Sorry, Prime Minister, The Pandemic is Not an Excuse for Corruption
Last week, Parliament debated our Opposition Day motion to appoint a special anti-corruption committee to investigate Liberal misuse of public funds during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past five years, we have seen scandal after scandal from this government. From Trudeau’s use of taxpayers’ dollars to fund his illegal vacation on a billionaire lobbyist’s private island, to SNC Lavalin, to the more recent WE Scandal where Trudeau gave almost a billion dollars to a liberal-linked organization that was handsomely paying his wife, brother, and mother. From the beginning there has been a consistent disdain for ethics from this government.
Government corruption is never acceptable, and during a pandemic, it is frankly disgusting. It saddens me that we need a committee such as this to investigate Liberal government corruption, but Canadians must trust that the government is serving Canadians – serving your best interests – and not just those of well-placed Liberal hacks.
With supreme cynicism, Trudeau declared this motion a “matter of confidence,” which means that if the vote had not gone the way Liberals wanted it to go, Trudeau would have called an election. The Liberals have tried to convince Canadians that we were the ones trying to force an election during a pandemic, but this is simply an outright lie. Not once in the history of our country has a vote on the creation of a committee been declared a matter of confidence. Mind you, no Prime Minister had ever been found guilty of repeatedly violating our ethics laws either. Until Trudeau.
The truth of the matter is that Trudeau would have called an election to block any investigation into his and his government’s corruption. He was willing to send voters to the polls during a pandemic, potentially exposing them to COVID-19, without even bothering to consult our Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam on the health risks. Trudeau was quite willing to put you and your families at risk just to cover up his own corruption.
The Liberals are defending their refusal to support the motion by saying that the creation of this committee would detract from the government’s ability to deal with the pandemic. With almost 300,000 employees, rest assured the government would have had no problem both supplying existing documents to the committee and running the country. Are the Liberals so incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time that they would be unable to balance governing with providing documentation to a single committee?
Time and time again, the Liberals have shown that they believe rules and laws simply don’t apply to them. Senior Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux justified Liberal corruption last week in debate with me: “One would think that during a worldwide pandemic, the Conservatives would maybe put the brakes on [their ethics questions] for a little while… I do not quite understand why even during a pandemic they do not see the value of putting their five-year-long ethical question on hold.” Mr. Lamoureux, the pandemic does not justify Trudeau’s corruption. A government cannot adequately respond to a crisis of such magnitude when it is misusing public funds and covering up its corruption. But the Liberals are too entitled to understand that even though it may inconvenience the Prime Minister and his friends, ethics and honesty are still priorities for Canadians.
Unfortunately, the NDP and Green Party backed the Liberals on last Wednesday’s vote, defeating the motion and preventing the creation of the committee. We will not let the Liberals get away with hiding their misconduct and, as such, introduced a second motion for the Health Committee to study the government’s COVID-19 response, including gifting our much-needed PPE to Communist China, shutting down our vital pandemic early-warning system, and using taxpayers funds to line the pockets of Liberal insiders.
The Liberals are doing everything they can to block us, but I will continue to fight for the accountability, transparency, and integrity that you deserve. As always, thank you for putting your trust in me to represent you in Ottawa.
Thanks for reading,
Kelly McCauley
Member of Parliament
Edmonton West