Chair, this matter is one of great seriousness and great importance.
The Prime Minister made an announcement to have Mr. Carney take over in a role that's the de facto finance minister role—effectively holding pre-budget consultations across the country. This came on the heels, of course, of expressions from the Prime Minister's Office that they didn't have confidence in the deputy prime minister.
We have Mark Carney, who's earned the nickname “carbon tax Carney” for his affection for Justin Trudeau's price on everything. This relationship seems to have earned him the opportunity to have this job.
What's Mr. Carney getting for this job? We're told he's not being paid and that he's not being employed by the House of Commons. He's being hired by the Liberal Party. That distinction's really important because although he's advising Justin Trudeau and his government members, he doesn't fall under the conflict of interest regime by virtue of how he's been appointed.
We have Mr. Carney, who we expect will be able to see non-public information and his investment firm will stand to benefit greatly from that. If you look at the first couple of days after the announcement by the Trudeau government that they would have carbon tax Carney as the de facto finance minister, Brookfield Asset Management had a great couple of days. That's reflected in their stock price.
The first is changes to mortgage rules with Brookfield owning Sagen, which is the largest private mortgage insurer in Canada. With longer amortization periods, we're now going to see more profits for mortgage insurers and big banks like Sagen.
As an aside to that, in the face of a supply crisis, the government's response is to create more demand. That must also have been advice they got from Mr. Carney.
What's more is that within the first couple of days.... A person identified as a personal friend—a buddy—of Mark Carney's is the head of a company called Telesat. Telesat was given $2.4 billion to do something that the private sector is already able to do. The government has since made all kinds of claims that this is about national security, but the Prime Minister's remarks on the day of the event speak for themselves. I think he said it's about space and satellites and cool stuff, but it's really about connecting rural Canadians. Well, that's something we know can be done by the private sector for much less. If the idea they put forward was such a good one, we know that banks and private business would have gotten involved. Again, it's to the benefit of that elite cabal.
We then have Brookfield, in the days after this announcement, signalling that it's in talks to get 10 billion dollars' worth of Canadians' pension funds. This is terrifying. It should terrify Canadians that Justin Trudeau is trading influence and favours with his friends in exchange for the management of Canadians' pension dollars.
All of this should have been put through the lens of the Conflict of Interest Act and reviewed by Canada's Ethics Commissioner, but they've bobbed and weaved through a loophole and have appointed carbon tax Carney as an adviser to the Liberal Party for zero dollars, though we know that, as the paid head of Brookfield, he's going to benefit quite well.