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National

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

Published

1 month ago

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

Chainsaws and Scalpels: How Governments Choose

Published on November 17, 2024

By

The Audit

 David Clinton

Javier Milei in Argentina, Musk and Ramaswamy in the US.. What does DOGE in Canada look like?

Under their new(ish) president Javier Milei, Argentina cut deeply and painfully into their program spending to address a catastrophic economic crisis. And they seem to have enjoyed some early success. With Elon Musk now primed to play a similar role in the coming Trump administration in the U.S., the obvious question is: how might such an approach play out in Canada?

Sure. We’re not suffering from headaches on anything like the scale of Argentina’s – the debt we’ve run up so far isn’t in the same league as the long-term spending going on in South America. But ignoring the problems we do face can’t be an option. Given that the annual interest payments on our existing national debt are $11.7 billion (which equals seven percent of total expenditures), simply balancing the budget won’t be enough.

The underlying assumption powering the question is that we live in a world of constraints. There just isn’t enough money to buy everything we might want, so we need to both prioritize and become more efficient. It’s about figuring out what can no longer be justified – even if it does provide some value – and what’s just plain wasteful.

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Some of this may seem obvious. After all, when there are First Nations reserves without clean water and millions of Canadians without access to primary care physicians, how can we justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars funding arts projects that virtually no one will ever discover, much less consume?

Apparently not everyone sees things that way. Large governments operate by reacting to political, social, and chaos-driven incentives. Sometimes those incentives lead to rational choices, and sometimes not. But mega-sized organizations tend to lack the self-awareness and capacity to easily change direction.

And some basic problems have no obvious solutions. As I’ve written, there’s a real possibility that all the money in the world won’t buy the doctors, nurses, and integrated systems we need. And “all the money in the world” is obviously not on the table. So the well-meaning bureaucrat might conclude that if you’re not going to completely solve the big problems, you might as well try to manage them while investing in other areas, too.

Still, I think it’s worth imagining how things might look if we could launch a comprehensive whole-of-government program review.

How Emergency Cuts Might Play Out

Imagine the federal government defaulted on its debt servicing payments and lost access to capital markets. That’s not such an unlikely scenario. There would suddenly be a lot less money available to spend, and some programs would have to be shut down. Protecting emergency and core services would require making fast – and smart – decisions.

We would need to take a long, hard look at this important enumeration of government expenditures. There probably wouldn’t be enough time to bridge the gap by looking for dozens of less-critical million-dollar programs. We would need to find some big-ticket items fast.

Our first step might be to pause or restructure larger ongoing payments, like projects funded through the Canada Infrastructure Bank (total annual budget: $3.45 billion). Private investors might pick up some of the slack, or some projects could simply go into hibernation. “Other interest costs” (total annual budget: $4.6 billion) could also be restructured.

Reducing equalization payments (total annual budget: $25.2 billion) and territorial financing (total budget: $5.2 billion) might also be necessary. This would, of course, spark parallel crises at lower levels of government. Similarly, grants to settle First Nations claims (total budget: $6 billion) managed by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada would also be at least temporarily cut.

All that would be deeply painful and trigger long-term negative consequences.

But there’s a far better approach that could be just as effective and a whole lot less painful:

What an All-of-Government Review Might Discover

Planning ahead would allow you the luxury of targeting spending that – in some cases at least – wouldn’t even be missed. Think about programs that were announced five, ten, even thirty years ago, perhaps to satisfy some passing fad or political need. They might even have made sense decades ago when they were created…but that was decades ago when they were created.

Here’s how that’ll work. When you read through the program and transfer spending items on that government expenditures page (and there are around 1,200 of those items), the descriptions all point to goals that seem reasonable enough. But there are some important questions that should be asked about each of them:

  • When did these programs begin?
  • What specific activities do they involve?
  • What have they accomplished over the past 12 months?
  • Is their effectiveness trending up or down?
  • Are they employing efficiency best-practices used in the private sector?
  • Who’s tasked with monitoring changes?
  • Where are their reports published?

To show you what I mean, here are some specific transfer or program line items and their descriptions:

Department of Employment and Social Development

  • Workforce Development Agreements ($722 million)
  • Indigenous Early Learning and Child Care Transformation Initiative ($374 million)
  • Payments to provinces, territories, municipalities, other public bodies, organizations, groups, communities, employers and individuals for the provision of training and/or work experience, the mobilization of community resources, and human resource planning and adjustment measures necessary for the efficient functioning of the Canadian labour market ($856 million)

Department of Industry

  • Contributions under the Strategic Innovation Fund ($2.4 billion)

Department of Citizenship and Immigration

  • Settlement Program ($1.13 billion)

Department of Indigenous Services

  • Contributions to provide income support to on-reserve residents and Status Indians in the Yukon Territory ($1.05 billion). Note that, as of the 2021 Census, there were 9,150 individuals with North American Indigenous origins in Yukon. Assuming the line item is accurately described, that means the income support came to $114,987/person (not per household; per person).

