Canadians are struggling. Canadians are

00:05:56.040 hurting. There's a lot of misery out there, all created by this government. And we have proposed

00:06:00.520 solutions for pretty much all of the problems that this government has created. At the same time,

00:06:06.760 liberals just continue to do what they do best, be liberals, and just dig into the cookie jar.

00:06:12.840 This is unbelievable. It really is unbelievable because there's a blatant conflict of interest

00:06:17.720 where you have the board chair who moves the motion herself, didn't just passively vote or just

00:06:22.040 sit on her hands and not raise her hand when it was time to award her own company and herself this

00:06:27.960 money, but move the motion. And this is beyond... This is really what it looks like after eight

00:06:36.440 years of Justin Trudeau. Because you said Canadians are struggling, and these insiders continue to get

00:06:43.640 paid. They get paid if they're former Liberal MPs. We saw that with contracts for ventilators that no

00:06:51.240 one ever ordered or used. We've seen this with contracts for the small business minister's

00:06:58.520 BFF. She awarded consulting contracts that are found guilty of breaking ethics laws. We see this

00:07:06.120 time and time again. And it starts from the top down. Justin Trudeau found guilty twice of breaking

00:07:11.960 Canada's ethics laws. But it always comes back to Liberals and Liberal insiders getting paid and

00:07:17.800 Canadians paying the price. And it's happening at a time when they can least afford it. It's heartbreaking.

00:07:24.120 It's heartbreaking to see the numbers on paper about food bank usage. But I know that over our

00:07:32.440 constituency weeks and every time that we're in our community, we see firsthand people in our community

00:07:37.480 and we hear from them who are struggling. People who are working one job, two jobs, and going to the food

00:07:43.160 bank because of the policies of Justin Trudeau's government. And it's devastating for them to see

00:07:50.840 this kind of corruption and insider dealing. Well, out of the $400 billion that was created

00:07:55.800 out of thin air, half of which the parliamentary budget officer confirmed that had nothing to do with

00:08:00.280 COVID but was couched in the language of COVID. Had the Liberals stuck to some fiscal responsibility

00:08:07.640 through the crisis. The inflation misery that we're feeling, we're experiencing right now that

00:08:15.400 are hurting, as you said, regular, normal Canadians might not have been so bad, but the Liberals just

00:08:22.200 could not help themselves. No, and it's stacked. It's one set of bad fiscal decisions stacked on top of

00:08:30.440 others. And so their inflationary spending, which didn't address the needs of COVID like they claimed

00:08:37.640 it had, but has been evidenced that that was not the case. And it's made all the worse by their

00:08:45.720 inflationary carbon tax, which they continue to hammer Canadians with. And the price at the grocery

00:08:51.960 stores are just out of control. And the fight has been on to get private members' bills passed,

00:08:58.280 to have farmers exempt from the carbon tax for things like grain drying and heating and cooling

00:09:06.280 on their farms. And the Liberals are doing everything they can to block it. But we know

00:09:10.280 that it's going to help take pressure off of food prices. We know that. And they are ideologically

00:09:17.000 opposed to doing that. They claim that this is all about doing the right thing for the environment,

00:09:24.600 except when it's exposed to be a political agenda item. And they saw that it was causing them

00:09:31.720 political pain in Atlantic Canada. And that's why they exempted oil heat from their carbon tax.

00:09:38.280 It's ludicrous. It's 100% political. And it is driving pain for millions of Canadians.

00:09:46.520 It's not about helping people at that point. If you are taking off the tax because you are going to

00:09:52.600 lose potential seats in certain parts of the country, that's not about helping people. It's not about

00:09:59.080 going, well, we understand people are struggling. You can't feed your families, maybe not pay the

00:10:03.960 mortgage or being evicted from your apartment. It's about, well, we might lose the next election.

