Senator Gold, yesterday, a former senior executive at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Bob Pickard, testified before the Canada-China Committee. Mr. Pickard, who blew the whistle on Beijing’s influence on the Canadian taxpayer-funded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, provided jarring testimony, stating that the president of the bank “ . . . articulates Chinese government policy as if it were his own.” He said that the Chinese Communist Party exerts undue influence in everyday operations of the bank.

That is just part of the really alarming element. Mr. Pickard stated that Canada has not received a single thing of tangible value by giving a quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayer money to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and that he is unaware of the Liberal government demanding a return of that money.

Senator Gold, is that true? Has Justin Trudeau even bothered to ask for the money back? Why is it that this Trudeau government is always serving the dictatorship in Beijing over the interests of Canadian taxpayers?

Your last statement is simply untrue. As has been stated by the minister and by me in this chamber, the government has taken seriously the allegations with regard to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Our participation has been suspended. Measures are being taken to determine, in a proper and responsible way, how we move forward.

Again, I remind colleagues that the government is responding properly and appropriately to the changing relationship that we have and that we now understand with China.

Turning over hundreds of millions of dollars to the dictatorship in Beijing is not responsible. Senator Gold, after eight years, Trudeau’s wasteful spending has added more to the national debt than all previous governments and prime ministers combined. Trudeau’s inflationary spending has driven up interest rates, doubled the price of rent and mortgages and added $700 to the grocery bills of Canadians in this coming year.

Don’t you think the quarter of a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money that the Prime Minister spent on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is contributing to the cost of living increasing in this country? It is just one of many incompetent actions of this government —

The government intends to investigate fully the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and I would just remind colleagues that the claims being made about what does and does not contribute to the rising costs of living — which do affect all Canadians — have to be looked at, at least when they come from the opposition, with a certain degree of skepticism given all of the misinformation, especially with regard to the carbon tax and others.