Each one of those (and many, many others like them) could be case studies in operational efficiency and effectiveness. Or not. But there’s no way we could know that without serious research.

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Energy

Ottawa’s proposed emission cap lacks any solid scientific or economic rationale

Published on November 17, 2024

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Jock Finlayson and Elmira Aliakbari

Forcing down Canadian oil and gas emissions within a short time span (five to seven years) is sure to exact a heavy economic price, especially when Canada is projected to experience a long period of weak growth in inflation-adjusted incomes and GDP per person.

After two years of deliberations, the Trudeau government (specifically, the Environment and Climate Change Canada department) has unveiled the final version of Ottawa’s plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from the oil and gas sector.

The draft regulations, which still must pass the House and Senate to become law, stipulate that oil and gas producers must reduce emissions by 35 per cent from 2019 levels by between 2030 and 2032. They also would establish a “cap and trade” regulatory regime for the sector. Under this system, each oil and gas facility is allocated a set number of allowances, with each allowance permitting a specific amount of annual carbon emissions. These allowances will decrease over time in line with the government’s emission targets.

If oil and gas producers exceed their allowances, they can purchase additional ones from other companies with allowances to spare. Alternatively, they could contribute to a “decarbonization” fund or, in certain cases, use “offset credits” to cover a small portion of their emissions. While cutting production is not required, lower oil and gas production volumes will be an indirect outcome if the cost of purchasing allowances or other compliance options becomes too high, making it more economical for companies to reduce production to stay within their emissions limits.

The oil and gas industry accounts for almost 31 per cent of Canada’s GHG emissions, while transportation and buildings contribute 22 and 13 per cent, respectively. However, the proposed cap applies exclusively to the oil and gas sector, exempting the remaining 69 per cent of the country’s GHG emissions. Targeting a single industry in this way is at odds with the policy approach recommended by economists including those who favour strong action to address climate change.

The oil and gas cap also undermines the Trudeau government’s repeated claims that carbon-pricing is the main lever policymakers are using to reduce GHG emissions. In its 2023 budget (page 71), the government said “Canada has taken a market-driven approach to emissions reduction. Our world-leading carbon pollution pricing system… is highly effective because it provides a clear economic signal to businesses and allows them the flexibility to find the most cost-effective way to lower their emissions.”

This assertion is vitiated by the expanding array of other measures Ottawa has adopted to reduce emissions—hefty incentives and subsidies, product standards, new regulations and mandates, toughened energy efficiency requirements, and (in the case of oil and gas) limits on emissions. Most of these non-market measures come with a significantly higher “marginal abatement cost”—that is, the additional cost to the economy of reducing emissions by one tonne—compared to the carbon price legislated by the Trudeau government.

And there are other serious problems with the proposed oil and gas emissions gap. For one, emissions have the same impact on the climate regardless of the source; there’s no compelling reason to target a single sector. As a group of Canadian economists wrote back in 2023, climate policies targeting specific industries (or regions) are likely to reduce emissions at a much higher overall cost per tonne of avoided emissions.

Second, forcing down Canadian oil and gas emissions within a short time span (five to seven years) is sure to exact a heavy economic price, especially when Canada is projected to experience a long period of weak growth in inflation-adjusted incomes and GDP per person, according to the OECD and other forecasting agencies. The cap stacks an extra regulatory cost on top of the existing carbon price charged to oil and gas producers. The cap also promises to foster complicated interactions with provincial regulatory and carbon-pricing regimes that apply to the oil and gas sector, notably Alberta’s industrial carbon-pricing system.

The Conference Board of Canada think-tank, the consulting firm Deloitte, and a study published by our organization (the Fraser Institute) have estimated the aggregate cost of the federal government’s emissions cap. All these projections reasonably assume that Canadian oil and gas producers will scale back production to meet the cap. Such production cuts will translate into many tens of billions of lost economic output, fewer high-paying jobs across the energy supply chain and in the broader Canadian economy, and a significant drop in government revenues.

Finally, it’s striking that the Trudeau government’s oil and gas emissions cap takes direct aim at what ranks as Canada’s number one export industry, which provides up to one-quarter of the country’s total exports. We can’t think of another advanced economy that has taken such a punitive stance toward its leading export sector.

In short, the Trudeau government’s proposed cap on GHG emissions from the oil and gas industry lacks any solid scientific, economic or policy rationale. And it will add yet more costs and complexity to Canada’s already shambolic, high-cost and ever-growing suite of climate policies. The cap should be scrapped, forthwith.

Authors:

Jock Finlayson
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
Elmira Aliakbari
Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute
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