I'll refer you to a comment made by Nigel Wright in front of this committee. Nigel Wright was the chief of staff to Prime Minister Harper.
Similar measures were applied in his case. He had to divest his assets in a blind trust. There were 40 companies that were screened in that context. They were kind of similar measures to what we see here.
At the time, Mr. Wright, who became the chief of staff to Prime Minister Harper, talked about his blind trust. He said that the “blind trust follows a form that was created and drafted by the Ethics Commissioner”, as in the case of the Prime Minister here. He said:
I transferred all of my controlled assets into the blind trust in late October. The blind trustee is the legal owner of them all now, and I'm not to have any communication of any sort—no direction, no advice, no information about what's in there. I do not know and will not know what's in there. Once a quarter I'll be told what the value of it is.
He said:
There is a direct link between the Ethics Commissioner and the blind trustee so that the Ethics Commissioner's office will have the ability to know what's going on, but the purpose of the blind trust is to remove me and any knowledge I may have about my controlled investments and have them administered by a third party.
It's exactly the same kind of situation that you have with Prime Minister Carney.