00:10:09.000 We can't have that. So let's take away our policy, our key priority that they said was going to save

00:10:17.160 the planet. They're taking it away for a few years until after the next election. And then those in

00:10:24.280 Atlantic Canada and elsewhere that are struggling now, they will feel the increased price when it comes

00:10:31.640 back. And they've said, and this undermines their entire argument, that 80% of Canadians get back

00:10:37.080 more from the carbon tax rebates than they pay into it. Well, if that were the case,

00:10:44.760 why do they need to take it off? Why are they exempting the dirtiest form of home heating from

00:10:51.560 the carbon tax if people are better off for paying it? So aren't they actually, by their own logic,

00:10:56.920 taking money out of people's pockets? Of course, that's not what's happening. This scheme that they

00:11:02.600 have trying to dupe people into thinking that they're getting back more than they pay in,

00:11:07.880 it just goes back to the route where they believe that money comes out of thin air, that people can

00:11:15.480 draw more out than they're actually- And there'll be no consequences when you create currency,

00:11:19.400 when you expand the money. Well, that's right. It's a part of a series of

00:11:22.680 of broken political promises by Justin Trudeau. They said the budget was going to balance itself,

00:11:28.360 and now Canadians are being crushed, crushed by debt servicing costs in this country,

00:11:33.480 costing tens of billions of dollars. And the pain is real every day. And all the while,

00:11:40.520 corruption runs rampant in liberal Ottawa. I think this is the fundamental difference,

00:11:44.600 one of the many fundamental differences between liberals and conservatives, right?

00:11:47.960 Conservatives want you, the individual, to have as much money as you can while obviously funding

00:11:54.600 certain government services, but then being able to make your choice based on what's best for your

00:12:00.280 situation. The liberals would like to take as much money as they can get from you and then decide

00:12:06.040 what you then qualify for in terms of grants, in terms of credits, that type of thing, right?

00:12:10.920 In Atlantic Canada, they're saying heat pumps are the way to go, right? Right or wrong,

00:12:14.840 wrong. That's for the individual to decide. But at this point, it's the government that has said,

00:12:19.800 this is the one and only path that we want you to follow. And if you do, you get some money.

00:12:24.120 Well, and they claim that it's always done in this wealth redistribution scheme that they're

00:12:29.320 taking from the haves and giving it to the have-nots. But as evidenced by scandal after scandal,

00:12:37.000 tens of millions of dollars, we saw that they racked up massive consulting costs to ask consultants

00:12:46.920 about how to save money on consultant spending. And this year, the liberal government, though they

00:12:52.600 promised that they would reduce spending on consultants, will have spent more on outside

00:12:58.600 consulting agencies while having the largest public service in history. So they've never spent more

00:13:06.680 on consultants and they've never had more public servants. So it's baffling. But why is the money

00:13:12.600 going to these consulting firms? Because they're insiders. These are friends of the prime minister.

00:13:17.960 These are friends of the liberals. So it's not about giving money to the have-nots. It's about giving money

00:13:22.760 to the have-nots. They always want to improve the standing of their friends and liberal insiders,

00:13:31.880 their donors. And yeah, I'm sure there's the donations back at some point, I'm sure, or in some

00:13:39.400 fashion, some way, volunteers, who knows. Before I get on to the next topic, what is next at committee

00:13:45.240 as you investigate this green billion-dollar slush fund? What are you doing next? Well, we need more

00:13:50.200 information. This all came to light because of whistleblower revelations. So we're going to

00:13:56.840 look to have the whistleblower come before committee. We've got to get through the interference of the

00:14:02.440 NDP liberal government so that we can actually get it on the committee agenda. It's incredibly

00:14:07.800 important. But since we first brought this forward, conservatives brought this motion forward

00:14:12.120 at committee, and we fought tooth and nail to have hearings on this. Like I said, we have an Auditor

00:14:19.800 General investigation after I wrote to the Auditor General. We have an Ethics Commissioner

00:14:23.160 investigation after I wrote to the Ethics Commissioner. We have the CEO who's resigned

00:14:27.000 and the board chair who have resigned after we questioned them at committee. So we're going to

00:14:34.680 have to hear what the whistleblower has to say. I'll leave you with this, Jamie. When we asked the minister,

00:14:42.680 Philippe-Francois Champagne, if he'd read the 300-page dossier that was given to the ministry by the

00:14:51.480 whistleblowers, he said, no, no, I haven't read that. Why would you waste his time with that?

