Slush Fund Scandal

Auditor General Finds That Trudeau Gave Hundreds of Millions To Liberal Insiders

June 5, 2024

After nine years of Justin Trudeau, life has never been more difficult for Canadians. But for Justin Trudeau’s well-connected Liberal friends, life has never been so good.

The Auditor General of Canada found that Trudeau has turned Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) into a slush fund for Liberal insiders. This follows a secret recording 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 Liberal’s friends appointed to roles within SDTC. 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 Justin Trudeau’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.

Justin Trudeau is not worth the cost and is not worth the corruption. Only Conservatives will end the corruption and bring home common sense to Ottawa.

Read the full report here