Freeland Spending $2 Billion On Non-Existant Company Is Worse Than McKenna’s Misplaced Billions

One of the most symbolic moments from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government that highlights the record levels of incompetence has to be the former Minister of Infrastructure Catherine McKenna being unable to account for billions in public work projects. 

It was reported back in June 2020, that McKenna and the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) could not show evidence to back up the existence of 32,000 subsidized public works projects out of a total of 52,000 that were funded. This does not mean the 32,000 projects were not supported (ignoring whether or not the projects were in the public interest) but the insanity of spending $57.5 billion and not knowing how the majority of that money was spent is staggering. 

Although what McKenna and the Liberal government did on that public works program demonstrated their utter lack of competence, and raises additional questions of financial impropriety due to the lack of accountability, on an ethical level this still pales in comparison to what our current Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland just did in late 2022. 

As previously reported the Liberals passed Bill C-32 in late December 2022 which included a $2 billion allotment for Freeland to use to buy stocks in an investment corporation that literally did not exist.

This was pointed out by Conservative Senator Elizabeth Marshall when the Bill went before the senate for approval. Marshall pointed out that because the corporation does not exist one would have to assume Minister Freeland is planning to establish a new government-controlled corporation, but then also pointed out there was no existing Act laying out the duties and limitations of such an investment corporation.

Freeland had no ability to respond to any of the questions put to her by Senator Marshall other than trying to reassure her that the $2 billion going towards a new Canada Growth Fund (as well as the coming $15 billion initial investment capital) will be managed properly, despite no oversight mechanism. 

This corporation costing $2 billion to establish may seem like a drop in the bucket compared to Catherine McKenna losing track of tens of billions, but that instance of incompetence resulted in McKenna being forced to move on from politics, in Freeland’s case it is highly unlikely anything will be done about the obvious sketchy use of taxpayer funds.

There was some form of oversight over the monies McKenna was dumping around the country, and because she failed to be transparent she was criticized vehemently. Freeland has set up a system that is meant to be opaque on its face, which means there is no way for Freeland to be called out for misused funds unless someone from inside the Canada Growth Fund admits to it.

The Canada Growth Fund won’t even give the Canadian public the ability to see what the fund buys, sells, or invests in. If that doesn’t sound like a fantastic opportunity for fraud and influence peddling I don’t know what is.

I have no doubt the Canada Growth Fund is slated to be specifically trying to fund green technology projects in part because the industry is full of so many boondoggles and underperforming firms there are a lot of built-in excuses for projects Freeland funds to heavily under-deliver. 

What Chrystia Freeland and the Liberals have established within Bill C-32 is not just another poorly managed program (you should expect Liberal programs to be poorly managed) it is an intelligently established way for the government to (potentially) hand out money to their friends without anything looking off. This is why this $2 billion scandal needs far more attention on it than previous Liberal scandals involving the misuse or money.