Report From Parliament Hill

Eric Melillo, MP, Kenora Riding

Dear Constituents

After nine years of the Trudeau government, life has never been more difficult for Canadians. But for Prime Minister’s well-connected Liberal friends, life has never been so good.
Recently, the Auditor General of Canada found that the Prime Minister has turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. This follows revelations of a senior civil servant who slammed the “outright incompetence” of the Trudeau Government, calling the SDTC’s actions “a sponsorship-scandal level kind of giveaway.”
The Auditor General found that the SDTC had “awarded funding to projects that were ineligible, [and where] conflicts of interest existed.” In total, $123 million worth of contracts were found to have been given inappropriately, with $59 million being given to projects that never should have been awarded any money at all.
On top of this, the Auditor General discovered that conflicts of interests were connected to approval decisions. As a consequence of this, nearly $76 million of funding was awarded to projects where there was a connection to the Liberals. While $12 million of funding was given to projects that were both ineligible and had a conflict of interest.
In fact, the Auditor General discovered that long-established conflict of interest policies were not followed in 90 cases. In one instance, Trudeau’s handpicked SDTC chair siphoned off $217,000 to her own company.
The Auditor General made it clear that the blame for this scandal lies directly at the feet of the Prime Minister’s Industry Minister, Francois-Phillipe Champagne, who “did not sufficiently monitor” the contracts that were being awarded to Liberal insiders. Champagne utterly failed in his duty to protect the Canadian taxpayer.
This government is not worth the cost and is not worth the corruption. Only Conservatives will end the corruption and bring home common sense to Ottawa.
Working for You 
If you’re planning to be in Ottawa and are interested in attending Question Period or taking a tour of Parliament, please let me know and my office can help reserve Question Period and tour tickets. 
As always, if there is anything my office can assist you with, please call me at 807-223-2182 (Dryden) or 807-468-2170 (Kenora) or email me at eric.melillo@parl.gc.ca.
Sincerely,
Eric Melillo
Member of Parliament
Kenora Riding