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How Rick Perkins and Larry Brock Revealed a $330 Million Cover-Up While Liberal MPs Run Damage Control

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10 minute read

The True Cost of Letting Corruption Slide

Canada’s government is rotting from the inside, and if you needed more proof, look no further than Public Accounts of Canada (PACP) meeting 143. What we witnessed was a showcase of blatant corruption, institutional incompetence, and Trudeau’s Liberal elite running a racket—this time under the guise of environmentalism and “clean tech.” Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), the so-called green tech fund, has turned into nothing more than a green slush fund used to enrich Trudeau’s cronies while taxpayers foot the bill.

Let’s break it down: Trudeau’s government has turned what should have been a platform to invest in cutting-edge green technology into a cash pipeline for Liberal insiders. The PACP meeting laid bare how $330 million of taxpayer money flowed into conflicted projects approved by board members who had ties to the very companies benefiting from these funds. This isn’t negligence—this is corruption, plain and simple.

The Heroes of Accountability: Larry Brock and Rick Perkins

Two Conservative MPs stood out during this farcical hearing, and thank God they did. Larry Brock and Rick Perkins relentlessly grilled Marta Morgan, the bureaucrat who’s supposed to be in charge of overseeing SDTC. Let’s be real, though—Morgan’s job isn’t about fixing anything. Her role is to protect Trudeau’s insiders, to dodge questions, and to ensure that Canadians never find out the full extent of how deep this rot goes.

Larry Brock didn’t mince words when he compared the SDTC corruption to the Sponsorship Scandal, the Liberal boondoggle from the early 2000s that took down the Martin government. In this case, billions of dollars earmarked for clean technology are being funneled into projects tied to people sitting on SDTC’s board. “This is the sponsorship-style level of corruption within the government, the likes of which we haven’t seen since that scandal,” Brock declared.

Brock’s comparison is spot on. The Sponsorship Scandal was about buying influence with taxpayer money, and SDTC is no different. What’s worse is that this time, it’s all happening under the guise of fighting climate change. Trudeau’s Liberals have mastered the art of using high-minded rhetoric about the environment to hide what’s really happening—a cash grab for Liberal-friendly businesses.

Then there’s Rick Perkins, who absolutely took Marta Morgan to task. He demanded answers about why the SDTC board hadn’t taken steps to recover the $330 million in conflicted transactions. Let’s not forget that Annette Verschuren, former SDTC chair, was found guilty by the Ethics Commissioner for approving $220,000 in funds to her own company. Perkins didn’t hesitate to ask Morgan why the board hadn’t moved to recover this money, despite months having passed since the findings came to light.

“Why have you not taken steps to recover money for the taxpayer? The mandate is there—why aren’t you acting?” Perkins asked pointedly.

Morgan’s response? The same old bureaucratic doublespeak we’ve heard for years. “It has taken a few months for the board to get up and running… We have engaged legal advice,” she said, failing to provide any real answer. That’s not oversight—it’s stonewalling.

Morgan’s Evasion, Liberal Corruption Laid Bare

Morgan’s refusal to answer basic questions about conflicts of interest or the recovery of misallocated funds is exactly what you’d expect from Trudeau’s bureaucrats. When Perkins asked which law firm was advising SDTC on recovering taxpayer funds, Morgan dodged. She refused to name the firm, hiding behind vague references to “ongoing processes.” But let’s be clear here—this is all about protecting the same insiders who enabled this corruption in the first place.

Perkins saw right through it. “Are you getting legal advice as to what process should be followed to recover money? Yes or no? And if you say yes, which law firm is giving you that advice?” he asked, exposing the depth of the cover-up. Morgan couldn’t answer. Why? Because naming the firm would likely reveal the same old swamp creatures, still entangled in this corrupt web of green grift.

This isn’t about oversight or accountability—this is about Trudeau’s Liberals using every trick in the book to protect their insiders.

Redactions, Non-Answers, and Bureaucratic Cover-Ups

But it wasn’t just about recovering money. Larry Brock highlighted the heavily redacted documents that SDTC provided to the committee. He slammed the government for hiding the truth from Canadians, calling the redactions a deliberate attempt to cover up the depth of the corruption. “No small surprise that government departments heavily redacted hundreds of pages… the opposite of transparency and accountability!” Brock exclaimed, expressing the frustration that every taxpayer should feel.

It’s infuriating but not surprising. Trudeau’s Liberals love to talk about transparency and openness, but when push comes to shove, they’ll redact every piece of evidence that exposes their corruption. They know the truth is damning, and they’ll do anything to keep it hidden.

Brock also pressed Morgan on why SDTC continued to take legal advice from Osler, the very firm that helped facilitate the conflicts of interest at the heart of this scandal. Perkins had hammered her on this earlier, and Brock followed up, demanding an explanation for why SDTC hadn’t cut ties with a firm so deeply implicated in the corruption.