00:14:56.760 Why? Because he knows what it says, that his buddies and buddies of the liberal prime minister

00:15:03.880 are taking Canadians for a ride. Liberal insiders get paid, Canadians pay the price, and we're going to keep

00:15:11.320 digging. Well, actually, Canadians are paying the price, mortgage rates. People are struggling with

00:15:15.800 the new refinancing that's coming up and will come up. Let's cue up cut three. We have a little

00:15:20.440 exchange in the House of Commons between our leader, Pierre Polyev, and the prime minister,

00:15:25.560 Justin Trudeau. Let's cue up cut three, and we'll discuss in just a second.

00:15:29.480 And now one-fifth of all Canadians are actually unable to pay the interest on their mortgages. Their

00:15:37.080 mortgages are growing in size. When they renew, it will be at a bigger principal at a higher rate.

00:15:42.280 How many Canadians will go bankrupt, and will we have a mortgage crisis when that happens? Yes or no?

00:15:48.120 The Right Honourable Prime Minister.

00:15:50.840 The Speaker, we know Canadians are struggling right now. I heard from a mom from Oakville who actually

00:15:56.760 said that her mortgage prices, mortgage costs went up the same amount as her child care costs

00:16:04.200 came down. Thank God they cancelled each other out. But people should be doing better than that.

00:16:08.760 That's why we're going to be able to continue to be there for Canadians.

00:16:13.320 What's the solution in another government program? It's unbelievable. How would it touch

00:16:18.040 this prime minister? And this is their plan. They're going to borrow more money to shell out to Canadians

00:16:28.440 who are hurting because of the policies. It's exasperating to listen to Justin Trudeau talk about

00:16:37.240 this. I know that we're on the verge of a fall economic statement, and we'll have a budget soon

00:16:44.360 thereafter. I get asked all the time, I'm sure you do too. Well, what are your solutions? So we hear what

00:16:49.880 your problems are with the Liberals. Our solutions are very straightforward, and I am certain that in

00:16:55.560 tomorrow's fall economic statement, and I'm certain that in the upcoming budget that the Liberals aren't

00:17:01.480 going to take the path of least resistance to get the answer. Why? Because they're common sense

00:17:08.440 solutions. And our common sense solutions are very straightforward. Less bureaucracy so that we can

00:17:14.280 build homes, but his answer is always about programs and bureaucracies. It's big government and bigger

00:17:19.240 government. Two speeds. Exactly. And they're carbon tax. Not only are they keeping the carbon

00:17:25.400 tax in place for the majority of Canadians on the majority of things, which is driving up the price

00:17:29.320 of heating homes, feeding families, putting gas in the car so people can get to work at doctor's

00:17:35.880 appointments. They aren't just going to keep it on. They're going to raise the price of everything.

00:17:41.320 They're going to quadruple that tax. So it's unbelievable. They also need to stop their inflationary

00:17:48.840 spending. The problem is that they don't know that they have this problem, and the best thing that

00:17:55.400 they can do is to just stop spending. If they have something else they need to spend money on,

00:18:00.280 they need to do exactly what people do in their households, what people in our communities do,

00:18:05.640 what we do in our own households. If you have a new dollar of spending, you have to find a dollar

00:18:10.280 of savings because there's a limit every single month. And they don't understand that, and they

00:18:16.920 just keep spending the cupboards bare. Well, that's common sense, and common sense isn't

00:18:23.960 too common in the Liberal Caucus these days. Let's quickly talk about the fall economic statement that

00:18:28.920 we've got to get out of here. It's coming down in just a few hours. So let's queue up cut number two.

00:18:33.560 It's the finance minister and all our wisdom here talking about which he's going to do. Let's play cut two.

00:18:38.360 Next Tuesday, I will be delivering our government's fall economic statement. Our fall economic statement

00:18:46.440 is based on a responsible fiscal plan that allows us to invest in what Canadians need right now.

