Today on The Opposition, We sit down with former MP Rick Perkins to walk through a story that should make every Canadian furious. Ottawa burned through $130 million on a “women’s entrepreneurship” fund that produced exactly zero startups and zero net jobs, despite ministers bragging it was a triumph. That is not a program. That is theater paid for with your money.

From there, wee trace the pattern we’ve seen before: Sustainable Development Technology Canada the “green innovation” fund that, once audited, showed 186 conflicted transactions funnelling roughly $400 million to companies tied to board insiders. Parliament ordered unredacted documents to the RCMP. The government sent 29,000 pages most of them blacked out. Then the Speaker ruled the government had breached a House order, and the resulting privilege fight consumed the Commons until Trudeau prorogued Parliament. That is not accountability. That is impunity.

Perkins explains how this culture of secrecy works in practice: hide behind “cabinet confidence,” redact everything, and dare the police to investigate without evidence. Meanwhile, insiders keep the cash. He argues Parliament the owner of these programs has both the right and the duty to hand unredacted files to law enforcement so Canadians can finally get the truth.

And when the government says the fix is “a new one-stop Major Projects Office,” Perkins laughs. The same bureaucracy that turned the Trans Mountain expansion from $7 billion to $34 billion now promises speed. Why did costs explode? He describes stops for anthill relocations, six-week shutdowns over a single swallow, and inspectors sorting garbage bags on site all under Bill C-69’s regime. This is not efficiency. It is performance art.

Knight frames it simply at the top: Canadians work until mid-week just to pay the state, then watch the state light their money on fire and call the ashes “success.” Perkins supplies the receipts. Together they map the through-line: glossy announcements, conflicted boards, missing metrics, shredded transparency and a Parliament brought to a standstill rather than admit what happened.

If you want to understand why trust is collapsing and how to fix it this conversation will make you angry, and then it will make you clear. Listen now