Morgan’s response? You guessed it—another non-answer. “Processes are being followed, and we’re looking at legal structures,” she mumbled, refusing to explain why the same law firm that helped create this mess is still providing legal advice. It’s absurd, but it’s par for the course in Trudeau’s Canada.

Liberal MPs Like Iqra Khalid: Protecting the Swamp

Let’s not forget Liberal MP Iqra Khalid, who swooped in during the committee to do what she does best—protect Trudeau’s swamp. Rather than asking tough questions or holding the government accountable, she focused on soft issues like governance improvements and the future of SDTC. Khalid didn’t once mention the $330 million in misallocated funds or the conflicts of interest that allowed board members to enrich themselves.

Instead, she harped on future reforms and administrative improvements, as if that would somehow wipe away the corruption embedded in this system. Khalid is playing a role that every Liberal shill plays—pretend everything is fine, talk about process, and hope that Canadians forget about the billions of dollars being wasted.

The Bigger Picture: SNC-Lavalin Was the Warning

This SDTC scandal is bigger than just the misallocation of funds. It’s a pattern of corruption that’s plagued Trudeau’s government from day one. If you look back, SNC-Lavalin was the canary in the coal mine. That scandal showed us exactly what Trudeau is willing to do—protect his corporate friends at all costs. Trudeau went so far as to pressure his own Attorney General to interfere in a criminal case to help SNC-Lavalin avoid prosecution for bribery.

Back then, Liberal voters shrugged. Trudeau got away with it, and now we’re seeing the consequences. This green slush fund is what happens when corruption goes unchecked. Liberals have become emboldened, knowing that they can use virtue-signaling about the environment to enrich their own, all while claiming they’re saving the planet.

This is what happens when corruption slides.

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Business

It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

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From the  Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers

The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.

Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.

These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.

Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.

In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.

Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.

According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.

Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.

A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.

Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.

Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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2025 Federal Election

Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s

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By Gage Haubrich

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is planning to borrow more money than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

That’s an odd plan for a former banker because the federal government is already spending more on debt interest payments than it spends on health-care transfers to the provinces.

Let’s take a deeper look at Carney’s plan.

Carney says that his government would “spend less, invest more.”

At first glance, that might sound better than the previous decade of massive deficits and increasing debt, but does that sound like a real change?

Because if you open a thesaurus, you’ll find that “spend” and “invest” are synonyms, they mean the same thing.

And Carney’s platform shows it. Carney plans to increase government spending by $130 billion. He plans to increase the federal debt by $225 billion over the next four years. That’s about $100 billion more than Trudeau was planning borrow over the same period, according to the most recent Fall Economic Statement.

Carney is planning to waste $5.6 billion more on debt interest charges than Trudeau. Interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion per week.

The platform claims that Carney will run a budget surplus in 2028, but that’s nonsense. Because once you include the $48 billion of spending in Carney’s “capital” budget, the tiny surplus disappears, and taxpayers are stuck with more debt.

And that’s despite planning to take even more money from Canadians in years ahead. Carney’s platform shows that his carbon tariff, another carbon tax on Canadians, will cost taxpayers $500 million.

The bottom line is that government spending, no matter what pile it is put into, is just government spending. And when the government spends too much, that means it must borrow more money, and taxpayers have to pay the interest payments on that irresponsible borrowing.

Canadians don’t even believe that Carney can follow through on his watered-down plan. A majority of Canadians are skeptical that Carney will balance the operational budget in three years, according to Leger polling.

All Carney’s plan means for Canadians is more borrowing and higher debt. And taxpayers can’t afford anymore debt.

When the Liberals were first elected the debt was $616 billion. It’s projected to reach almost $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, that means the debt has more than doubled in the last decade.

Every single Canadian’s individual share of the federal debt averages about $30,000.

Interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. That’s more than the government takes in GST from Canadians. That means every time you go to the grocery store, fill up your car with gas, or buy almost anything else, all that federal sales tax you pay isn’t being used for anything but paying for the government’s poor financial decisions.

Creative accounting is not the solution to get the government’s fiscal house in order. It’s spending cuts. And Carney even says this.

“The federal government has been spending too much,” said Carney. He then went on to acknowledge the huge spending growth of the government over the last decade and the ballooning of the federal bureaucracy. A serious plan to balance the budget and pay down debt includes cutting spending and slashing bureaucracy.

But the Conservatives aren’t off the hook here either. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will balance the budget “as soon as possible,” but hasn’t told taxpayers when that is.

More debt today means higher taxes tomorrow. That’s because every dollar borrowed by the federal government must be paid back plus interest. Any party that says it wants to make life more affordable also needs a plan to start paying back the debt.

Taxpayers need a government that will commit to balancing the budget for real and start paying back debt, not one that is continuing to pile on debt and waste billions on interest charges.

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