moved
That, given the Minister of Finance:
(a) after being elected to Parliament in 2015, led Canadians to believe that he had placed his shares in Morneau Shepell into a blind trust, while never having done so;
(b) used a loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act to place his shares in a private numbered company instead of divesting them or placing them in a blind trust;
(c) on October 19, 2016, sponsored Bill C-27, An Act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, a bill that would reasonably be expected to profit Morneau Shepell and the Minister of Finance in light of his continued ownership of shares in Morneau Shepell through a company he controls;
(d) was and remains in charge of regulating the pension industry in which he has had a personal economic interest; and
(e) has failed to live up to the ethical standards set forth by the Prime Minister in his mandate letter to the Minister;
the House call on the Minister of Finance to apologize to the House and to Canadians for breaking their trust, and the House call on the government to immediately close the loopholes in the Conflict of Interest Act as recommended by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, in order to prevent a Minister of the Crown from personally benefiting from their position or creating the perception thereof.
Mr. Speaker, I will start by suggesting the brilliant idea that I should split my time with my friend, the member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques. This is the best idea I may have had all week.
This incredibly important motion the New Democrats are raising today is of the most serious nature. This is what some have referred to as a motion of censure. This is not a task we take lightly and is borne directly out of the respect we have for this place, out of an understanding of the role cabinet ministers play, and the important role they play in the lives of Canadians. In order to play that role, they require the trust of Canadians and must conduct themselves in the highest ethical standard.
The Prime Minister gave an explicit order to his cabinet ministers that they would not just follow the letter of the law when it came to ethical behaviour, but they would go beyond that to fully encompass the spirit of the law of conflict of interest. He also ordered his cabinet ministers to make fully public their personal assets and their controlling interests “to be above and beyond” reproach. This clearly has not been the case.
Let us start with the facts of the matter. It is always important, when setting out an argument, to talk about what we know to be true. In 2015, after being elected to Parliament, the Minister of Finance led Canadians to believe he had placed his shares in Morneau Shepell into a blind trust. He told this to the CBC, he let it be known to his former company, Morneau Shepell, and he indicated that to colleagues in the Liberal Party. Beyond that, for two years, when this mistruth was repeated publicly on social media by Liberals and others, he allowed that mistruth to exist. That is a fact.
The second fact is that the minister exploited a loophole within the Conflict of Interest Act that allowed an individual to place his or shares in a private numbered company, instead of divesting them or placing them into a blind trust. That is now known as a fact. That was only revealed by the media digging and finding out the reality and the truth.
The third fact is that on October 19, 2016, the minister sponsored a bill. The same Minister of Finance, under his name, sponsored Bill C-27, an act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985, work in which Morneau Shepell, his former company, the company he still had shares in and derived benefit from, receiving payment cheques on a monthly basis, almost in excess of his yearly salary as a member of Parliament, would directly benefit. Morneau Shepell had done work in this field of pensions, with a great amount of benefit to the company. This bill, by the way, not parenthetically I suppose, does great harm to the pension security of Canadians by passing the risk from a shared view between the employer and the employee, almost entirely to the employee. He sponsored the bill, a bill that his company, which he still had assets in, and he would have directly benefited from.
The fourth fact is the minister remains to this day in charge of regulating the pension industry in which he has had a personal economic interest, and remains with a personal economic interest. The Prime Minister, as we note in our opposition day motion here, called upon the Minister of Finance to live up to a very high ethical standard, not just the explicit minimum. The Prime Minister explicitly told cabinet ministers they had to divulge, to full public disclosure, their personal assets. That was not done in either case.
We call on two specific things, because we do not just seek to point out the facts of the case, we also seek to make things better.
The first thing is that if the Minister of Finance, and the government, is truly interested in attempting to restore the trust lost between his office, between him and the business community, and the larger Canadian public, it would seem to me that an apology is in order. One of the hardest things in politics may be to say “I'm wrong and I'm sorry. I was wrong to exploit this loophole. I apologize for having done it. I will make amends the following way.”
I was personally surprised, and I have heard this from many Canadians over the weekend, that the Minister of Finance's tone last week was “How wonderful am I. Look at me now, divesting, maybe eventually, my interests in an industry in which I will continue to regulate. How wonderful am I that I allowed this lie to exist for two years in the public, that I never corrected it, and that I will still not apologize for. How wonderful am I that when the media asks for more information, I say I am not accountable to you.”