00:18:55.560 That is why the fall economic statement will be focused on two key challenges, making life more

00:19:02.520 affordable for Canadians, and taking further concrete action on housing. We know this is an

00:19:10.600 urgent priority for Canadians, and we believe that at the heart of this issue is supply, supply, supply.

00:19:21.320 Well, I'm not sure if you're going to be addressing the supply issue if your bureaucracy is bigger than

00:19:26.520 it's ever been in Canadian history. At the same time, you're not going to, as you said a few minutes

00:19:31.560 ago, tackle the affordability crisis if you're continuing to borrow to pay your air fingers cold

00:19:38.280 priorities. Yeah, exactly. They continue to raise taxes on Canadians when they can least afford it, 0.98

00:19:46.120 and they're borrowing money for programs that aren't going to address the needs that Canadians have

00:19:52.120 today. And my goodness, I have never seen so many photo ops and press releases to address a problem.

00:20:00.280 It took them the better part of a year to spend a nickel or to announce the spending of a nickel out of

00:20:06.040 their so-called housing accelerator fund, and they'd built nothing. They'd built no houses. So it concerns

00:20:14.600 me to hear that they're going to talk about opening the floodgates of spending so they can get things

00:20:21.480 built when, you know, more than a year after they announced this housing accelerator fund. And of course,

00:20:27.800 this comes from the prime minister who, in the last couple months, four months, said that housing isn't

00:20:33.720 even a federal responsibility. That's because he's failed to deliver on his successive campaign

00:20:40.600 promises to address the housing crisis in this country. And, you know, frankly, his policies,

00:20:45.960 you know, are driving that housing crisis. And I don't expect to see real solutions, common sense

00:20:52.440 solutions in the economic update from the finance minister today. So, you know, we're going to keep

00:20:59.480 pushing, you know, we've heard from, you know, our leader, Pierre Polyev, the common sense solutions

00:21:05.320 that this liberal government can adopt. We know that they're not going to, you know, pick up the

00:21:09.640 conservative, all of our conservative ideas and say, okay, let's march forward with this. But my goodness,

00:21:15.400 just stop raising taxes on Canadians. That's something that they can do today. If they want to tackle

00:21:22.040 affordability, that should be the top line in, you know, in the minister's announcement later today.

00:21:28.200 You know what? We're not going to spend anything new and we're not going to raise any taxes. And,

00:21:32.760 you know, we'll have a new budget in the spring. And I don't know if their NDP dance partners would

00:21:37.560 be okay with that. Oh, my goodness. I know there would be tens of millions of Canadians who would

00:21:44.440 see that light at the end of the tunnel if they heard that. But I don't think they're going to see

00:21:48.200 that kind of common sense and better until we have the opportunity to take it to the polls.

00:21:53.720 I can't agree with you more. As you know, the guests always get the last word and we are pretty

00:21:57.080 much out of time. Michael Barrett, the floor is yours. Well, you know, it's a pleasure to be here

00:22:01.080 always, Jamie, and have the opportunity to share this message with Canadians. Waste, corruption, 1.00

00:22:09.480 scandal, and mismanagement, it's been the hallmark of this NDP Liberal government. And after eight

00:22:14.280 years, it's on full display yet again why Justin Trudeau is not worth the cost. And we're going to bring

00:22:19.080 home accountability for Canadians. So I encourage everyone to stay tuned and share this message with

00:22:24.680 their neighbors because it's so important that we expose this government for who they are.

00:22:30.040 Michael Barrett, thank you very much for coming on. The Member of Parliament for Leeds,

00:22:33.400 Greenville, Thousand Island, Arita Lake's also the Shadow Minister for Ethics.

00:22:37.240 Thank you for your time. Thank you for yours as well. Remember, we have new content for you every

00:22:41.240 single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Like, comment, subscribe, and share this program. I guarantee

00:22:46.840 you, you do not hear this message in the mainstream media. So we need these ears to hear it. We need the

00:22:52.040 eyes to see it. You can also download on platforms like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify. Until next week,

00:22:57.720 remember, low taxes, less government, more free. That's the blue.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - November 21, 2023

“Where are my tax dollars going？”

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